Remember the concept of “Desert Island Disks?” That was the parlor game where you’d be asked to imagine living on a deserted island and be forced to select your ten favorite record albums to take with you. I guess the thought was that instead of choosing actual life-sustaining material (like food and water for example) you’d be better off endlessly listening to a collection of personal oldies.

Or how about that other idiot conversation-starter where you’d be asked to select two people from history you’d most want to have dinner with? The uppity Lincoln Center crowd would almost alwaysssss select the likes of “Gandhi and Jesus.” Of course, the smarty-pants youngsters would respond with something unoriginal like, “I dunno, definately not Hannibal Lecher!” and then burst into self-satisfying laughter.

Well, here’s a new twist on an old favorite.

My wife and I hosted a party and invited a bunch of our friends and co-workers. (It’s probably relevant to note this was just days before September 11th and was the last care-free gathering I attended before the end of America’s “Age of Innocence.”) In attendance was a diverse group of folks that represented a variety of design disciplines from the worlds of fashion, industrial, new media and graphic design. At one point, someone jokingly started a list of “Hi Lites” and “Low Lites” of design. Considering the melting pot of aesthetic backgrounds and the excessive consumption of Guinness, I suppose this was inevitable.

The final result was the following non-sequitor list of dubious design milestones from the past 30 years. In a way, it reminded me of that “Cheers and Jeers” column I’ve read in TV Guide while killing time at the grocery store check out line. Only this list has no “Cheers.” I’m afraid the party favorites were the absurd designs that were flat out irresponsible. “Those designers should have known better!”

They say that you grow from making mistakes. What can we learn from this? Whether they realize it or not, today’s designers wield a mighty powerful sword. Let me state the obvious: smart design permeates every aspect of our lives and regulates pop culture. The flip side to the coin is that dumb design can be equally powerful. At this point in time, we’re all still prisoners of biology and our brutish primal needs. We still breathe, eat, fuck and die the same way our flea-bitten chimpy ancestors did millions of years ago. We’re the same barbarians, just better deodorized and dressed a little nicer. Instead of rooting up an insect in the jungle, we’re shopping for brightly colored plastic nonsense at Moss and the MOMA gift shop. Not much has changed. But that’s where designers come in. Little by little the work of today’s designer contributes to the long-term picture. For better or worse.

Who knows? Maybe years from now the design solutions we place on a pedestal today will be the fodder for drunken party humor tomorrow. Time will tell. But for now, please allow me to humbly present in no particular order, the top 25 examples of design irresponsibility. And please don’t shoot the messenger...

Chrysler’s PT Cruiser
This new mass-market car was designed to appeal to the aging boomer who wants a vehicle that feels “cool” but still has enough practical utility to cart their whiney kids to soccer practice. The PT Cruiser is an odd duck. It’s a cross between the retro car driven by ZZ Top in their music videos and a classic Al Capone gangster mobile. I’m not quite sure what that says about middle America, but apparently consumers have fallen in love with it.

The original interface for Prodigy
Back in the late 1980s the Internet was in its Jurassic period. IBM and Sears teamed up to launch a proprietary online service called “Prodigy.” The interface featured astoundingly poor vector graphics that was not unlike the crude DOS text lines of an airport monitor’s display. In their defense, they did the best they could considering they had to work with 8-bit RGB colors running on computers no smarter than today’s average Palm Pilot. It looked awful, worked only on Windows and had the chutzpah to actually contain a paid advertisement at the bottom of every screen! Say what you will, but Prodigy pioneered “radical” concepts that would later be the building blocks for many of today’s legitimate web sites, online business models and virtual communities.

NYPD Blue’s camera work
This wildly popular ABC cop drama pioneered the “shaky cam” technique when it premiered ten years ago. (It also was the first network to show a brief glimpse of Dennis Franz’s naked, cellulite-riddled ass in primetime, but that’s another story). This “eyewitness” camera technique was fresh at first and fooled the viewer into thinking they were seeing “raw” unrehearsed footage. In the context of NYPD Blue it contributed to the story. But soon Madison Avenue started using it everywhere. When this calculated camera technique started showing up in commercials for Eggo Waffles it became laughable and distracting.

