TypeFaces controversy

My first post - something that I’d just like to clear up:

I’ve recently started a new job at a boutique design agency with a strong online focus. My boss, Adii, is a young online entrepreneur with an insane passion for design and the web. After a big restructuring and change in strategy for the agency, Adii wanted us to bring out something special as a first product - something that will give us a foot in the door of the web design industry.

The product had to be something that would capture the imagination of the online web design community. What better way to do this than by bringing out a beautifully designed physical product featuring their heroes - inspirational web designers. The idea of TypeFaces was born - web designer playing cards featuring 20 designers chosen for their great designs, their activity and contribution to the industry Adii loves and their big following due to these reasons.

Something else worth noting is that this project was never intended to be a big money making scheme. It was our “hello world” - a way to make people aware of us. Adii funded our time and salaries while the income from the cards would finance production costs.

During research one big thing that struck me about the industry was the fellowship, the humility of its big players and how they didn’t seem to take themselves too seriously. It seemed like an industry that loves to warm its seemingly cold, digital, impersonal medium with humor and personality. Based on this we decided to make it our approach with the cards. It was great knowing we’re not dealing with movie stars harboring egos the size of the planet forcing us to tread lightly in order not to offend. We would make them fun, tongue in cheek and aim to humanize the digital personas of the designers and bring this to the community. We also decided to make the community decide the humoristic “top trumps”-style ratings that would feature on the cards, making this not just our product but something shaped by anyone who wants to be a part of it.

Imagine my surprise when we received a very aggressive, very insulting response from one of the designers - demanding to be removed immediately even going so far as to call our project TypeFaeces…  I feel like “Dude, I sat for hours researching your work, reading and watching interviews with you, trying to come up with something playfully relevant to write about you that YOU would find funny, and then more time designing a card with your face on it, and THIS is what you have to say about it?!”.

We didn’t ask for permission from the designers which, in retrospect, was a bit ignorant and a definite mistake, but we genuinely felt the intention of the project, the mood of the industry and more importantly, the fact that we are honoring these great designers and their accomplishments, made it unnecessary. I never expected anyone to react negatively. However, like I said, it was a mistake to assume that everyone would want to be a part of this and including them without letting them know about it/explain out intentions/ask for permission. If we have offended anybody due to this we are obviously very, very sorry.

I guess my point with this post is to explain the intentions with the project to anyone that might be reading this. Perhaps explaining it with the launch of the project would have avoided the controversy surrounding it, but we felt the playful tongue in cheek tone of everything from the designer attributes (sanity, endurance, scariness, flexibility, speed!) to the seemingly random descriptions to the rough portrait sketches would make it pretty clear that this is for fun. We didn’t do this to make the designers look good, but rather to make them human. And definitely not to support any “elitist/cliquey vibe” in the web community - we are bummed to only be able to include a limited number of designers but limiting the sales price on the cards meant limiting the production costs and therefore the number of cards we could produce.

This is meant to be a fun, playful but beautifully designed product and a tribute to an industry and community we love. Just that.

- Cobus