Over the last decade, we’ve started to become accustomed to well-designed sites with legible text and cohesive navigation. But that wasn’t always the case, and some sites still need major help. Below are some examples of web design gone wrong. The names of the offenders have been obscured for their protection:

Backgrounds Matter

We live in the digital age. This means that the majority of web surfers spend a significant amount of time browsing. One of the drawbacks to this cultural phenomenon: eye strain. After a good several hours staring directly at a screen, nobody wants to spend their time trying to read text off a red background. That’s not to say color on websites is bad. Just don’t place all of your text on a highly saturated color that will leave the visitor’s eyes hurting. In addition, placing an image of your logo (or any other photo) tiled infinitely across your background is actually worse than a solid color. Don’t believe me? Just go to MySpace. I’m sure you’ll be able to dig up a few examples.

Type Matters

While typography has long been an issue for web designers, the times are changing. Google Web Fonts has over 400 type families to choose from – for FREE. Even before Google, many designers would default to Arial, since it is like a typographic chameleon; it blends in with a variety of other design elements due to its straightforward, no frills appearance. Using a combination of Comic Sans, Times and Tahoma in a technicolor way, gives the impression that whoever designed your site did not have any plan for coloring links and using type to denote a hierarchy.

Layout Matters

There’s a reason sites like Apple allow for generous white space. By not visually overloading the viewer, you allow them to see the important things, like your message. This site comes off as a gigantic classified ad. Believe it or not, the site does have navigation, but it’s incredibly difficult to pick out among the visual onslaught. In fact, I had to double-check to make sure. Which leads me to…

Navigation Matters

How do you expect viewers to stay on your site if they can’t find anything? And yes, this is a real home page. The site doesn’t get any easier to navigate past the home page either. I ended up just randomly clicking icons until I found some text. By the time I finally reached the author bios (it’s a book series site, in case you couldn’t figure that out by the utter lack of words), I was on my third attempt at trying to find some content.

Color Matters

Color is a designer’s best friend. It can set a mood or call attention to an item of interest. But what happens when every item on a web page is labeled to different fluorescent colors? The image above shows exactly what the end result is. Everything is calling for attention, but nothing is winning.

Don’t Overdo the Animation

One of the great things about web design is that you can animate parts of your site and create interactivity. But sometimes less is more. If you want to create animation on your site, think of why you’d like to. And if your only answer is, “because it’s cool,” you may want to revise your concept. There are a plethora of sites that added animation because it looked “cool”, and most of the time, it wasn’t really that cool. The example above shows the pitfalls of going animation crazy.

Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should

The image above only shows part of the issue with this site. Not only is the background a full-on saturated rainbow, it moves! If that’s not enough, check out the cat in the lower left corner. It runs! The navigation is more or less an afterthought, as the small blue serif type would indicate. In fact, the moving rainbow is so distracting, I started to get a headache looking at it.

As with anything that is designed, the goal isn’t to inundate the viewer, but to lead them along to the information they are seeking. These sites didn’t follow that basic tenet. Some overcrowded their pages, while others didn’t give enough information or made the information incredibly difficult to read. Building a website is a time-consuming, comprehensive task. Gimmicks can work in small doses, but clean, easy-to-follow design works every time.

Marlins Park, home of the recently rebranded Miami Marlins, was recently finished. Back in March the team held its annual FanFest, which was the first look at the interior of the stadium for many. But first, let’s look at the exterior:

As you can see, the exterior is much more modern than many of the newer ballparks from the current “Camden Yards Era.” Here are a few examples (left to right: Coors Field in Denver, CO; Busch Stadium in St. Louis, MO; Camden Yards in Baltimore, MD).

These parks attempt to replicate the nostalgia of venues such as Ebbets Field and Fenway Park, and are relatively successful in doing so. In fact, Camden Yards started the trend of the neo-vintage park, replacing “Cookie Cutter Era” parks like the previous Busch Stadium and Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. But back to Marlins Park—it looks somewhat less-than-surprisingly like a cross between the Guggenheim and the Milwaukee Art Museum.

