Does anyone really use those annoying little insert cards that magazines insist on hiding between the pages? It’s one thing if I am reading the magazine at the bookstore, or at the dentist, but when I have already subscribed, do I need three or four annoying little cards with subscription offers? They fall out all over the place. Besides, I’ll be getting the renewal letter in the mail soon anyway — a letter letting me know my subscription is expiring and I wouldn’t want to miss a SINGLE issue so I’d better renew now. Even though it doesn’t expire for another six months….

Do we even need to talk about the wasted paper? They may be small but I bet they add up. If they eliminated those little cards from all the subscriber magazines, just think of how many fewer they’d need to print!

And even if they did eliminate the loose cards from within the pages, they’d STILL have the one or two that are attached and perforated. Which are almost as annoying as the loose ones.

Besides, subscriptions are so inexpensive these days, it’s not like magazines make money on the subscriptions themselves. The printing and postage cost more than the subscription. It’s advertising that pays the bills. But magazines need reader and subscriber percentages to sell advertising. Knowing all of that, I still don’t see the need for all these annoying little cards. Do they really generate that many new subscriptions? Does anyone know?

I especially love the labels, “Comic Sans is illegal,” “Legible from space,” and “Helvetica was an unimaginative choice.” Your philosophies are completely in tune with ours here at Fight Bad Design.

Design Police, I believe every proofreader and editor should be armed with this kit. Therefore, I hereby implore you to create a digital version that enables me to insert these labels individually into a PDF. Because really, who proofreads or edits on paper anymore?

It’s not new news that United Airlines and Continental Airlines have merged. And their new tag line, Let’s Fly Together, is pretty smart. It’s the new logo that concerns me.

They took the name United, the font and symbol from Continental, and formed a mash-up of the two. It seems to me that they have taken “merger” to a literal extreme.

Both logos have interesting histories, although opinions vary widely. From a visual perspective, the wire frame globe symbol that has been Continental’s for many years is a bit too common for the 21st century. Globes, and especially wire frame globes, have become as common as clip art. And when that happens, it has less to add to a company’s identity. It does little to help identify the company as unique or special or different.

Brand New by Under Consideration is not a fan of the new “mashup.” And Fast Company gives us a nice time line of each logo’s history, as well as each logo’s famous designers.

Famous designers and mashups aside, I don’t think this logo is any more or any less special or interesting than either of the originals. It’s vanilla and non-descriptive. Perhaps they wanted a very visual way to say the two have merged. Let’s just hope that this is a temporary solution while they work on more permanent, more well-thought out branding solution.

Menu cover for Spice Village. Most of the offending typography is inside, although you get a nice hint of it on the cover.

As designers everywhere are up in arms about James Cameron’s mis-use of Papyrus in his latest accomplishment, Avatar, I have found a more local offense.

Spice Village Grill in Huntington Village (NY) is one of the newest restaurants to pop up on Main Street. Camera shop turned hookah bar turned restaurant, Spice Village Grill offers an authentic menu, a cozy atmosphere, and friendly servers and owners. And Papyrus. Yes, the rather cheap menu is not just poorly printed, it is done entirely in Papyrus, with a little Monotype Corsiva (yellow type with red drop shadows!) thrown in for good measure.

Oh my eyes! Clear Papyrus overload (among other design injustices.)

Here is something that will surprise you: I don’t think Papyrus is all bad. I don’t. I think it has its place. But that place is unlikely to ever be visited by most of us so Papyrus should just be left alone. Just. Don’t. Do. It. But if you must know, here are the times when Papyrus would be appropriate to use: when you’re designing the DVD or book cover of a biblical account – and you’re printing it on parchment, and when you’re… well, that’s about it. Enjoy!

Back when typewriters were the only alternative to hand-written pages, type was mono spaced. This means that every key took up the same amount of space, whether it was an “i” or an “m.” It sometimes made it difficult to visually determine a pause in a sentence, which is indicated by a comma, from the end of a sentence, indicated with a period. It also meant that sometimes there were larger and smaller spaces between letters. So, for no other reason than to improve visual readability, it became common practice to use two spaces after a period when using a typewriter. The space following all other punctuation was still a single-space.

It’s important to note here, that in offset printing, no double spaces were used. Older printing was “set” using individual letter blocks that were set one-by-one in a press. These letter blocks already accommodated for the differences in the width of letters and appropriate spacing after punctuation, so no double-spacing was required. The double spacing was solely for the purpose of legibility on typewriters. Additionally, having a single space shortened the overall text, and decreased printing and paper costs. Some say this also lead to the adoption of single-spacing.

