Less black and more graphics

Less black and more graphics is a Computing Team in-joke, originating from the 2012 SRAs.

Origin

It comes from the rather terse feedback from Computing Team's 2012 Best Technical Achievement entry, Presenters First: A Unified Computing Experience, which is confusingly itself an in-joke. Quoted for posterity:

Subject: The Student Radio Association - Awards Feedback (URY (Best Technical Achievement) - Presenters First: A Unified Computing Experience)
Date: 2012-12-11 15:02
From: Student Radio Awards Judges <awards@studentradio.org.uk>
To: matt.windsor@ury.org.uk

THE STUDENT RADIO ASSOCIATION - AWARDS FEEDBACK (URY (BEST TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT) - PRESENTERS FIRST: A UNIFIED COMPUTING EXPERIENCE)

Hi Matt Windsor,

Firstly, we're sorry that this feedback process has taken slightly longer than we would originally had hoped.

Below you will find the feedback for 'PRESENTERS FIRST: A UNIFIED COMPUTING EXPERIENCE' that you entered into the 'BEST TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT' category for the Student Radio Awards 2012. Depending on the category, you may have more than one piece of feedback from different judges. To protect the judges anonymity, their names are not included. If you entered this category on behalf of someone else, please forward this on to the participants!

• A well thought through playout system and broadcast work flow manager
• Excellent system, nice use of HTML5.
• A lot of time and effort and clearly gone in to creating this system and it does quite a few clever things. However, it slightly feels as though the system is trying to be all things to all people. Future development should perhaps focus on making the user interface more friendly (less black, more graphics, standard symbolic buttons etc).

If you would like more information please reply to this email, where someone will get back to you.

Many Thanks - The Student Radio Association Ltd
The Student Radio Association Ltd, a company Registered in England and Wales as a Company Limited by Guarantee, No. 06419104. VAT Registration No. 919 2489 90
Registered Office: c/o The Radio Academy, 3rd Floor, 55 New Oxford Street, London, WC1A 1BS

Controversy

Much was made of the SRA judges' decree that URY's computing services would be improved by less black and more graphics. It was pointed out that less black would reduce contrast (thus making it harder to read things) and more graphics would clutter the user interfaces up (thus making it harder to read things).

The other potential issue with this observation was that URY's branding at the time was, in fact, predominantly black. This email therefore specified that we would've won the award if we changed our corporate branding - something which is of course directly under the remit of "Best Technical Achievement".

A retort was sent, but not replied to. Possibly.

Alternative forms

The phrase is sometimes inverted as more black and less graphics, usually to connote the idea of rebelling against the SRA (in all their ignorance).