Code Quality Control Poster
Quality Control
Confirming your code quality regularly prevents production exceptions and crashes.
This is the title and pitch for my latest creation. A poster reminding me, and you, and us, that “you can help stop the spread of bad code.”
Download the poster as a typical .PNG image to view on your machine.
Print the high-resolution .PDF file after downloading it.
Inspired in a Bathroom
No doubt that the quality control poster is based around my career and passion for software engineering. So many things are filtered through that lens.
What I first saw one day was taped to a bathroom wall. You’ve seen the same poster hung on the walls of your favorite restaurant restrooms. Clinical reminders that “Employees must wash hands after use!” are routinely posted past the stalls, beside the sinks, and near the exit door. Like a solemn public school hall monitor watching all who roam.
We’ve seen these posters a thousand times nagging us about the need for sanitary measures. Ubiquitous to a point that they’ve all but become easily ignored, visual noise.
Really See It
For whatever reason that day I challenged myself to see it for what it intends to be. An education for any passerby on preventing disease. Preventing sickness transferred from a cook to a consumer by spread of germs from dirty hands.
Germs are little bugs. We all know that from grade school. Bugs are a funny, well-used metaphor for mistakes discovered in computer programs.
It occurred to me that I can take this connection as inspiration for making my own cautionary poster about sanitation. A poster imploring the prevention of bad code.
Sketch
Rough sketches were scribbled out in my pocket notebook as I ate lunch at the restaurant. Yes, the very same one that I saw the restroom cleanliness poster. Yes, I washed my hands after use.
Later that night I started laying it out in Sketch. My fav design app on OS X. Next day I printed out a copy and bounced it around a few of my colleagues. My brain trust. They always come through for me!
Font Awesome is Awesome
My buddy Sean saw my poster and pinged me saying the bug icon I used caught his eye. I gladly gave thanks for his support, but had to admit that I steal from the best.
All icons appearing in my Code Quality poster are from the fantastic Font Awesome by Dave Gandy. It’s the first place I turn to whenever I need something visual. Especially anything icon-driven.
Promotional
Don’t believe that I’m sending this poster art piece out into the world free and clear. Well, I am, but it’s also a bit of native advertising. Or is it content marketing? Or is it inbound lead generation? Oiy!
All I know is that I have this book in print, Responsive Web Design Toolkit: Hammering Websites Into Shape, and I need you, and all of your crew, to know about it.
Given that reality I slapped my book’s website along the bottom edge of the poster along with my Twitter ID. Will that help me generate awareness and sales? Who knows!
Finally
Have a look at poster. Print it out and keep it nearby. Enjoy it for the mash-up of entertainment and education that I meant it to be. Share the download links with your friends and colleagues if you like.
If you think the Quality Control poster I made is a fun and quirky thing reach out to me on Twitter and tell me.
Until then, let’s do something awesome today!
