Just when you thought that reCAPTCHA couldn’t get any more annoying or trying on your patience, they went ahead and started using Papyrus font. What’s next, Comic Sans!? Wow.  This got me thinking about the all time worst fonts to use in your design work.  VideoJug beat me to the punch.

Courtesy of VideoJug, here is a list of the top 5 fonts that you probably should never, ever use – whether you have the slightest bit of designer in your, or even if you’re a soccer mom making a flyer for your daughter’s girl scout bake sale.  These are the five worst fonts ever, and definitely the most over-used fonts of all time:

#5. Arial - There are so many cooler sans serif choices, like Avenir, Myriad, or even the always favorite Helvetica.  Arial is oh so played out.  It’s still kind of usable (on minor website text links and  things like that) but try to use something better. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

How many times have you seen some pretty bad technical mistakes in print?  It can be pretty comical.  Low resolution graphics printed at 12 dpi in print, because they were upscaled the image so much.  Or, maybe it was because they started with a thumbnail graphics swiped off of the internet.

Recently I spotted a nationally run TV commercial that was such terrible quality that you could see artifacts all over the screen, even on a 480p TV set.  Or maybe it was really bad photography representing marketing materials or advertising for a reputable business. I’m not talking about bad design or photography in general, but mostly just bad technical execution.  Amazingly, these basic things that we all were taught in school are sometimes forgotten.  We’ve all messed up at some point in our jobs, but for the most part we quickly learned and improved.  Tight deadlines are no excuse for technically bad artwork, because at some point we all have to learn to squeeze out at least decent quality work under the most stressful of situations.  There’s no excuse for sloppiness, but it does still happen.  All you have to do is check out blogs like PSDisasters.net to see for yourself.  You can also just google “bad graphic design” or “bad photography” examples (but you probably don’t even have to look that hard.)

Here are some examples of some bad graphic design using watermarked comp graphics pulled from istock on a finished product.  Maybe they weren’t trying to steal them; let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.  They could have just screwed up and forgot to replace the low res comps with the high res stock images prior to print or publishing.

Are They For Real?
I was flipping through the newspaper the other day and came across an ad for a national restaurant chain. Looking closely at the photo of the sandwich on the plate, I immediately noticed how off the focus was. The entire front of the sandwich was OUT of focus and the only part IN focus was about a quarter inch in the center, entirely too shallow. If becoming a stock photographer has done one thing, for me, it’s taught me how to shoot properly.  I have definitely made many mistakes in the past, but that’s how I learned.  Some people are learning while they’re working for large corporations.  I sort of pity them, because these people obviously don’t have anyone to teach them the proper ways, or to correct them, if their images are getting published nationally.  I really wish I had saved it, so I could scan it up and post it here.  The same company that had the really bad photo in their ad, at least has a really excellent selection of images on their website.  Lots of depth of field, nicely lit compositions, and all professional food photos with no other mistakes in their lineup.  I wonder how an image so bad slipped through?  Maybe someone got in big trouble over it later on.

There are many photographers out there that make a living shooting things wrong.  These ones might only be making it because they have good business skills.  There are a lot of really bad graphic designers in the corporate world, too – probably making double the salary that their skill set really should be allowing them.  I’m not trying to be mean, I just get a little bit disgusted when I know lots of really talented people that are struggling.  In the meantime, these people that are highly skilled, are the ones finding themselves stuck in a rut with their creative careers.  Or maybe they are just living in the wrong area of their country, where creative jobs are scarce.

The Moral of the Story
Sometimes it’s out of the creative’s hands, when printers goof up, fail to provide an accurate proof for color or what have you.  But we can’t pass the blame onto the printers, those guys have enough stress as it is.  Plus, we are all human – prone to goofing up once in a while.  But what about those creatives who really are bad?  I think what it really comes down to, is that there will always be some people that are much better at certain jobs than the actual “so-called” professionals working these positions.  So here’s to the hacks, the hung over art directors, the technically untrained photographers of the world.  Don’t quit your dayjobs Best wishes, and we hope you shape up before you get shipped out.  For the rest of the real professional creatives that know what they’re doing, keep at it.  Some day your time to shine will be here.

Yup, this is pretty much what you have to deal with if you’re a graphic designer.  Everyone fights over you and your time, the deadlines, and everyone is an expert… except for you, of course.  The individual with the actual design degree.  Despite the crappy acting, this video is worth a couple of chuckles.

And yeah… if you use Comic Sans or Papyrus fonts, you need a serious reality check.

Wow, John Stossel actually covered the topic of graphic design very briefly on the abc tv show 20/20.  I must have missed this one – maybe you did too? He talks about the uber-hated comic sans font and even Paul Rand.