See what I mean? And it’s not a bad thing, either. Miami is an international fashion and culture hub, so of course its stadium should reflect that. An old-timey stadium like Coors Field wouldn’t look right in Miami. In addition, the Marlins’ entire rebrand has focused on creating a distinctly “Miami” look, from the logos and the colors to, naturally, the stadium.

And the interior doesn’t stray from this concept either. Contemporary minimalism is displayed throughout the structure, as the concourse area features large smooth expanses of white, much like the exterior. Here is the Miller Park concourse for comparison:

The Miller Park concourse has a vintage feel with its exposed support structure paying homage to Milwaukee’s Rust Belt heritage. The muted green beams are juxtaposed against brick walls, giving the environment an Industrial Revolution vibe. Marlins Park, by contrast, is sleek and modern. Most of its support structure is hidden, and the parts that aren’t are painted white and bear a slightly aquatic feel perfectly suited for a team named the Miami Marlins. Here are a few images of the field:

As you can see from the images above, the modern theme continues throughout the park, as evidenced by the asymmetrical shape behind the LCD screen and the tile work. And since it’s Miami, bright colors complement the white background.

There are a couple of looming issues, however. The bright green “batter’s eye” backdrop in center field will be repainted black, so that it is less distracting, and the home run sculpture might be removed or covered. Why? Marlins utility player Greg Dobbs, a left-handed batter, finds it distracting when facing a side-armed, right-handed pitcher. We will have to see if other lefties have the same issue. Here is a video of the home run sculpture in action.

In addition, PETA is protesting the stadium’s new aquarium, which is located right behind home plate. However, I don’t believe the aquarium is going anywhere.

As I mentioned, regarding the logos and uniforms, the Marlins organization has a vision for the entire fan experience of a Marlins game. From the logo and uniforms to the stadium, the Marlins are bucking the old-timey establishment of MLB, with its brick stadiums and repetitive color schemes, by embracing their city and all of its flash. While I may disagree with some of the details, it’s impossible to ignore the totality of the organization’s vision.

Celebrating its centennial in 2013, Grand Central Terminal unveiled a new logo for the occasion. The mark focuses on one of the building’s most iconic images, the illuminated clock from the central information booth. Here is a comparison of the old and new marks:

The previous mark consisted of an oval encapsulating a GCT monogram placed above a GRAND CENTRAL wordmark. The new logo, as I mentioned above, focuses on the terminal’s iconic clock. The time on the clock is set to 7:13, which could be read as 19:13 in the PM hours. 1913, naturally, is the year Grand Central was built. It’s hard not to like that clever little detail. In addition, Avenir Next was chosen as the typeface, and black was brought into the color palette to complement the gold. Below the GRAND CENTRAL wordmark, you see 100 YEARS. This part of the logo will be removed after the centennial, while the rest of the logo will remain as the terminal’s identifying mark. The new logo has already started appearing on display screens in the main concourse, and will replace the old mark on signage throughout the terminal, starting later this year.

Where the old mark seemed to be a bit antiquated, the new version blends the building’s heritage with a more modern appearance moving forward. The choice of Avenir Next, created in 1988 by Adrian Frutiger, and its airy treatment convey a sophisticated minimalism that complements the detail of the ornamental clock. The addition of black creates depth in the design and keeps the GRAND CENTRAL wordmark from getting lost, as it does in the previous mark.

Another aspect in which the new logo is superior is that it communicates to a broader audience. If you removed the wordmarks from each logo, the previous design could signify a number of institutions, as long as the initials matched up. Furthermore, New York is an incredibly diverse city in which many languages are spoken. Opting to identify the station, which attracts tourists from all over the world, with a symbol allows the brand to more effectively communicate to a multilingual audience.

The updated branding for Grand Central brought a stronger identity to the forefront, as it instantly conveys one of the building’s most iconic images and speaks in any language.

