Typos and other sad, nit-picky details in the life of a graphic designer

So when I'm not designing during the day, I spend a lot of time thinking about questions to ask the Internet. If I think of something to ask, or to comment on, chances are at least twelve (or thousands of) people have asked that question, or noticed that thing, or had that realization, themselves. To me, the mass consciousness that the Web has created is just terrific!

I find myself especially drawn to sites that list errors of others: Pages like the one I discovered in IMDB today that list "goofs" in various movies and TV shows. Here's an example for the movie "Mary Poppins". In this page, they list technical and continuity errors like strings showing and people switching places from cut to cut: in other words, only details that nerds would notice. (Incidentally, they didn't list the one blinding error I always notice when watching that movie: when Mary and the children march out of the room after "Spoonful of Sugar," I swear the bed closest to the door is cut in half.)

Anyway, so this website is great fun, and it just goes to show you that people love to say "Ha-ha! You did it wrong!" to hard-working artists. This irritating characteristic of mine comes in handy, however, when I'm laying out graphic pieces with long stretches of copy: I'm usually pretty good at finding the annoying little typos, misspellings and stray spaces in a paragraph.

So tonight, when I was washing my face, I was amazed and delighted to find a typo on my Body Shop Tea Tree Oil Facial Wash packaging: "In a perfect world, we'd never gets spots and life would be fair, for everyone." "GetS!" Never mind that the Body Shop continues to talk about their fine work with the Bunjum Aboriginal Co-op -- they didn't catch a typo!! On a piece of packaging that was distributed in the hundreds of thousands! Fascinating!

I immediately went online, sure that some other nerd out there had discovered this as well, and was saddened to find that I was the only one.

Alas, here I am, alone, on a Friday night, in my lessened state of gloating:





"Ha-ha! Look what I found!"