It's Day 139 of my THREEHUNDREDANDSIXTEEFIVE challenge and I am wearing one of my more elaborate Bench T-shirts recounting the great and heroic tale of "The Designer And The Deadline".
Once upon a time, there was a hungry designer locked away in his tiny box studio, starving for work. He peddled his portfolio all over town but none of the big fish would bite, until one day, the major brand Bench took a shine to one of his architectural illustrations. After a brief meeting with the client outlining the objectives of a new project, the designer was officially commissioned by the brand to produce a single T-shirt illustration from which they may "go from there". The deadline was pretty tight, but that didn't matter; the designer had finally made it.
The designer was filled with glee and he rushed back to his drafty old studio which was overpriced and had terrible wifi reception, as fast as his legs could carry him. He was determined to impress the client like never before, so he set about creating the most elaborate T-shirt illustration of his career; one that fused heat transfer, screen printing, flocking, stitching effects - the works!
He worked tirelessly through the night and come daybreak, a dark blue, purple and grey vision sat before him, depicting a scene of an American street with cars, signposts and buildings - perfectly on brand and some of his best work. The client will most certainly be pleased.
With the deadline a mere hour away, the designer confidently hopped on the train to present the work personally.
Typically, the train was packed with commuters and morons who think it's acceptable to stand by the doors with their noses buried in their tablets, so the designer had to squeeze his small frame into the crowd awkwardly.
Wait a minute.
Small frame.
Small.
Small!?
Oh no! The oversight! The foolish mistake! Only now on a train full of people on his way to the client has the designer realised that the artwork he has created fits perfectly on a T-shirt ideal for himself - a size small - but not for anyone larger. The artwork finishes about four inches shy of the available space on a size medium, God knows how bad it will look on an XXL! If the design were to be enlarged wholesale its quality would degrade - the old stiff-pixel snag, so that was no good. He had to come up with a solution fast! He whipped out his laptop, balanced it on the face of an infant who had no business being on a commuter train during rush hour, and set about developing what we in the industry like to call a "fudge". The hapless designer sliced out a 1px column from the rightmost edge of the drawing and yanked that sucker as wide as he could to fill the void, eventually nestling under the left armpit - highly unusual territory for a T-shirt design to venture, I'm sure you'll agree. The end result gave the illustration the impression that it was about to depart at warp speed, but that didn't matter. The error was patched, the clients entertained it and the fudge prevailed.
And that my friends is the story of The Designer And The Deadline. Embrace the fudge.