Attention, class. Today we will be discussing the design of propaganda posters used during World War II. Please take notes, as this will be on the test.

This iconic poster features a character later dubbed “Rosie the Riveter.” The phrase “We Can Do It!” refers to women performing the factory jobs that typically belonged to men. Rosie has since become a symbol of feminism and women’s economic power.

This poster warns of the harm in wasting food. Wasted food on the home front meant less food was available to be shipped overseas. Conservation was a major theme in these posters, since supplies were limited.

One way to conserve food was to can it. This poster encourages everyone at home to get the most from their ration of food by canning it and saving it for a later date.

The poster above isn’t simply instructing civilians to save their fats to use at a later date, it asks them to turn in their fats so they can be used in the production of explosives. This was just one way in which America’s home front was mobilized.

In addition to collecting fats, tin was a major resource during the war. Tin was washed, flattened and taken to an authorized collector. It was then recycled and used for syrettes, instrument panels on planes and aircraft bearings. In addition, food was shipped overseas in tin because the soft metal isn’t harmed by salt water.

Materials weren’t the only things to be rationed during the war. Energy use was curbed domestically by rationing fuel oil and gasoline. During the winter months, civilians were asked to sacrifice comfort for the greater good. This also meant asking them to dress warmly so they could keep going to work and producing supplies for soldiers.

In addition to encouraging those at home to take action, propaganda posters also instructed civilians not to do things, like talk. In total war, espionage cannot be ruled out, so the government urged its citizens to use caution when discussing the war, with catchphrases like, “Loose lips sink ships.”

Design-wise, the majority of these posters were created in two styles. The first is a simplified style that tended to appear on informational posters. However, when eliciting an emotional reaction is necessary to generate action for a cause, propaganda posters tended to use a hyper realistic illustrated style. Dramatic shading, the idealization of Allied forces and conversely the degradation of the Axis all shaped the American public’s view of the war. The drama of the imagery conveyed the importance of victory, while painting the Allies as heroes battling the evil Axis drew an emotional response. This emotional response was the precursor to action. To that end, these posters can only be considered a massive success.

Back in January, I posted an article about examples of creative advertising I found. Some of those ads were installations, in which the designer used three-dimensional space to convey a message. Here are a few more examples of installations in advertising:

FedEx Kinko’s

In developing this concept, ad agency BBDO took inspiration from painted concrete in the urban jungle that is New York City. The agency placed larger-than-life bottles of correction fluid next to crosswalks, implying the fluid was used to create the striping in the street. The end result is an impossible to ignore message that draws the viewer in. But that wasn’t the only thing BBDO did for FedEx Kinko’s:

Using painted curbs, BBDO also placed highlighters along the sides of streets as another larger-than-life reminder to pick up a few office supplies.

BIC

BIC developed this ad in 2007. The billboard itself only displays a small company logo in the lower right corner. However, a giant razor is propped up against the billboard, and its path to said billboard is cut into the field surrounding the ad, as if the razor had shaved its way through the grass.

Kill Bill

Kill Bill is a bloody movie. At a certain point, the movie cuts to black-and-white so it doesn’t have to lose a scene or risk getting an NC-17 rating due to the amount of blood. New Zealand firm Saatchi & Saatchi created an ad that incorporates the film’s gore. I hope they planted those bloodied cars otherwise someone is going to be very angry. The best part of the ad is the bloodless silhouette of the white sedan on the ground, since the car must have been parked before they sprayed all that fake blood. It would be interesting if Showtime’s Dexter would incorporate something along these lines.

Jeep

Jeep has marketed itself as your ticket to go anywhere. The SUV maker boasts about its vehicles’ ability to handle rough terrain. To that end, this ad implies that Jeep Parking can exist anywhere, even on a staircase. It’s pretty clever and relatively cost effective. The only costs to create this ad include securing the space, white paint and a stencil. In addition, the ad is placed in an unconventional location, making it that much more difficult to tune out.

