You can't polish a turd!: If the concept or design is bad to begin with then no amount of revisions or repurposing will improve it. (My room mate in art school was fond of this saying and so am I.)
FRANKENSTEINING: The process of collecting graphic parts from different design options and compiling them into one new option. What you end up with is a design solution worthy of a mob carrying torches and pitch forks and not good design. (Inspired by weasel marketing people. Big surprise huh?)
Craptacular!: An easy one word critique used to relay your dislike of the work being presented, while still sounding up beat about it. (Inspired by art meeting that catered to the lowest common denominator.)
Serial Design Killers: What you start calling the marketing department when they keep shooting down every original idea or design? (See the pattern yet?)
The client may be King but they're not the Art Director: Listen to your client, take into consideration all their input, weigh the options, study the details, know the target audience and then if necessary ignore all of it and design what you think will work best.
Design-O-Saur: A designer who refuses to embrace digital design methods and trends and is constantly referring to the good old days of colored marker comps and border tape.
Horrawful: A design piece is so bad it cannot be classified into either 'Horrible' or 'Aweful' category by itself but rather a combination of both. In context you could use it in this manner. "Did you see that project he did? It was horrawful!"
Have a good design catch phrase? Post in the comments and I'll add it to this list.
6 comments:
These are great! Thanks for sharing. I am looking forward to using "You can't polish a turd" on my future students!
Design-O-Saur: A designer who refuses to embrace digital design methods and trends and is constantly referring to the good old days of colored marker comps and border tape.
Unfortunately, I think you described my favorite designer, Art Chantry. But that's part of what I dig about him - his sticktoitivness. He absolutely refuses to change. *sigh*
As far as terms, my friend and fellow student Mark came up with a term for really crappy work: horrawful. Obviously, it's a combination of horrible and awful.
Fueled by Crapahol! - When a designer has a moment of inspiration that fuels a late or all-nighter, only to be followed by reviewing the next morning and realizing it is crap.
Dave
My Neighbor's Nephew
He's only 14 but he's a -WHIZ- on computers.
Term developed from the distillation of misguided justification of why a perfectly amateur design effort needs no help from a pro. Efforts generally include at least one (1) occurrence of the name of the business being misspelled, two or more versions of a logotype, and the logo/business name appearing in arched, rainbow-filled, chrome-bordered, vertically scaled, drop-shadowed format.
Often includes unrelated clip art, e.g. a 1996-era line art cartoon of a pelican flying in front of a setting sun accompanied by the words "We accept credit cards".
An adaptation of the Peter Principle.
This goes with Turner's comment.
My phrase is "Nephew Art." But really any relative of the client could be used. As in "My nephew has a PC and all these programs. He can whip us up a logo."
We also use 1DS. Which means "One Day Seminar." To be used for folks in our Foundation office. For example:"I took a one day seminar in newletter design and I know all about it. White space is really important, you know?"
I'm _so_ glad I wasted my money on art school. ~grumbling~
This goes with Turner's comment.
My phrase is "Nephew Art." But really any relative of the client could be used. As in "My nephew has a PC and all these programs. He can whip us up a logo."
We also use 1DS. Which means "One Day Seminar." To be used for folks in our Foundation office. For example:"I took a one day seminar in newletter design and I know all about it. White space is really important, you know?"
I'm _so_ glad I wasted my money on art school. ~grumbling~
Post a Comment