I call her Eagle Eye.

Eagle Eye can sense a quarter of a point size font difference by taking one glance at a design.  She has become my favorite customer, but her eagle eye for slight design variations wasn’t always something I handled well.

She is a throwback to another time.  She owns her own advertising agency and has worked in the industry for over forty years.  At over seventy years old and five foot three inches tall, she is the smallest and seemingly frailest person I have ever worked with.  But she has a southern toughness that rivals that of Scarlett O’Hara.  I would imagine that her toughness has grown from forging a long lasting career in a field dominated by men, in a region of the country that has had some old fashioned views of a woman’s place in the working world.

We get to work together for a short period of time every year.  That one period of time lasts for only a month, but it has become my favorite month of the year.

My first experience with Eagle Eye was during the first year of my current job. I was still cutting my teeth when I was told that a customer was coming in for a job we had been printing for over thirty years.   Her name was Sonja and I was to update the brochure for the county fair that she was promoting. 

Our first meeting was easy enough, she had everything well organized and she had sketched out the changes that she wanted.  I took the notes and did my best with the file and hideous photographs I received to work with.   Although the design was from thirty years ago, I had to admit, it didn’t look too bad when I was finished.  After all, current design trends were focusing on a retro style, and I thought I had done a spectacular job. 

My thought was incredibly wrong.   She spotted fonts that were a quarter of a point size different from the fonts surrounding them, she spotted drop shadows that didn’t match by only two percent difference, and told me that every image had to have the background lightened.  By the time I was through with our meeting, I had two full days worth of work ahead of me.   I was flabbergasted.

Being someone who only gets more determined in the face of adversity, I went back to work and put together another proof.  She spotted more fonts that didn’t match, the drop shadows were now too dark, she wanted the blue lightened but not too light, and every photo I had taken so much time to adjust was not light enough.

After a few proofs, I started to explain why some of the changes she requested couldn’t be done the way she wanted. Some of the changes she wanted were changes that I thought wouldn’t work for press printing, but she wouldn’t budge.  She stuck, like pluff mud, to all of the changes that I told her were impossible.   I eventually gave up on convincing her of my side and cursed as I went back to my desk to try the impossible tasks she refused to see as impossible.

We did this through seventeen proofs, until she eventually approved it for printing.  I was glad to be done working with her, and I hoped I wouldn’t be the one to work with her the next year.   My hopes were dashed and the next year, when the same time came around I was the one.

The process went the same, but that year there were new challenges, the yellow background that had been used for the last fifteen years wasn’t yellow enough for her.  She would ask: “is that a different yellow from last year?”  I would tell her “No, it is exactly the same color that has been printed for fifteen years” and she would say “It looks like a different yellow, well let’s just try to make it more yellow.”  I would add more yellow and she would say “See, doesn’t that just look so much better?”  I would clench my teeth in frustration.

One of the reasons I had such a hard time accepting our relationship was the fact that she would look at something that she had agreed upon the previous year and tear it apart as if someone else had approved it.   It didn’t make sense to me that she would trash talk a design that was her own, and then approve of it after making what seemed to me to be inconsequential changes. 

After three years of the same struggles, I decided to give up and just accept all of the changes she asked for without argument.  I soon learned that none of her requests were impossible.  What started out as giving up suddenly turned into opening up.  My eyes were opened to her point of view.  I realized that I had completely pushed away her forty years of experience for my meager eight years.   I am ashamed to admit it now, but my ego caused me to assume that everything everyone learned prior to computer based design was obsolete.   How arrogant of me. Every change Sonja was asking for really did make the piece look better. 

Once I put aside my ridiculous notions, it dawned on me that her critiques of the previous years design were the mark of a great designer.  If Sonja had been born at the same time as me, during the era of computer-based design, she would have blown the socks off of the design world.

I now look forward to working with her every year and will mourn the day I no longer have the chance to learn from such a strong and talented role model.  The lessons I learn from Sonja are lessons I will treasure for my entire career. 

Lesson Learned: Your ego is young. Respect those who have more experience. Learn as much from them as you can.