Character #002 ~ Luke Jones. 27. Graphic Designer. Colour Challenged.
“Yeah, I have heard that, but it’s an old wives tale, no?” Luke said, plonking the cheap plastic kettle onto the ill-fitting base.
He turned to the young woman leaning against the kitchen door of the design studio. She was cupping a warm mug of cocoa on this particularly cold Wednesday. And she finally shrugged.
“Nobody actually lives by that. What do you mean that blue and green should never be seen, unless there’s something in between? I mean come on. It’s only a thing because it rhymes. I bet in Latvian culture there’s no design apartheid like this. Because I bet it doesn’t rhyme in Latvia!” concluded Luke.
He headed back to his desk, wiggled the mouse and the screen woke. She followed and sat on the milk crate next to him. Vernacular chic or just cheap, she hadn’t quite decided.
“Look. Didn’t you say you were colour blind as a kid? Old wives tale aside, these two colours really are like tired kids on a road trip. They’re super clash-y.” Kat said as she tapped her pen on the screen.
They’d worked together for years and built it up to from a two person design studio to a two person design studio. Which was their entire point.
They figured as their reputation grew could say no to more to more projects. And just work on the things that interested them. Like the identity for a local biodynamic microbrewery they did a few months ago. And this job they just got, for new beer coasters.
“Well..” said Luke who barely registered a difference in the two colours, “I could add a key line, a white one, that framed the perimeter of the beer coaster, with a graphic quality, that extenuated the very essence of the squircle.” He’d started the sentence well, but finished a parody of an Apple design video.
“The squircle? You’re going with squircle? The bastard child of a square and a circle? Jesus. Your grip on acceptable language is fast approaching the point of no return.” Kat said rolling her eyes.
“And besides, the plastic, the fucking plastic that we’re using, so they don’t fall apart when Johnny-Drinkie-Too-Much spills his shitty beer on it, comes pre-cut as circles only” Kat added, slightly annoyed that they’d taken such an ethically dubious job.
“You know I see you more than my girlfriend” he said explaining why he’d stopped censoring himself.
“Maybe that’s why she hates both of us…” she muttered under her breath.
They laughed.
He looked down at the near endless array of unwashed tea and coffee mugs that had gathered. Evidence of a week free of client meetings. He couldn’t work out if her taste in crockery was fashionably eclectic, or they were just poor.
We should be making more plastic beer coasters, he thought to himself, we can’t keep working like this.