When Color Photography Came to The New York Times
“What the hell is the world coming to if the sacred “Grey Lady” starts running color photos?” To many die hard readers, the idea of modern color printing in The Times was nothing short of blasphemy. I’m sure they’re long over it by now.

The Round iMac Mouse
When anyone does a review of the best industrial design, Apple computer always scores bigtime. As well it should. The Macintosh single handedly changed the course of personal computing and has become the gold standard. Apple’s brilliant marriage of hardware and software produced the best user experience in the industry. But their biggest boner had to be the 1998 iMac mouse. This round “puck” looked gorgeous in photo shoots, but was ergonomically annoying. This was an instance where function followed form. Luckily, Apple redeemed themselves in the summer of 2000 by replacing this flawed mouse with a superior optical version in the shape of an egg.

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Ronald Reagan’s 1984 Campaign Ads
Depending on whom you talk to, the design effort to re-elect President Ronald Reagan was either a high or a low point. The ad campaign was made famous by the tag line “It’s Morning In America” and featured folksy voice-over prose with emotional images of majestic Californian sunrises. Many of the cynical liberals at the time referred to the spots as “Mourning in America!”

Dumb Ass Digital Type
I’m no prude. Heck, I like typographic experimentation as much as the next guy. But that whole mid-1980s nutty type era was getting a little out of hand. For a period of time it seemed that every designer coming out of art school would collage together multiple overlapping headlines and try to pass it off as meaningful communication. Baloney. A lot of this illegible layered look was the result of a designer’s ability to gratuitously manipulate computer fonts, rather than produce an intelligent message. Computer typesetting has caused as much harm as it has good. The biggest typographic casualty has been the art of quotations. Some of the sexiest letterforms in any font set are the quotes, commas and apostrophes. However, more often than not, today’s designers blindly hit the keyboard producing “spikes” or inch marks in place of real quotes. The tragedy is that most of these folks either never had the education to notice the difference or simply aren’t anal enough use the hidden keyboard commands to change the “dumb straight quotes” into proper “smart curly quotes.” Sure, maybe I’m splitting hairs, but God is in the details. And all the type purists I know cringe when they see grand movie credits roll up the big screen littered with these easily corrected typographic errors.

Joe Camel
The birth of big tobacco's kid-friendly icon represents the most blatant and loathsome marketing device from corporate America. Shame on them! How did the illustrator who painted those images sleep at night? Further, more than a few women pointed out to me that Joe’s elongated, uncamel-like face was suspiciously phallic looking as well. I bet that’s no accident.

Bill Shatner
One could argue that Paramount’s multi-billion dollar Star Trek franchise owes its success to Mr. William Shatner, the actor who played the ubiquitous Captain Kirk. His over-acting, dime store hairpiece and poorly concealed belly truss may not have been what you’d expect in a star ship captain. But despite being the target of easy jokes, Shatner/Kirk is a beloved hero. The producers who wrote, cast and “designed” the character of Captain Kirk positively influenced many generations of fans, but often at the expense of subtlety.

New Coke
On April 23, 1985, The Coca-Cola Company introduced “New Coke” and expected a huge hit. The internal marketing geniuses at the company secretly tested the new formula in more that 200,000 blind taste tests and it always came up a winner. The new Coke recipe also used fructose corn syrup instead of cane sugar therefore making it cheaper to manufacture. Driven by greed and their maniacal quest to crush their Pepsi competitor, Coca-Cola simultaneously discontinued the old formula when they switched to the new version Coke. The public went nuts. In the eyes of the audience, Coke was an American institution that could not be tampered with. The controversy produced scores of crabby editorials, public debates and violent protests. At one point a mad rush to horde the “old” coke became popular. Even Andy Warhol went on record against New Coke and was rumored to have stock piled many cases of the old stuff. Coca-Cola finally buckled under negative public opinion and brought back the original formula less than three months later on July 11, 1985. The return of “classic” Coke was so important that ABC actually interrupted “General Hospital” to break the news. The Coca-Cola Company hedged its bets by selling New Coke and Classic alongside each other, but the damage was irreversible. By 1986 New Coke had only a 3 percent market share. In 1990 it was half-heartedly relaunched as “Coke II” and was finally put out of its misery.

