John Debay

President Obama, responsibly acceding to the reality of divided government, is now the leading champion of fiscal austerity, and his proposals contain very little in the way of job creation. More important, he no longer uses his office’s most powerful tool, rhetorical suasion, to keep the country focussed on the continued need for government activism. His opponents’ approach to job creation is that of a cargo cult—just keep repeating “tax cuts”—even though the economic evidence of the past three decades refutes such magical thinking. What does either side have to offer the tens of millions of Americans who have settled into a semi-permanent state of economic depression? Virtually nothing. But if responsibility were fused with conviction—if politics were a vocation in Washington today—the Hartzells would be represented at the negotiating table.

Typography to me is about design. It’s about words and the conveyance of meaning. It’s about setting words that people read. A certain amount of it is creative, a certain amount is expression and aesthetics, but mostly, it’s about people reading stuff. Do them a favour and don’t make it difficult.

I think one of the reasons “Pixel Perfection” is becoming a meme these days is that people want to emulate Apple, and attention to detail is one of the qualities people most associate with Apple. Having worked as part of the organization responsible for the massive undertaking of shipping OS X, however, I have a slightly different take on what makes Apple great. Certainly attention to detail is an important reason for Apple’s success. But I think another essential component of what makes Apple successful is that it is extremely disciplined and incredibly good at continuously identifying the appropriate level of imperfection in projects and products over time. That doesn’t sound terribly profound, but based on my experiences outside of Apple and my observations of the tech industry at large, perfection is a lot easier than you think. Imperfection is the hard part.