Just to show...

...that I wasn't making it up about the ugly crap in the previous posting...

...Ah-h-h-h... Y'know, for the full effect, you should probably zip past this post and read that one, if you haven't already done so. Go ahead... I'll wait.
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...Hmm-hm-hmmmm-hm-hmmmm-hm-hmm-hm-hmmmm...
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All done? Good. Let's continue.

As I was saying, just in case some of you think that I was exaggerating just how much the crap that I was sent offended my designer's sensibilities, I post for your edification ONE side of the offending flyer:

(Please note - I'm only including one-half of the total ugliness that I received since revealing such crapulosity in its entirety to the untrained viewer could cause blindness, madness, hair on the pal... uh, no, wait... That's something else... Well, in any case, it wouldn't be good for you. Trust me; I'm a trained professional.)



Now, I realize that, as a non-driver, I simply may not havet been exposed to a lot of car-dealerships' direct mail pieces and they might, in fact, ALL be this ugly (in which case, I weep for my people...) but that doesn't change the fact that this is one ugly@$$ piece of trash!

For those of you whom I have not already bored to tears with this diatribe, let me explain my thoughts on graphic design.

Leaving aside the concepts of "good" and "bad" for a moment (Don't worry; we'll come back to them shortly!), I believe that there are two types of graphic design:

1 - Design that is intended for USERS and;
2 - Design that is intended to impress other DESIGNERS.

The intent of the former is to pass on information in the clearest, most readily-comprehensible way possible; the intent of the latter is to show off one's bad@$$ chops and proclaim one's alpha-dogness in the kennel.

I believe that it *IS* possible to do both, but it's generally beyond the skills of 99.9 percent of the designers out there.

(For the sake of full disclosure, I should point out that I include myself in that 99.9%. I'm a solid, meat-and-potatoes cook; I'm not Escoffier!)

In designing for end-users, the designer should be, essentially, invisible. Shoving one's way in between the users and the information that they're hoping to obtain is the cardinal sin for a designer in this case.

In designing in the hopes of impressing other designers, then the FACT of one's existence and influence on the viewing experience IS the information being imparted and gets top billing.

Both of these are fine and valid methods of working - I'm just an end-user designer. Always have been, always will be. Possibly because my initial impetus in graphics was in drawing comics, storytelling seems to be the basis of what I'll call, for want of a better term, my aesthetic. The question that I'm always trying to answer as I work is, "What is the minimum amount of data that is necessary for me to include for the reader to understand the story that I'm telling?" Because if they don't get the story, then I've failed in my job as a communicator. I don't have the quote right in front of me (and, of course, he put it much more succinctly), but Robert Heinlein pointed out in an article on the craft and business of writing that it's perfectly okay to have an ulterior motive in writing a story (aside from the obvious one of paying the mortgage) - you may have a point of view that you want to express, a warning to give, or a philosophy to expound - but if you can't do that while first and foremost entertaining the paying customers, then you're going to be going back to real work pretty darn quickly!

The "good" and "bad" only comes into the equation if the design of your piece doesn't do the the job that it's supposed to do! If it doesn't let the end-user get the information that s/he is looking for as easily as possible, or alternatively doesn't show the rest of the pack just WHY you ARE the (wo)man, then it's bad design. Otherwise, the worst that can be said about it is that it's inappropriate to the task at hand.

The examples that I usually use for the two types of graphic design are:

1 - end-user information - Popular Science
2 - design-mojo demonstration - Wired

If you're in the middle of re-plumbing your bathroom using a Popular Science article, you REALLY don't want to have to hunt for the next step; alternatively, I've never seen Wired Magazine as actually being about presenting information as much as being about the edgy, pushing-the-envelope look and experience.

Now the excrescence that started all of this, really (in mine 'umble opinion) succeeds in neither of these functions... Actually, in all fairness, that's not quite true...

If we assume that the purpose of the flyer is to impart the information: "We've got a metric sh*tload of cars that we need to unload in a Gawdawful hurry and we can't afford the space to tell you anything really useful about all of them, so instead we're going to cram as much randomly-sized disjointed verbiage and as many uselessly small pictures as we possibly can into the limited space that we have available in hopes that you'll be curious or, heck, even confused enough to come out to see what we're trying to sell you," then I will have to admit that it succeeds admirably.

If it has ANY other intent, it fails miserably.

That's my opinion, anyway.

Closing Thought for Today:
"efficiency + elegance = excellence “ -- Torley Wong