Breast Implants
Honestly, are they really necessary? Excessive tattoos, tongue piercings and fake breasts are generally bad news. You’ll regret it later in life. But kids, if you must have the procedure done, my contacts who used to write for The Man Show tell me "...the best tit jobs go in through the armpit and under the pecs to subtly elevate the whole area, as opposed to the antiquated process of entering the underside which leaves tell-tale wrinkled bags immediately under the skin." Mammoriffic!

Any Product from the Creepy Amway Corporation
Do you know anyone who actually buys Amway products? Neither do I. Yet the cult-like nuts who run the company rake in millions. Based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Amway sells third-rate junk through a suspicious person-to-person direct marketing gimmick. Amway recruits desperate sad sacks looking for an easy “get-rich-quick” ticket out of the trailer park. This sort of hoodwinking amounts to nothing short of a global pyramid scheme. Trust me on this one, if anyone ever approaches you boasting about “a business opportunity as an Amway distributor” run like hell.

1970s American Automobiles
The Pacer, The Pinto and of course, The K-Car. Without question, these products represent the very best examples of the very worst design.

That “Heimlich Maneuver” poster
You know the one I’m talking about. The poster is laid out on a peculiar 30-degree angle and illustrated with the kind of disturbing line art figures usually reserved for airplane crash procedure warning cards. According to law, this odd two-color poster is supposed to be publicly displayed at all eating establishments. However, I’ve only seen them taped up in greasy spoon diners. I’ve yet to see this garish warning boldly hung in one of David Bouley’s joints.

The NBC “N” Logo Debacle
For years the icon of the NBC television network was the colorful peacock. But in 1976 they paid big bucks to kill the bird and replace it with a fresh, new logo. With great fanfare they unveiled a cold corporate mark in the shape of an abstract “N.” It was met with almost universal disgust. To make matters worse, after the “N” was plastered all over the airways they discovered the designers and marketers hadn’t done their homework. A rinky dink local station in Nebraska already had a logo that was identical. It seemed no one had done a search before committing to the new NBC “N.” With great embarrassment, NBC quickly paid the little station to clam up and allow them to use the “N.” In the end, it didn’t much matter. The public missed the peacock and it was soon brought back anyway.

Space Food Sticks
During the Apollo program, NASA did what was virtually impossible: in record time they sent a man to the Moon and successfully returned him safely to the Earth. Advertisers seized the moment to create new products with a “space” theme based on actual NASA foodstuffs. Kraft gave us “Tang,” which was essentially an orange Kool Aid-like power that was mixed with tap water. But Pillsbury came out with “Space Food Sticks.” The package described them as a “…non-frozen balanced energy snack in rod form containing nutritionally balanced amounts of carbohydrate, fat and protein.” Whatever. They were nothing more than a moist Tootsie Roll wrapped in high-tech foil to give them a futuristic look. Shortly after they went on sale, the public lost interest in the space race so Pillsbury unceremoniously discontinued the snack.

Obnoxious, Fat, Day Time Talk Show Hosts
Mindless daytime talk shows are nothing new. But in recent years a new genre has emerged. I’m talking about Rosie, Oprah and Roseanne. I can’t imagine anything more unpleasant than watching these insufferable women pushing their agendas by chatting with washed up movie stars and quack therapists. Oprah’s forced geniality and rehearsed gestures of compassion are legendary. Rosie’s brassy, personal politics polluted every show. And Roseanne is, well, Roseanne. But there may be hope yet. Oprah’s rating are dropping, 2002 is Rosie’s last season and Roseanne’s syndicated flop was quickly cancelled.

NYC’s Conversational Signage
Here in New York, the streets are clogged with signs blurting out traffic demands such as “DON’T BLOCK THE BOX!” Yet at the same time there are many signs that try to enforce civic compliance with a more relaxed, conversational approach. The most notable signs are the ones that actually say, “Don’t even think of parking here!” and “Littering is selfish and filthy, so don’t do it.” Who writes this copy? I image these were designed by some exhausted, nebbishy municipal worker at the end of his rope.

