Taste
Lots of seemingly-different-but-actually-related thoughts coming together these last few weeks. What Gruber said at dConstruct seems to be underlying everything. Spoiler? It all comes down to taste.
Aside: Listen to the talks. All of them.
This email from university today made me think about this more. On top is the email I received, below is how I would have written it.

If you’re going to be given the ‘power’ to email several thousand students with one click, somebody should be ensuring that you have the level of taste required to do that properly. This person does not. Seriously: that’s the entirety of the email she sent. No indication of who she was, why I received it, where it came from (except the from: address). This isn’t rocket science, it’s just that some people clearly have attention to detail approaching zero in some situations.
This is something that’s coming up time and time again for me. It sounds elitist and snobby, but I can’t think of a way around it: in situations where lots of people can affect a single thing*, there needs to be a gatekeeper.
* A thing can be a project, website, brand, or any number of other things.
In this case, her email is affecting the Halifax college or university brand – and not in a good way. YUSU is an organisation who really look like they get this. Everything that I’ve seen come out of there has been beautiful. From their weekly emails, to logos, to building signage and their website. All the way down to whatever rubbish they’ll give out to new students in a few weeks (key rings, calendars, pens, etc). It all looks stunning. This is so important.
Taste, and attention to detail. I’m going to be thinking about them far more than ever before.




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