Along came the first word-processors. Some of which were glorified typewriters with some automated functionality, but they quickly evolved into something that closely resembles the word processing we use today. And here’s why that’s important – word processors and the computers we use today have proportional type. Proportional type means that the computer font already accounts for both the width of each individual letter, and the appropriate visual spacing after punctuation. So there is no longer any need to add that old-fashioned double space. In fact, because it is already accounted for, adding a double space is adding much more space than is visually necessary and creates visual “rivers” through a block of type.

Professional designers and desktop publishers know this all to well and are very accustomed to removing all the double spaces when formatting a document. It’s one of the first things we do when we receive client-supplied or writer-supplied copy that has double spaces. (And some do this while mumbling expletives about double spaces after the period.) You can clearly see the difference between a document that uses single spaces versus one that uses double spaces. And then, pick up a newspaper or book and look at the spacing after the period — it’s single-spaced.

Some pro-single spacers will add the argument that even HTML disregards double spaces. I’m quite sure that this has nothing to do with the typewriter origin, and is simply related to the programming language, so it’s really not part of the “argument.”

While the Chicago Manual of Style doesn’t say it’s wrong to add a double space, it does recommend a single space. Unless of course, you’re intentionally using a mono spaced font for an old-fashioned retro look. And in an age when people are shortening “for” to “4″ and “later” to “l8r”  just to save a few keystrokes, it seems silly to continue to add that extra space that’s no longer needed.

Here is a very interesting read on the history of Double Spacing at the End of Sentences and punctuation. Spacing and punctuation even differed from English to French, and has a very interesting evolution. Enjoy!

Olympic logos from the 2016 applicant cities.

Every four years, cities from around the world vie to be the host of an upcoming Olympics. Beginning in 2007, cities began their campaigns for the 2016 Olympics. As you probably know by now, Rio was chosen to be the host for the 2016 Summer Olympics and it will be the first time it’s been held in South America.

If you ask me, it’s no wonder Rio was chosen. Just look at their applicant logo! Design-wise and aesthetic-wise it is clearly the winner. They integrated the typography in a clever way and were clearly unique in their decision to not use the five standard Olympic colors. (Keep in mind these are the applicant logos and as applicants, they are not entitled to use the Olympic rings in their logos.)

Yes, I know. All of the logos were conceptual and tied in nicely to their city’s culture. But for me, Chicago’s use of a star seems like, well, it’s been done before. Madrid’s welcoming waving hand is cute, but not enough (even with the hidden M for Madrid). And Tokyo’s blessing knot is a nice concept, but a weak execution (IMHO). Rio’s abstraction of their landmark mountains with unique colors is sophisticated and classy. And the clever way they tied in the “i” in Rio with the “1″ in 2016 used as an exclamation mark is conceptually exceptional and truly ties it all together. (More about each logo’s meaning.)

Of course, I’m not on the voting committee. And even if I were, I clearly would not have voted based on the aesthetics of the logo alone, but it would have been difficult to ignore. Even Rio’s applicant website trumps the other three.

Sure, all of these logos are well designed, but Rio’s is clearly the strongest. And nothing could ever be as bad as the 2012 London Olympic logo in solid magenta with hard-to-read, doodle-like lettering. How did that ever get chosen? We’re going to be seeing way too much of that awful, 80′s inspired logo in just a few years. We’ll blog about that one soon!

The Oasis — A Club for Men who Love Footless Women

Setting aside the fact that I am a woman and clearly do not understand the appeal of the “gentleman’s club,” the design of this sign is just wrong on so many levels.

I drive by this sign on my way to work each day, and after five years, I largely ignore it. However, considering the purpose of this blog is to highlight bad design (in an effort to eventually abolish bad design — quite a challenge, I know) through education, I thought it might be time to call attention to it.

So the idea here is pretty clear; let’s use the club’s name, The Oasis, and give it a visual that says what oasis actually means. Surprisingly, in that respect, it is actually successful. Most of us will conjure up images of a tropical island when asked to define the word oasis. It isn’t the prettiest sign in the world — in fact, it’s downright ugly. The woman is sitting at an uncomfortable-looking awkward angle almost leaning against the tree, but not. However, that is not the sign’s biggest issue.

Fetish or skill set? Where are her feet?

