Desktop publishing consultant design typography
Good type is type-aahhh!-graphy.
Bad type is typog-grrrrrr!-aphy.

Read how we can help make your type better.
First came typists, and typing, a skill.
Then typesetting, compositing, a craft.
Then typography, design, an art.
Then desktop publishing, the anti-art.

Daddy Desktop (a service of
Listen, Write, Design,), can help you upgrade your typography on a current project by consulting with you, by suggesting steps you can take,

or by holding your hand, that is, by reviewing your project in stages,

or by our resetting the type for major projects where only the best will do (such as national ads).

Read the link at left or call.
704 542 3375. And as the great
Herb Lubalin once put it:

Let's talk type.
Let type talk.
Create a Web site that works.
Not one that looks like a yellow phone book page. Ugh!

View our radical approach.
Be forewarned. We hate Web pages:
that are busy and complicated,
that are busy and overstuffed,
that are busy and unfocused.

Many Web sites make three mistakes.

1. Unlike most products,
unlike most ads,
unlike most package design,
unlike most everything commercial,
many Web sites look alike.
They are not differentiated visually.
They come from vanilla templates.
They could be for you or anybody.

You. Or. Anybody. 'zat what you want?

They lack visual brand equity.

Many Web sites jam dozens of items on a home page like flies on flypaper. What does the publisher want you to see first? To read first? To seek out tediously from a zillion menu choices. To act on right now? — Anybody's guess. Why?

Read our article on branding.

2. They throw everything at you at once, a blizzard of ugliness, a hailstorm of visual debris and confusion. Pictures in various sizes. Blue type. Black type. Three or four columns of "stuff." They fear that if dozens of choices are not right there right now, you'll flee. They believe that everyone is comfortable reading tiny type on a computer monitor which chews it up. (With an aging US population yet.) Worst of all, they believe that clicks are bad, that white space is bad, that greed will force users to find something in this mess. (Are people that patient?) They make it hard for you to find something you might want to buy from them. It's amateurish. It's expensive.

Which is why so many fail.

3. They have bought in to the nonsense of "Web architects," to the idea that invisible technology behind an ugly, self-serving, confounding, database-driven Web page, without real writers and designers, will make it wonderful.

What they really need is terrific graphic design by a designer/planner whose main passion is:

Effective communication.
And creative collaboration with their technical confreres.

Communicate with us.
Bad-ad ER.
Resurrect bad ads at the last minute.
Maybe.

Six ways to fight bad ads.
The courier is en route in an hour to get your ad CD to the publication or printer. Or your email deadline is ticking. Maybe it's already on extension.

It's the Last Chance Saloon for this ad.

You suddenly find your ad is wanting.
Your gut says:

The headline is wrong.
Or the mood is wrong.
Or the layout.
Or the photo or artwork.
Or the pitch.
Or the offer.
Or something.

We'll drop everything to make your ad work better (on tight deadline extension). It may take a few hours or all night. You will end up with a much more effective ad. It ain't cheap because it is superrush / drop everything / figure out whose software is best to finish the job / give up dinner and evening plans and work the red-eye shift.

$275/hour, 3–hour minimum = $825,

if one person can do it. If creative plus technical people are needed, the cost will reflect that.

Trust our gut. Over the years, we've learned to.
Crop bad photos better.

We show you how via iChat, phone, email.
What do you do when you're forced to work with photos that are poorly cropped or boring or blurry or out-of-focus or whose color is munged?

Daddy Desktop will show you a little trick that makes many awful photos useful and exciting, and it has nothing to do with Photoshop.

Most newsletters and company publications depend on photos to get people to actually read the stuff. Bad photos are not your ally. When your photos look good, you look good. And viewers continue to look and read.

Side benefit: The more good photos you use, and the bigger you can use them, the less copy you have to write, proofread, edit, and rewrite.

And a tip: Good photos with
well-written captions will get more readership than corporate text.
We create the idea.
You produce it.

We create you produce. Your layout is good but you need a better idea, a better headline, a better pitch, a better concept. Daddy Desktop will respect what you have done that still works, and develop a communication concept — words and visuals — that ties in as much as possible with your prior work, but steps outside it to produce a more powerful piece.

Then you will finish the project.
Or:

You create the idea.
We produce it.

Either way, your strengths combine with ours.		 Or:

You create we produce. Your idea is good but you need stronger layout. Ask Daddy Desktop to polish and finish the ad. We'll take your file, if technically possible, and rework it. If you are local, come here and watch and kibitz (if you are not allergic to the cats gainfully employed here).

Then Daddy Desktop will finish the project.
Select the right creative vendor.

Let us help you choose the right
printer, photographer, illustrator.
Daddy Desktop will guide you on selection of
art: illustrators, stock art, clip-art —
photo: photographers, stock photos —
production: printers, prepress vendors.

Of course nothing is better than your own file of talent whose work you know, and whom you can call on.

Daddy Desktop will help you negotiate prices based on usage, style, content, rights and payments.

We'll help you deal with "artistic temperament" in a productive way. (For example: what if the illustrator has stayed up all night to meet a tough deadline. He brings it in at 8:30 sharp. And you hate it. Not good! We can help.) (Maybe.)

This requires time for judgment, calls to vendors, judgment, your approvals, judgment, so please don't ask for this function at the last minute. Thank you.
To chat, 980.245.2323.
Dezignoclast.
Unpredctable service for large desperate companies.
For the company at its wit's end, inhibited by corporate culture. Desperate for a new idea. Look here:
Design Doctor.
A special service for the
top corporate executive or
top marketing executive.
For the company with too many creative suppliers, inside and outside, too many departments, too many styles of marketing communication.
The facts are here: