The Cardinal Sin of Design
27 Sep
About ten years ago, I was sitting in a graphic design class and the teacher asked us to present a composite image for a mock ad campaign. The first image presented was of a skyscraper and was stretched disproportionately vertically and horizontally. I’ll never forget the look of disgust on the teacher’s face as he lit into us about maintaining proportionality and ratio aspect. Our show-and-tell turned quickly into a diatribe that lasted the remainder of the class. He repeated “Stretching an image disproportionately is the cardinal sin of design” so many times it burned in our brains. We dared not present an image that looked to be stretched or skewed in any shape, manner, or form.
Since that unforgettable mental lashing, I’ve always been keenly attune to aspect ratio in typography and photography, especially in the church world. If you’re not familiar with aspect ratio, it is simply the relationship of the width of an image to its height. For typography (fonts), each letter must be treated as an image and maintain the ratio of height to width. When the width of an image or font is increased, the height must also be increased to maintain aspect ratio and vice versa, or else it will appear skewed and awkward. There is never an instance when fonts or images should be proportioned outside of their original aspect ratio. This is the cardinal sin of design.
Here are some examples of skewing an image.
- Original Image – I shot this at my brother’s wedding last month
- Skewed Horizontally
- Skewed Vertically
There is a cognitive dissonance that is created when looking at the last two images. Even though, at a glance, the images look fine, the mind red flags the image and says “There’s something not quite right here.” There are three things that happen when you present a skewed image in print or on screen:
- You distract from the message as the mind will try to reconcile the proportional offense
- You do a disservice to the photographer and present their work inappropriately
- You lessen the quality of your production
Certainly, completely untrained eyes will miss a slight skewing of an image, however, most people will catch it either consciously or subconsciously. The bottom line is that someone worked hard to create a beautiful photograph. Don’t diminish the quality of the photo by stretching it. The two ways to properly resize a photograph are cropping and maintaining aspect ratio while resizing.
Cropping means you cut away parts of the original image to fit the dimensions of your project. Cropping is perfectly acceptable and a frequent practice in design. A cropped image might not be the original image size, however the subjects still maintain their proportionality. If you must resize an image, the rule-of-thumb is always downsize, and never upsize (unless you are using an algorithmic software such as Genuine Fractals). When downsizing an image, grab a corner of the image and press either the SHIFT or CONTROL key (possibly the COMMAND key for Apple users) while dragging the transformation handle toward the center of the image. If the bounding box adjusts the width and height automatically and the image stays intact, you’ve succeeded. If not, try again or read the application’s help section to find the keystroke assigned to lock aspect ratio. This applies to typography as well.
A few weeks ago I walked into the foyer of our church to find a sign company employee installing custom letters on the wall. Our church uses a script font for our taglines. I was horrified to see that the sign company designer had skewed the script font vertically and the letters looked absolutely stretched. I asked several people if they saw something wrong, and they replied “No.” I then held up a printed piece with the proper proportionality of the script font next to the lettering on the wall and their eyes opened wide. They could not believe how much of a difference it made.
The truth is, it’s a bit more difficult to spot stretched typography if you aren’t a designer. So, what’s the point? Why are you being so petty? I’m glad you asked. Font faces were created to be beautiful and portray a message with style and elegance. Skewing a font diminishes the quality of the font just as the integrity of the images above were harmed. If it’s a popular font, it certainly will be a recognizable error to the masses. Church identities are mainly communicated through typography. When a logotype is skewed and stretched, it directly affects the quality of the brand. We should always put our best foot forward when communicating the message of the Gospel to the community. Certainly, there are people who would be turned off by a cheap looking stretch job.
The number one reason why designers skew and stretch is to fill up white space. White space is a powerful concept that helps direct readers to key points and then directs them to a sub point. When you’re tempted to stretch a font’s height to fill up vertical space or make an image fit your project size disproportionately, remember that this is the cardinal design sin. There’s never a good reason to stretch images or fonts. Saints resize proportionately, sinners stretch and skew.
Go forth and sin no more.
