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001
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A
Sorry Tale of Cross Incompatibility
Contributor:
Mike de Sousa, Director, AbleStable®
A friend of mine recently fulfilled a life long ambition
by cutting a commercially released audio CD of his
music. The CD was pressed and the sleeve artwork was
printed after approval and all appeared to be running
smoothly.
My friend received a copy of the completed CD through
the post. He pulled open the heat-sealed cellophane
rapping, clicked open the jewel case and started
reading the CD booklet. Every apostrophe was replaced
with a small square.
My friend contacted the graphic designers/printers
immediately and asked 'What the hell is all this?
This wasn't in the proofs...'. The designers/printers
said, and I quote 'what do you expect when you use
Arial as your main font?'. The upshot was that the
printers had to meet the additional costs incurred
for reprinting the booklet.
The point of recounting this sorry tale is to illustrate
how creative professionals still do not check and
double check for cross compatibility. Always test
on PC and Mac if you're a creative professional exchanging
digital files. I was staggered at the arrogance of
those designers/printers and the unnecessary costs
and inconvenience they caused by their thoughtless
action and poor customer relations.
The central message all of us have to take on board
is to acknowledge we do not all speak the same digital
language. We live in a digital tower of Babel. Anyone
who's used the web browsers Internet Explorer and
Netscape, realise web pages can look remarkably different
depending on your point of view.
Although PC's and Mac's run entirely different operating
systems, it is possible to achieve a cross platform
solution (and that includes your web site). Solutions
of this kind are always a compromise, but don't fool
yourself into thinking compromise equates with less.
Many of the best solutions have arisen out of compromise,
compromise encourages creative problem solving, compromise
is what the web is all about. | |
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| Authors
background |
Mike
de Sousa is the Director of AbleStable®.
Mike has been commissioned as an artist, music
composer, photographer, print and web site designer,
and author.
If you observe inaccuracies in our in-house
contributions or wish to contribute an article
or review to be included at AbleStable®
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AbleStable © 2002-2008 |
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Material: AbleStable © 2002-2008 |
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