Outback Steakhouse Receipt
A graphic designer once told me something interesting, something that was disputed by another designer when I repeated the anecdote years later.
The first designer said there was a name for the design element that appears on the cover of some magazines. If you look at a cover of a magazine and see an illusion of the top corner peeled back a little, as if to reveal something behind the cover, that visual element is called a VIOLATOR. He was referring specifically to a cover of Sports Illustrated which had the usual full-page cover image and the S.I. logo, but the top right-hand corner of the cover showed a cartoon hand appearing to peel back the corner of the cover, revealing a headline teaser — something like “S.I. Goes to the Beach! See Page 44!” (I don’t remember what the text really said, but it was in that spirit of drawing attention to a certain page of the magazine.)
The term VIOLATOR, in magazine publishing, can refer to that specific type of corner-peeling imagery, or it can refer to anything that could be said to disrupt the expected design of a cover.
A few years later I met another designer who also worked in publishing. We were looking at a copy of the “New York Post” when I pointed out that they used the VIOLATOR on the cover. This fellow looked at me like I was ignorant, and I explained that this other designer from S.I. introduced me to the term. No way, said he. “I’ve been in graphic design for 15 years and I never heard that term.” Then he kind of implied I was an idiot, but I maintained (with, admittedly, only anecdotal evidence) that the term was accurate.
The term appears to be accurate, and I would think that whether the 15-year design veteran’s ignorance of the term does not necessarily reflect his competence in the field. It may just be a somewhat esoteric, reasonably obscure term in the field of publishing.
I think of the term VIOLATOR when I see a receipt like this one. The bright pink streak down the middle of this Outback Steakhouse receipt indicates that the roll of thermal receipt paper is nearly exhausted, and that the cashier should replace the paper soon. It is in the same spirit as “Cigarette Burns”. Cigarette Burns are those fairly arcane signals that observant movie-goers see on movie screens. The signals are directed at the projectionist, who uses the signals as a cue to switch to a new film reel.
I don’t know if there is an official name for this type of streak that appears on receipts. I have asked friends who work in service industries if they know of a technical term for the receipt streak, but no one has had any idea. That does not mean a specific term does not exist. Maybe they, like the 15-year veteran of graphic design, simply have not encountered the term in their work. I think of another friend who was a bartender for 17 years and retired from that realm. In all those years working the bar he had never heard the term “sausagefest,” a term of some dismay used to describe a bar that is populated entirely by men. How could a seasoned bartender of so many years not know that term? Just the same as the veteran designer might have somehow missed the term Violator.
If the colored streaks that signal the end of the roll of thermal receipt paper have no official name than I would think they could be called Violators. The use of the term in publishing comes with sarcastic æsthetic implications, as if a tranquil piece of carefully-crafted design has been soiled — SOILED! — by rogue splats of outsider art. It may be unfair to compare a common receipt to a carefully designed work of art, its dignity impugned by the appearance of the pink streak. Still, if this occurrence of the Violator is more utilitarian than those seen in publishing then its artistic merits are no less rugged.
The genre of the Violator can, I think, include the receipt streaks.
