Devil in the details
It’s clear to me that Barcelona has a lot to be proud of.
I have a slight, undefinable (and very charming, I’m told) accent when speaking English, so when I was living in London people often asked me where I came from originally. ‘Barcelona’, I would say. To which everyone unfailingly replied: ‘Barcelona! Such a beautiful, exciting city! The food! The weather! The architecture! The design! What the hell are you doing here in London?’
‘Pah!’ you will say (if you’re from Barcelona). ‘That’s the dreaded, evil “Barcelona Brand” effect. It’s crap. Big empty words. It’s ruining our city, and our lives.’
Perhaps so. But while the locals complain, the foreigners admire, and envy. They both have good reasons for their reactions.
What brought me to this slight digression, was coming across a news release at Core77 about the announcement by BCD (Barcelona Centre de Disseny) of a new strategic design cluster in Barcelona. BCD’s press release, notes Core77’s Mark Vanderbeeken, is ‘unfortunately clumsily written and clumsily translated.’
We can have dozens of big strategic design initiatives, to promote ‘business excellence and innovation with international projection’ as this one claims to do. But unless their press releases are written in flowing and grammatically correct English, their international projection will suffer.
It’s a good thing when a city dares to have a big vision. Barcelona’s may have been clouded by commercial interests, but still its perception abroad is that of a vibrant cultural node, with an amazing amount of clever, ambitious projects underway, a city looking at the future and working hard to make it happen.
All I want to say is, I wish that a highly visible, top-level Catalan design institution like the BCD could make the effort to produce perfect English copy for its international press releases. Not doing so only serves to project a total lack of professionalism. If we want to be taken seriously, we need to behave like grown-up, serious players. And that means making the effort.
The devil is in the detail, and the future too.
