My sister is minoring in nutrition, which means that when she sends me an IM about how she’s eating 1.2% too much Poultry, I look down at my 3 cans of Red Bull and get to feel bad about myself…

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Jonathan: “So have you been playing with your new CS3?”
Me: “Yea… just started to.”
Jonathan: “I’m about to start mine up now. Glad we finally have it…”
Me: “Yea, I mean, I love the cleanliness of the interface… but I can’t make sense of these abbreviations. The vernacular is different: Ai is Adobe Illustrator, I assume, but Ps is abbreviated Photoshop… And ID is, first of all, suddenly a capital on the second letter… abbreviating InDesign.. Shouldn’t it be either Ai, Ap, and Aid? Or Il, Ps, Id? Then again, different types of names could warrant different naming conventions, I guess. But the dot of the ‘i’ in Ai still really bothers me… it lines up with the edges but doesn’t look like it’s optically sized and looks too small for the rest of the letter… Like an old man with a shrinking head. Maybe there’s already been a blog posting on this forever ago… ::pauses:: But then again, there are children dying in Kenya.”

Aisle of Acme Grocery Store : Shrewsbury, NJ

Hilarious. The question of who the target audience is for this still exists… But the sad thing about it is that it is errily inviting… the black and white limits the color, usually used in propaganda, from overwhelming the page; the kerning isn’t torrential; legibility exists for the text and photograph, which has sufficient detail to hold my attention enough to see the fear in that so-clearly-boat-boarded infant (okay, so that was sarcasm)… I almost bought it for its nearly commendable success of cheap design qualities. Can’t quite say the same for the turtle, however… who by the way looks ecstatic about the news…

Evangelism in Design: Seperation of Shop and State

So I’m innocently pouring out my Forever21 purchases, and am delicately bludgeoned with the force of religion. John 3:16 hidden on the bottom in the folds. This definately gave new meaning to the term ‘call to action’. A writer for a NYC-based paper also noticed it.

“[When I] asked about the inscription, a manager waved her hand. “Oh that’s just advertising,” she explained.”

In trying to not infiltrate this with all of my agnostic/atheist views, I can’t help but feel like ‘advertising’ means selling means product means religion-as-product… instead of religion-as-personal-and-intrinsic-sense-of-self-and-world-view.

“A spokeswoman at the Forever 21 headquarters in L.A. later corrected the manager, explaining that the inscription is a “demonstration of the owners’ faith.”

The article goes on to describe people not knowing it was there… Not bothered at all, or freaked out and annoyed. It then presents this attemptingly-design-savvy commentary: “But the discreet placement — and the religious content — of the phrase could be a smart advertising move, according to Pamela Klein at Parsons New School for Design. “Religion is hot — it’s in the air. Madonna has a crucifixion in her current show and it’s cool to be interested in God these days,” Ms. Klein said. As for the location of the phrase, she said that it’s a clever idea because it allows customers to discover it. “It’s not out where you see it right away…and it becomes personal — you have to actively engage with the bag to read the statement,” she said. ” And they aren’t the only ones to think this. These are from In-N-Out Burger in California, where I went to see for myself!

These are all supported and accurate design solutions, but the question is whether or not this extremely delicate and drama-stirring content is going to achieve the same “hey! discovery!” feeling as a website or catchy innocent phrase might… And its not the only company to try to. Ergo a common feel-good design idea can, for some, easily turn into a sick i’ve-been-taken-advantage-of nausea that is a hidden evil, doing the exact opposite of what a design intends.

Full Article from NY Sun