News Agency Puns

A little bit of Background information:  When I was a young lad, my father was a professional glass cleaner.   Not just for a job, cleaning Glass was this man's passion!  He always wanted me to take over for him when I grew up, but I always thought it would be a pain, it was a silly job, really.   However, I knew that my father would be shattered if I didn't put an honest effort into the cleaning business.    The first time I perfectly cleaned a mirror, I realized I could really see myself doing this!   My father was wiping away tears of pride when I began to become as passionate as he was.

Anyways, fast forward to a couple months ago.   I have taken over my father's cleaning company, and was working a job at a publishing agency.  Now, due to the pandemic, this building had set up different entry points depending on the purpose of your visit, and each one was gated and stationed by an employee so you could have your temperature taken and go through a checklist to ensure you don't have any symptoms, etc.

After finishing the contract at this building, the owner was so impressed with my work that he said he would like to recommend me for a permanent job with a friend of his.   At first, I was skeptical (I had taken over the family business, after all), but it was becoming difficult to find regular clients anymore, so I agreed.    He gave me a single sheet from a notepad, and told me to write down something about myself that sets me apart from others in my line of work, and I should make it a very impactful statement,  his friend was a very busy man and wouldn't look at more than notes like these.    I wasn't sure what to write on the spot, so he told me to think about it, and return the note when I come back to leave the bill for my work.

So I came back a few days later, went through the gate to drop off my bill and my note about how I am much better than any other glass cleaner out there.    Well, it turns out the friend of the publishing agency's owner was a hiring manager for a well-known computer company, and my note really caught his eye, and I was offered the job!   Now I make more money every two weeks than I had with a month!   At first, I though my father would be upset by me leaving the family business behind, but he told me "As long as you are happy where you are, with what you are doing, then you are succeeding in life.  You are no longer a student of glass cleaning, you are my equal, and I am proud of you"  I never realized how freeing it

When I worked for a design agency, I had two adamant higher-ups. There was a brand identity project for a new company, and I was in charge of typography, but those two disagreed with my choice of font.

The first one was this stony-looking Peruvian-American man named Esteban Ferrero, but since that's Spanish for Steven Smith, and our company had a rule that everyone has to call each other using nicknames instead of last names, everyone, including himself, just called him Steve. The second one was a Dutch woman with a sharp glare named Evelien van der Berg. She was famous for giving designers a hard time convincing her that their design choices work better than hers. In accordance with the company rules, we called her Eve.

Anyway, I showed Steve my first draft, and he wasn't convinced that I chose LinoLetter as the main font, and told me that I should use a sans-serif font. But I stood by my position that serifs add legibility to printed and digital material, that it fits the company's identity as an organic store, and that it is hard to stand out with a sans-serif. It took a lot of debate, but in the end, Steve was convinced that LinoLetter was acceptable.

A few days later, I showed Eve a more elaborated version, as for the sizes and styles of the font, and the pairing of LinoLetter with Century as the headline font. She insisted that I should have used a sans-serif font for the headline. I expressed my view that LinoLetter is a font with composed and legible shape, and Century, while it is also legible, has flair at larger sizes. She kept disagreeing with me, saying I should use something bolder and more contrasting, like Tungsten. It felt like hours had passed before the conversation went anywhere, so I had to give up and look for a sans-serif font that goes with LinoLetter.

So it goes to show that the one who gave me a hard time was adamant Eve, not adamant Steve.