Trudy Karl
Illustration, Design, Art & Travels
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Design Inspiration
The devil is in the details
July 12, 2007
I just had a realization, that it may pay to have to wear glasses. This may not be what you think. It is related to the common phrase, "The devil is in the details." Well, think about this. When creatives are in the intense mode of working on a file, let's say in Illustrator, we get into anchor point tweaking, or color adjustments, and really, we need to step back.
I used to have perfect eyesight. It was better than 20/20. Then age happened. I've been so distraught and obsessed with trying to see well again, that I would never take my glasses off. I was recently working on a design of underwater dolphins (similar to my humpback whales), and speckles in my vision told me to clean my glasses, so off they came. I then noticed that it was easier to see effectiveness of the colors of the fading dolphins in the distant water when they were a bit blurred out. Huh. So, I had forgotten that one of my favorite things to do was to squint my eyes to try to blur things out and see the overall composition, without distraction of the details.
So, maybe it really does pay to bad eyesight? Nah! But maybe in design mode, it pays to occasionally take off your glasses to "see" better, however. No squinting, or twisting up your face is necessary. Maybe they could invent a large blurring glass for those with perfect eyesight, so they can have the same "benefit." Hehe. Imagine that. 
