11 Ways to Ruin a Great Design

Another post from the purposely silly “This Looks Awsome” Series (yes, we know it’s spelled wrong. It was done on purpose to be silly, you nit)

1. Create your project in any program with “Microsoft” in the name. You’d be better off finger-painting with mud on an old pizza box, dousing it with gasoline and throwing it briskly into a portal to hell.
2. OPTIMA OPTIMA OPTIMA. Did I forget to mention that use of COMIC SANS will also immediately discredit you as a designer?    
3. Forget to run spell check. This is the best way to show how disinterested you are in the subject matter. Typos also demonstrate that you’re too lazy to finish the job right. That gives the rest of designers an undeserved bad name. How could we be lazy with all of these extremely tight deadlines that we have worked so hard procrastinating for?
4. Add an exciting red starburst with the word “NEW!” in some lame block font doesn’t really make anyone want to buy your new product. It actually makes them want to spray it with bug killer and smack it with their shoe. Twice.
5. Clip backgrounds from photos using the Magic Wand tool. The icon for the magic wand should be replaced with a sparkling crutch. Don’t use it to pull out background images from photos. Take that time that you’ll be ridiculed by all of your peers and put it to good use learning how to mask.
6. Add an outline to the lovely cursive font you have selected and watch the readability disappear.
7. Use really low resolution images taken from someone else’s website for your brochure. Please note that if you’re going to use stolen imagery for your brochure you have to decide if it’s worth spending time in jail for copyright infringement. Seriously, if you’re going to go to jail anyway you should at least have a nice brochure from which you might possibly get some business to pay for your court fees.
8. Accidentally outline all the text in your document and then stand by praying that the client doesn’t ask for any copy changes. Come on, we have all been there, furiously trying to move around the big block of blue boxes created by the outlined paragraph instead of having to re-type the whole gosh darned thing.
9. Fill the white space by cramming all the copy you can onto the page thereby eliminating any sense of focus to the overall message. This is one of the easiest ways to confuse the audience and remove any chance of successfully gaining new customers for your client. This often results in no more paying gigs for you.
10. Stretch and squish your photos just to make them fit into that little space you have backed yourself into by filling the rest of the document with needless copy. Don’t worry, no one will notice.
11. Show your masterpiece to the client and ask, “Would you like to see any changes?” (If you’re a client and you’re reading this, we’re just kidding…really)