Bad Examples

Week One

I found this tiny pamphlet at a local restaurant a few months ago and upon viewing it made me chuckle. It has been on my fridge ever since I found it. The text on this handbill is very disorienting and rambunctious. The use of so many different typefaces and font sizes makes it very hard to read and understand the message that is being told. The biggest words that stand out the most on this advertisement are the words free and pages. Seeing the word free made me believe that whatever event this was would be free to anyone, but under further inspection you can see that the event is not free to everyone, and is only restricted to a certain age limit. This also brings up the question of whether you need the flier to admit a child for free, or if every child is free. The word pages being so large is a bit confusing as well, only after several moments of inspecting this pamphlet did I realize that this was a circus event. I suppose that if the word circus were a bit larger this advertisement would make just a little bit more sense. Even the times underneath the dates are confusing, and number and letter spacing becomes even more confusing. Overall there is too much going on, all the important information is in much too small lettering, and the handbill is confusing.

I found my bad example in my kitchen this week. This balsamic vinegar bottle in the shadows of my pantry looked as though it had an odd textured background, but upon further inspection it turned out to be snippets of words. I feel as though the typography on more than one area of this container’s packaging could be improved. The purple lettering over the purple background makes the words hard to read, and the thin text that reads “perfect for” in the top left corner is so thin and close to the rugged darkening borders that you may not even be able to tell that it is there at all. The word “with” in the bottom right corner is also have to read. These purple words make the phrases “perfect for salads” and “great with bread”. Altogether both of these phrases are set in four different types of fonts. It makes the packaging look less uniform and eclectic in aesthetic, which may have been the goal, but I feel as though the fonts could have been chosen more carefully. I also do not like the white center of this sticker. The lettering “Balsamic Vinegar” and the text underneath could have been centered better into the middle. The white space being left by letters pushed so far to the right is unsettling. Overall I feel like this design and typography could have been thought out more.