Can you recount a story about good or bad graphic design?
I’m looking at possibly doing my senior project on educating the public about good graphic design, and why it’s important. To help me with that, I would love it if you could recount a story (doesn’t have to be long) about a time when:
(For non-designers) You were confused about what made a design good (note the word “design” here, this is not meant to turn into a discussion about contemporary fine arts). If you can’t think of a story with this, simply write about whether or not you think design matters and why. Try and cite a specific example.
(For designers) You were trying to compare designs in front of a non-designer who could not understand what made one good and the other bad.
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
9 Answers
I would suggest focusing on Edward Tufte and his work with the visual display of information.
Actually just today at work we got a magazine and in had the word “analytics” on the front of it.. there was a picture of a pie chart behind the letters “YTICS” so the “ANAL” part really really stood out. – Our graphics cube actually has it posted up they found it so funny.
I used to drive past an office whose signage stunned me the first time I saw it. It looked like this:
\ / / /_ =
only you have to imagine that the _ character is base-aligned with the others and the last character is not a = but three parallel horizontal strokes with the top and bottom matching the base and height of the others. Each separate piece is either a bar (a long rectangle) or a parallelogram (a bar with slanted ends). Can you picture that?
To me it spelled plainly and unmistakably: VILE.
I could not believe that a company would call itself that in large, bold letters, no matter what line of work it was in.
One time I slowed down and looked closely, and I saw in small letters: Westcoast Legal Service. What looked like V I L E was actually W L S.
The designer had abstracted graphic elements from the letters in a way that he or she reinterpreted as alphabetic characters, but had forgotten that it couldn’t just be recognizable to someone who already knew the meaning; it had to convey information to someone who did not.
As you can see here, that organization has since modified its logo, keeping the stylized separation of strokes in a quasi-stencil fashion but making it very clear what the three characters are.
Just the other day I was looking at the community bulletin board in the library. There was a flier for someone opening their own interior design business, going on about what she can do for a client, her talent and her experience.
The flier? White sheet of copy paper with black words. She made the words a little bigger, but that’s it. The words weren’t even placed well on the page.
My immediate thought? “You can’t even design a flier and you want me to trust you with my home?!”
I understand this isn’t something that would require the amount of graphic design talent as something like the sign @Jeruba saw, so it may not be helpful. I just thought the quality of the flier, especially considering her business, was pathetic.
(I can take a picture if that will help you.)
anything that involves the phrases “Make the logo bigger“ and “put the president in”
You guys are awesome, thanks for the help!
Graphic Design student says heylo to graphic design lecturer (?)
To me, good design = happy people .
So here’s one video that might interest you a bit (=
Stefan Sagmeister and happy design
Answer this question 
Composing members:
0
