Questionable Fashion Trends

Here is a picture of me riding the train to the Cherry Blossom Festival this past weekend, which ended up being more of a downtown DC bar hopping excursion. Some of the fashion choices of people are interesting to say the least, as if that look would be a fashionable one while walking around the nation's capitol.

No Excuse for Poor Design

I recently read a friends' recent blog post where he decided to show off some of his "artwork". I noticed a few design oversights and thought I would respond to them here at BrainMatters. I have tried to review this as objectively as possible, and have even used some handy critique stickers courtesy of design-police.org to help my points along. To see a larger version of this "book" click on the images.

Cover:

Inside:

I think the critique stickers speak for themselves. I was running out of space for all of the errors I would have liked to point out. But enough of the typography and general design issues, let's talk about the actual artwork.

1. Heart - Uninspired design, copied from centuries of other anatomically inaccurate artists vying for a shot at a sweet deal from Hallmark or any other second hand greeting card vendor. This rendition is really no better than what could be accomplished by a kindergarten student with ADD sitting in the sandbox with a load in his Garanimals.

2. Brang - I am not even sure what a brang is. I have searched a few anatomy books and even Googled it. This site gave alternatives to this alien spelling, and the only word that was related to a body part (and not as an adjective) was listed at NUMBER 20! I will assume you meant brain. The picture however looks more like the item found towards the other end of the body, possibly where your head was when you created this horrible rendition.

3. Tung - Again, I am unfamiliar with the Urban Slang of today's youths, corrupted by spelling lessons from lolcats and unmotivated teachers who put too much reliance on computer spell check. This item looks more like the holy hand grenade sans the pin. Maybeez it mite blowed up ur crap dezinez.

4. Funnbone - Not sure what kind of back alley hack performed the bris on this horror show.

5. Throt - Spellcheck is looking more and more acceptable. Unfortunately the model for this medical rendition, one Mr. Carl T. Suggins, died shortly after posing for this picture. A lifelong smoker, smokeless tobacco user and coal miner, Carl was diagnosed with "throt" cancer, and died after getting hit by a bus crossing the street on his way out of the medical clinic.

6. Blud - As I sit here shaking my head at the spelling of this final piece, I can't help but wonder why, of all the items to color dark on this veritable cornucopia of medical insight, the artist decided to make blood look just like a broken potato chip. Perhaps it was a parallel to the angst of the artist. Or maybe it was an analogy of the broken dreams and excessive grease on the hands of creativity. The lightly salted goodness inherent to the artistic community found only in the single serving vendor bags of life.

Or maybe not. All I know is, I think I need a snack.

Marketing Genius(?) of FIOS

I enjoy getting things in the mail other than ValPak coupons and the bi-weekly 20% off oversized banner from Bed Bath and Beyond. The exception would be bills, but usually the bulk of my mail consists of poorly printed grocery ads and other miscellaneous JUNK mail. You can imagine my surprise when I received a Priority Mail envelope with "IMPORTANT INFORMATION INSIDE". My first thought was "I wonder how many houses the (fe)mail man skipped to deliver this precious cargo? What could it be? A check from a long lost rich-as-heck uncle, or perhaps a solicitation for advice from Dubya on world affairs, or even an encrypted message from the makers of Ovaltine. "

That thought quickly turned to "If this is so damned important, why was it stuffed into my tiny mailbox at such an angle as to require jaws of life to extract?" Turns out, this important information was nothing more than a cheap ploy to get me to sign up for Verizon FIOS.

The problem is, I already have FIOS.

Now the fact that they send mass marketing items out is not so much an issue, however, the extravagant method of delivery, and the contents of said package are what has my fiber-optic shorts in a wad. Contained in this rather expensive package, were two pieces of paper that looked to have been printed on a low-level inkjet.


Where am I going with this rant? That's a lotta packaging for a glorified memo. Based on current USPS pricing, an envelope of this caliber runs a person about $4.60 to send. Not taking discounts and bulk mail rates into account, let's say Verizon sends a small run of 3000 letters to the area I am in. This is probably a very conservative number. We're looking at $13,800.

I say we take away the marketing budget, and purchase some more decent channels. There are many repeats, about 200 music channels, and about as many useless other random channels. Let's use that money for a good cause. Let's get some more HD channels in the lineup, and I am not talking QVC or Lifetime or Telemundo.

Or at the very least send the money to me. You can even put it in a fancy envelope.