Can someone please tell me where her feet are? Perhaps the footless woman is a secret man fetish I am unaware of. If I had such a bizarre secret fetish, I would also keep it secret. So maybe it’s just that, as a woman, I’m not privy to that kind of information. That’s fine, I guess. But I doubt that is the case. So where are they? Where are this woman’s feet?

Okay, so considering the awkwardness of the rest of the design, I can make the leap to say, perhaps her feet are burred in the sand. I don’t need to point out the very obvious perspective issues with this concept. Suffice it to say that it is a very sad attempt at drawing at the most basic level. But as a creative person and modern art lover, I could almost forgive the rest of the graphic on the basis of “kitch.” It’s the footless part that gets me. And maybe the island that looks like a surfboard.

Gentleman, care to explain?

Honestly, I am trying to find some virtue in the dancing girls. I’m trying to find some reason for their being, other than some movement on the page to capture attention. But if the advertiser is trying to get my attention why wouldn’t they create some movement that is actually relevant to the ad content? Is that such a crazy idea? Is it so radical to think that an ad’s imagery and content might want to have something in common?

So we have these girls dancing on the page. I’ve even seen some silhouetted men dancing. These guys seem a little Chippendale-esque to me. And again, I’m not exactly clear on what their purpose is. But I’m seeing more and more dancing people promoting loans, college degrees and even auto insurance.

So I’m wondering if there’s a common thread. Other than the tackiness of these irrelevant dancing people that is. Does anyone know? Is it some financial institution using these disparate ideas to get people to borrow money for school, homes, or…. car insurance?

Once I clicked on one of the return-to-school ads to see where it went, it seems to be a searchable database of schools and areas of study. I couldn’t see if it had a financial tie-in. And if they are several separate businesses, why would they all use the same, silly idea?

These ads all get an A+ in tackiness and irrelevance. And with their occasional use of Comic Sans, their regular use of Relfex Blue, and their inability to come up with a concept, they all get a big F in design. Don’t you agree?

But when you purchase a product, specifically a boxed product, you rely on the photo to give you a real sense of what’s inside. Sure it might be retouched to improve color, texture or blemishes, but it should certainly be shown to scale in proportion with the other objects or people in the image.

Proportions can be deceiving... especially when you can use Photoshop!

For example, I recently purchased this inflatable pool for my kids – the Slide ‘N Splash Whale Pool from Banzai. From the photo on the box, it looks like a decent sized pool. And although the true dimensions are written on the box, it’s typically the photo a consumer would rely on to determine whether or not to purchase a product.

What I learned once I unpacked and inflated the product, is that it is proportionally MUCH smaller than what is depicted on the box. Not slightly, which might be forgivable, but vastly and greatly different. Unless these children are approximately 18-inches tall, there is no way this photo is real. This photo has been modified, at the very least, to shrink the images of the children to probably two thirds to half of their actual size. In reality, the slide is so small that when my 2 year-old sits at the top, her feet reach into the pool. (Yes, my daughter is an average-sized child.)

From a marketing and design perspective, this is blatant and intentional deception. By “faking” the proportions in their favor, Banzai believes they will sell more pools. And they probably will. I would not have bought it if the photo had more accurately depicted the size of the product. But they won’t make their customers happy by deceiving them. In fact, I have bought my first, and last Banzai product.

Newsday's logo — not good enough for online.

Our local Long Island newspaper has been around for as long as I can remember — and so has their logo. However, it seems that this logo wasn’t good enough for their online news site, appropriately titled, Newsday.com.

If you look at the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal’s online news sites, their logo is the same as it is on the printed paper — which is what you’d expect. It’s how you build and maintain a brand. But for some reason, Newsday feels their print logo isn’t good enough for online.

So, okay. Let’s say you think there’s a good reason to have a “dot com” version of your logo for your website. And let’s say you also have a really good reason why the new online logo should not resemble your established print logo, except for color. Even if that were plausible, why oh why would you use a swoosh?

Newsday's online logo — new font and a fun, new swoosh.

What do you think this swoosh means? Is it indicating the magic change from print logo to web logo? Is it indicating movement towards the dot? (And if so, movement of what?) Unfortunately, it’s not just Newsday that is guilty of swoosh-abuse. Many companies add a swoosh to their logos, and their usage seems to be more prevalent online. And Newsday even added some shading to the logo to make it look “glassy” and “web 2.0.” But what, exactly, is this new logo trying to say?

I’m not sure what the bigger question is here, the logo switcheroo for the web or the addition of the swoosh. For both reasons though, I’d like to welcome them to the pages of Fight Bad Design. Hey, our ribbon matches the orange of their swoosh…