Now What Do I Do?

WOW did I make a mistake today. I am working for a company that publishes textbooks, posters, training materials, and other published items. The professional they hired to produce this material has no experience in publishing. Has access to the entire suite of Adobe products and is preferring to use Word and Powerpoint, even though these are being printed commercially. The products were sent to press without a press proof; “What’s a press proof she asks?”

Recent project, this person’s self-described best work, is a poster with umpteen different fonts, every box has a gradient, with a different color, no borders between text boxes. No style guide rules for grammer or design were followed. So, I tried to offer some suggestions. It was not received well, so I assembled a number of reference sites and sent them over. The strategy was that this would take the “personal” out of the dialogue.

It was like gas on the fire. I started a war, even though I did not actually throw my Chicago Manual of Style. The question is, how bad do we let something that is representing our company get before we speak up. I probably butted in where I did not belong since I am the web developer but holy-cow, we are charging for this stuff.