Punctuation Matters

Communication Design isn’t just “figurines”.

Text is a fundamental part of the message you want to transmit. It’s your message’s soul. Punctuation is a part of it and you should pay attention to it. That is why it matters.

When I was in high school, I only truly enjoyed drawing classes and I’d actually get irritated if my teacher didn’t show up. Of course, I enjoyed a canceled class in the middle of the morning… but I’d rather that class would be English, for example, which was way worse than a boring class, it was for me a true martyrdom!

But back then I still couldn’t understand the benefits of this subject…

Only after a few years working in advertising did I realize (because I never thought about it before) something that was obvious: having a job in communication forces you to deal, on a daily basis, with written and spoken English.

Let me ask you this: have you ever seen an ad in a magazine that had nothing written on it? Or a TV ad without text, or lines? …well, maybe you have seen one from Nike or some other renowned brand, but those are very exceptional examples.

Most designers that I know in the visual communication area (art directors, communication designers, videographers, etc.) don’t care about texts for anything because they say, it’s not their job to do it. “The client is the one who has to give me the texts” or “have the copywriter make them!”.

This complete resignation of responsibilities when it comes to writing always confused me, because, even so, I always gave my opinion about the texts that would be in my design and advertising jobs. Actually, for many years I’ve been writing the headlines, slogans, signatures, and body-copy of my works on my own, whether they are press ads, movies, websites, branding or others.

For me, “Communication” is to communicate fully. Text is a fundamental part of the message you want to transmit. Text is, most of the times, the soul of the message. Creative writing in advertising can be very fun if we give it an opportunity. Punctuation is just one of its beauties: 

Let’s eat dad.
Let’s eat, dad.