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Thai Language Phrase Books: A Mega Review

What exactly goes into phrase book design?

It’s not exactly a secret that I also blog at Women Learning Thai. And as a designer, design does tend to sneak into my posts.

For instance, in Thai Language Phrase Books: A Mega Review, I found myself critiquing the book designs.

In preparation for that post, I approached the project as if I’d been hired by a client to scout out what arrangements worked best for phrase books, then report back. In detail.

First, I surrounded myself with every type of phrase book imaginable. Then, I culled out the cacca. Next, I immersed myself in all things phrase books by reading each from cover to cover, all the while keeping my design mind open.

Not exactly a surprise was how effective some of the one and two colour versions were. What did surprise me was how a leader in the phrase book business, The Rough Guide, could make a disaster of a colour choice.

In the first sections of The Rough Guide there are 16 pages of light blue with knock out white copy. Have you ever tried to read white copy on a light blue background? Printed on thin paper? You got it, it is pretty much impossible to read in good light, let alone bad.

And when you think about the situations for reading phrase books – dimly lit restaurants, street corners at dusk, at the back of a bus – then it should be obvious to everyone involved that phrase book design needs to be super legible.

But, designers being what they are, sometimes the urge to create something different (insert ‘pretty‘) gets ahead of us and we lose our way. Either that, or someone needs to smack their printer and/or the person responsible for the print check up the side of the head with a paddle. Hard.

Living in the country, I also brought my own Thai culture and language experiences into the mix: what was left out, what didn’t belong, as well as what I found new.

So the other surprise was a seeming lack of a Thailand focus. And here I’m not taking about actual design as in pixels, I’m talking about their target audience.

Perhaps, as a cost savings, some of the larger phrase book producers took the cookie cutter approach by using the same phrases for each country?

Well, I can’t talk about all countries, but I can tell you that it does not work for Thailand. For starters, Thailand does not have ski slopes, or avalanches or ice skating.

What it does have is a rich, embedded culture that comes out in their phrases. Yes, there is another beef coming up…

In Thailand, a common greeting is ‘have you eaten rice yet’ which translates to ‘have you eaten yet’ but really means, ‘how are you doing?’ or ‘what’s hanging?’ or ‘yo mamma!’

And did I find this very common Thai phrase in all of the Thai phrase books? No.

Deep sigh… But, instead of continuing on with a full-blown rant, I’ll leave this rant at that.

The (badly timed) series on Thai phrase books:

• Travelling with Thai Phrase Books
• Using Thai Phrase Books
• Thai Language Phrase Books: A Mega Review
• When They Can’t Speak Thai
• Thai Phrase Books with a Twist
• and one other (still to be determined).

Enjoy…

Snooty Designer?

The Creativity of Crowds

CrowdSpring aims to slash the cost of graphic design work–and democratize a snooty business.

snooty |?sno?t?|
arrogant, proud, haughty, conceited, aloof, superior, self-important, disdainful, supercilious, snobbish, snobby, patronizing, condescending, uppity, uppish, high and mighty, la-di-da, stuck-up, hoity-toity, too big for one’s breeches, persnickety, bigheaded and snot-nosed.

Yup, that’s me. I’m one bigheaded la-di-da designer with a hoity-toity arrogance.

Want more? Then read…

David Airey’s Forbes calls designers snooty
Steph Doyle’s Forbes Promotes Graphic Design Kitsch
Steve’s Design is a ’snooty’ business: Forbes
Erik Akers’ Designers = Snooty?
Jeff Andrew’s Forbes Magazine: Graphic Design is a Snooty Business
Brian Yerks’ Why CrowdSpring Owners Should Be Ashamed of Their Business

And of course, NO!SPEC’s Forbes Says Designers are Snooty

These past few weeks have been total strangeness.

Thanks Forbes. For everything…

What a strange week it’s been. What with walls blowing up, and, well, walls blowing up (?)

Anyway, I thought I’d end the week on a fine note by joining David Airey with his 33 logos in 33 minutes, inspired by Jane’s fun with brands meme. [... Continue reading ... Branding Before Breakfast. (a)Meme.

Yes, it’s a Happy Birthday to … us …

• Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Enya, Jackie McLean, Sugar Ray Leonard, Dennis Hopper, the Ayatollah Khomeini (um) and more.

[... Continue reading ... Pink Birthday Bits

Yesterday I received a promotion from your company. To, you know, improve my blogging bottom line. Or sell me cups. Something really important like that.

When I went on your site to look, I found this message:

“Sorry, the web site you are accessing has been closed by Royal Thai Police due to inappropriateness such as pornography, gambling or contain any information which is deemed to violate national security.” [... Continue reading ... Dear Support Associate

A sense of humour is one reason I live where I do. It’s also one of the many reasons I don’t mind traveling to the UK on and off. Yes, that tidy island off the coast of France has quite the local sense of humour.

The British feed the world with their own brand of comedy via the likes of: Peter Sellers, the Goons, Roan Atkinson, Charlie Chapman, Spike Milligan, John Cleese, Stephen Fry, Ben Elton, Michael Palin, Marty Feldman, Peter Sellers, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.

And I can’t resist mentioning a few comedies the Americans twicked: Till Death Do Us Part (Archie Bunker), Man About the House (Three’s Company), and Robin’s Nest (Three’s a Crowd).

So when the OGC logo came into view, I thought it was yet another pull. (Note: the OGC is UK’s Office of Government Commerce (OGC) – the HM Treasury tentacle “responsible for improving value for money by driving up standards and capability in procurement”). [... Continue reading ... OGC Logo a Brit of Humour?

Thursday night late (might as well call it Friday morning, mostly because it was), after tying up blogging loose ends here (and leaving Jay to the sweating heat of Songkran), we shoved suitcases into a taxi and off we went. To Suvarnabhumi, Thailand’s new(ish), but not uneventful airport (BA, join the club!) [... Continue reading ... Remembrance of a Brandy Morning

Have you been to an Embassy lately? I just came back and what a treat it was.

Do you recall their counter windows, similar to those found in banks? The ones with the narrow slots along the bottom to slide paperwork through?

Why is it, that although we all know modern mics carry, we still lean down on elbows to talk at that hole? [... Continue reading ... Quality Control: Are Your Clients Left Hanging?

The Real Reason Behind Digg’s Bury Brigade

As usual (love these guys), Brad and Chris are spot with their recent cartoon on the subject of digg and diggers.

But when I went to comment, Wordpress snafued it up. [... Continue reading ... bLaugh (Wordpress can’t count)

Artwerk

Wandering, working, sleeping. And not in that order.

Well, this is going to be a wandering post. A half asleep post. With Jay here in Bangkok, we are working long hours and my brain just wants to keep working. Two am finds us still up. Sometimes. Last night I attempted to crash at midnight but it just wasn’t to be. I finally dropped off on the sofa around one am, but … sigh … Jay, needing a drink of water and trying to be quiet, tripped over the cat’s bowl then slammed into the cupboard with a TWACK!! And then there I was. Awake. [... Continue reading ... Insomnia and the Artwerk Design Blog