The Verizon Logo
Everyone unanimously agreed that the Verizon logo is one of the worse pieces of corporate identity in the past 50 years. The logo breaks all the rules they taught you in art school: It doesn’t reduce very well, it lacks a clear conceptual idea and it’s astonishingly amateur in execution. If you’ve had the misfortune of having to work with it, you know what I’m talking about. Its awkward shape is astoundingly ill conceived. Either the designers were asleep at the wheel or the corporate heads of Verizon bullied them into delivering this graphic stinker. I suspect the final solution was the result of too many cooks spoiling the broth. A good logo should embody the qualities of the company it represents. In this case, the Verizon logo succeeds. It captures everything the company is known for: ineptitude, lack of aesthetics and bureaucratic decisions made by committee.

The Sneaker Phone
Years after Maxwell Smart made the nation guffaw with his kooky secret agent shoe-as-a-phone routine; the Sports Illustrated people actually offered a working telephone in the shape of a sneaker for those willing to buy a subscription.

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The New “Less Gay” Mr. Clean
One of Procter & Gamble’s most popular and profitable cleaning products is “Mr. Clean.” For years the poster boy for this lemony liquid was a beloved, beefy, bald man wearing a single questionable gold earring. Mr. Clean dressed in a skin-tight white muscle t-shirt and always appeared flexing his biceps while promoting a tidy home. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like the attributes of a Chelsea gay guy to me. When the Mr. Clean icon was recently updated, the illustrators attempted to temper his “Village People quotient” by making him look more like a benevolent muscular dentist. Perhaps they went a little too far to the right. The modern Mr. Clean now has bushy white eyebrows and a deviant smirk that reminds us of Aryan inmate Vern Schillinger from HBO’s gritty prison drama, OZ.

The Marshmallow Peep
The disturbing Peep has delighted children for decades. What could be wrong with a mysterious blob of sugary marshmallow in the pseudo shape of an innocent yellow “chick?” As far as I’m concerned, this is the real meaning of Easter.

The Usurping of Public Space
I was once in a movie theatre and in the middle of the film a teenage punk’s cell phone went off. What was worse, he actually took the call! This discourteous fucker actually talked for ten minutes before realizing he had pissed off an entire 1000 seat movie house. Today’s technology and design has contributed to the invasion of public space. Or rather, the notion of private space is now an endangered species. Cell phones make every place a place for private conversations. Under this trend, 4,000-square foot pre-fab suburban McMansions clog the suburbs and zillions of gas-guzzling SUVs are akin to taking the living room out on the road. Have we not learned anything?

The “Poop-ifiying” of America
The Farrelly Brothers, South Park, Jim Carrey, teen sex farce summer movies, Beavis and Butthead, the list goes on and on. It smells like the last half of the recent decade was giddy with what I like to call “poop culture.” Enough already. (Full disclosure: I deserve my fair share of the blame. As a Creative Director for Nickelodeon I spent years inventing juvenile fart humor for a living.)

Michael Jackson’s Face
If the self-proclaimed “King of Pop” had spent more time recording new hit songs rather than abusing his face, maybe his career would still be a success. After a great run in the 1980s, poor Michael Jackson soon dropped out of the spotlight and was engulfed with child abuse lawsuits and excessive plastic surgery. In the abstract, let this be a lesson to us all. Sometimes it takes more courage and creativity to know when to stop and just leave well enough alone. What were his surgeons thinking? Didn’t they have the professionalism and common sense to simply turn down Michael’s requests for repeated procedures? They say plastic surgery is a design art form. In a crazy, surreal way, perhaps Michael Jackson’s face is the best modern example of when designers act irresponsibly.

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David Vogler is a creative director with a background focusing on graphic design and product development. Contrary to popular belief, he’s usually pretty responsible. David’s work can be viewed at davidvogler.com

From Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility
Originally published by Allworth Press; Summer 2003

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