As an element of art, value is defined as the lightness or darkness of tones or colors. A piece of art that looks amazingly realistic appears so because the artist managed to capture within it all the intricacies of value that our eyes pick up in the real world. I once took an art class in which value was a regular topic of conversation. During one memorable class session, my professor instructed my classmates and me to completely cover a blank sheet of vellum with black chalk. He then projected a black and white image on the screen in front of us and told us to recreate what we saw by using an eraser to imitate the differences in value. The image was horribly out of focus and we saw nothing more than a light blob and a dark blob. Recognizing our confusion, my professor explained that he would increase the focus in tiny increments throughout the lesson to reveal new details in the value.
Slowly the image transitioned from two very fuzzy blots to several less-fuzzy patches. Some areas were bright white, some deep black, others somewhere in the middle. Each incremental focusing step made the image clearer and shifted the value differences on the pages we were working on so that one corner of the page that had seemed completely black 10 minutes before was revealed instead to be a soft gray. Two hours later, I flipped my page around and found that I had indeed recreated the photograph projected.
There’s a strong resemblance between this lesson in value perception and Source’s quality management initiatives. Just as my classmates and I tracked the image from its blurriest point to complete clarity, Source’s Quality Management System continuously monitors and measures our delivery from the first day and throughout the life cycle of each service program. With this focus on continuous improvement, we are ever-evolving as we discover better ways to provide quality engagements for our customers. So like the projected image, we work to bring each delivery into sharper service quality to consistently meet or exceed our customers’ expectations.
If you would like to learn more about our quality system, check out our data sheet.
By: Kayla Nesler