I am a God, a Titan, and master of all I survey.

Seriously. Let me explain.

I don't like contemporary American graphic design, I generally find id dull, derivative and with an odd aesthetic. I'm also NOT a big fan of Paula Scher, she's basically the Grande Dame uber designer at Pentagram in New York, I just don't like her work. Unfortunately - she's such a big cheese that every time she blows her nose someone writes a blog post, newspaper article and press release about it - every industry has someone like that. I quite like Pentagram as a design agency in the UK - but it depends on the project - I was once, many years ago, invited to interview there - I arrived on time and was told they were too busy to see me and could I come back a week later, which I did. The head Honcho, John MacConnell - kept me waiting an hour, staggered out of a junket in the boardroom, quite pissed, spilled wine all over my work ( clearly couldn't focus on it ) and dismissed me with a wave of his hand. I didn't get the job.

Anyway - last night, Pentagram updated their blog (which is quite good, better maintained than most design agency blogs, but obviously quite self serving) with a new piece by Paula Scher - a cover for 'Lolita' by Nabokov. I like the book, and I have seen some very good attempts at covers, but this was... well, shite. Staggeringly bad, really, really shite - apparently they wanted something 'ripe and fleshy' - if there is one thing that winds me up - it's when book designers don't actually read the books.

So - they cross post on Facebook, their Blog and Twitter - and I'm looking at this piece of work as the acolytes click the 'like' button and ReTweet mindlessly with words like 'awesome', and I think "that's not how you spell Vladimir" - so I check, and I'm right. There are two 'i's. So I tell them - I don't make a big deal - just a simple correction. They withdraw the original and put up a new cover very quickly and put it down to 'an earlier draft copy was posted in error' - which is quite annoying really - because firstly - the typo simple draws attention to what a shit piece of work it was and totally unreadable, and it's typical to blame a minion when really - it's Paula's fault - her name is 'above the door'.

I'm chuffed to bits with this small victory - me against the giants, and SPELLING of all things. Of course - I've had a bit of abuse online already - not quite on the scale of calling Justin Bieber the Antichrist - but I expected that, Design is a very partisan industry.

Here are the covers - before and after the correction. They really are shite.

In other news, about a week ago - I started getting more readers on here - and for some weird reason, this has continued at an almost geometric rate - considering that almost exactly the same number of people have looked at this blog every day for the last five of six years - this sudden blip is quite unnerving - with more hits every day numbering the hundreds. I'll be honest - it makes me uncomfortable - a bit like knowing that people are talking about you in the next room but not quite able to hear what they are saying - the one thing that absolutely makes me think of pulling this blog, is getting popular. Although it's probably just one of those robot computers looking for places to dump their strange comments.