Bad money

As with most badly designed things, the trash can becomes its final resting place. Not so with bad money. These truly ugly objects remain in your pocket everyday as a constant reminder of the lunacy of democratized design.

The design brief for each states quarter was to capture spirit or unique feature of the state in an image or series of images. Each state conducted a design contest for the image that would be used on that states coin. The result? 50 unrelated and badly organized images that are more suitable for tokens at Chuckie Cheese than monetary symbols of the greatest economic power in the world.

The problem is simple. The artist was removed from the process.

I’ve included the older quarter as a reminder of the elegance of the original design.

Virtual poster exhibits

I used to do a lot of posters. The printed kind. Silkscreened, offset litho or whatever got ink on a big piece of paper. Much of them were done for worthy causes with a lot of creative freedom in trade for no pay. Some of them ended up in museums, and competitions and some even in The Library of Congress. It was a lot of fun.

But, I’m happy to say that the poster is back. And better than ever. This time it’s virtual and everyone can participate. Just search for your favorite cause and add the word poster and you will be deluged with posters to review. As always, there is a bunch of garbage. But, from time to time, you’ll see some real design brilliance. Most of these new works are coming from Italy, Spain and South America. Very few Americans seem to be participating in these exhibits.

Here’s a few links to poster exhibits I like.

The hurricane poster project

Comunidad Cartel

Design Vs. POVERTY

Check out my poster for the Design Vs. POVERTY exhibition and let me know what you think.

Let’s give case studies a rest

In the communications design business, it is understood that a firm without a mountain of flawless case studies is missing a critical business development tool. But let’s be real. Even the most successful outcomes go through some ugly stuff that no one in their right mind would ever consider putting in a formal case study. The question is, do clients really believe a case study written by the creators of the case? I suspect not. No more than potential clients believe the recommendations on my LinkedIn page written by my friends at my request. So from now on, if a prospect asks me for a case study, I will send them to my clients for that information.