Kit-Kat

Kit-Kat has unveiled a pair of park bench ads over the past few years. The bench above features a backrest shaped like a four-finger block of Kit-Kat bars. In addition, “Have a break have a Kit-Kat” appears on the front edge of the seats.

The next version of Kit-Kat’s park bench advertising features a partially wrapped Kit-Kat. I have to imagine that the first version may not have been obvious enough, since all of the branding involved raised brown lettering on a brown bench. The second iteration of the concept, however, is quite difficult to miss due to the bright red “wrapper” with the large off-white logo. All this writing about Kit-Kat bars is starting to make me hungry…

McDonald’s

Aww man! This isn’t going to help. McDonald’s painted the inside of this bus shelter to mimic the look of the counter at one of its restaurants. This ad is perfect for raising breakfast sales, since morning commuters could stop off for a quick Egg McMuffin once they are off the bus.

LEGO

This ad for LEGO reminds me of what every kid, myself included, did when playing with the toy blocks, but on a much grander scale. Could you imagine as a child, having access to giant LEGOs and a crane to stack them? That sounds like a dream. I may have to add “using heavy machinery to play LEGOs” to my bucket list.

Toys “R” Us

It only makes sense to use this spinning ball of rock careening through the cosmos that we call Earth to advertise inflatable globes. The ad, from Dusseldorf, Germany, plays on our sense of whimsy much like the LEGO ad above by taking a toy and making it gigantic. The real question is: How does the world not pop when baseball players are running around with metal cleats on?

The Economist

We’ve all had ideas, and agency BBDO knows it. This billboard for The Economist uses motion sensors to determine when someone is walking under the light bulb portion of the ad, shining as the passerby is in prime position. This billboard is a great idea worthy of a giant glowing light bulb placed above the creator’s head.

We are inundated with advertising on a daily basis. It’s refreshing to see something unexpected from an ad these days. Playing with three-dimensional space in what is typically seen as a two-dimensional medium provides that little spark that makes us pay attention. I also think cities would be much more fun with more of this offbeat approach to selling products and services.

Two products were recalled in February: Infants’ Tylenol and Pfizer’s Lo/Ovral-28 birth control pills (along with their generic counterpart, Norgestrel). Both companies cited issues with the packaging process for why they recalled their product.

Tylenol

Tylenol redesigned their bottles three months prior to the recall. Said bottles were touted as a safety improvement, since Tylenol designed them to ease dose measurement. What actually happened? Seventeen complaints were recorded mentioning that a protective cover meant to limit the amount of liquid pain and fever reliever that can be drawn into a plastic syringe wasn’t working. The plastic syringe, when inserted, pushed the flow restrictor into the bottle. The product has been pulled from the shelf while Johnson & Johnson figures out a solution to this conundrum.

Pfizer

The pharmaceutical company recalled roughly one million packs of incorrectly packaged birth control pills. The issue wasn’t so much that the packaging itself was defective, but that the packages either weren’t being filled with the correct number of active and inert pills or were being filled with the pills out of order. This recall was more about the packaging process than the physical package.

Stories like these two often come with headlines that reflect negatively on the packaging industry. However, the stories beneath said headlines usually go on to illustrate just how important the packaging process actually is. Packaging has to be made of the correct materials and with a working design. In addition, the surface graphics need to be clear and accurate, so the end user doesn’t accidentally misuse the product, which could have serious consequences. Directions on packaging can let consumers know what the correct dosage or serving size of a product is, or even how to open the product without spilling all over. It can warn those of us with allergies, or give us the proper directions to using a product. It can keep certain items within itself separated until they need to be combined, for the integrity of the ingredients. While packaging is a marketing tool, it is so much more than that. It keeps air, light, moisture and other contaminants out of the products we buy, ensuring the freshest taste.

Why do you think Samuel Adams uses brown bottles? Brown glass prevents light from hitting the beer, so it doesn’t turn skunky before we get it home. What would hair dye be like without the proper packaging? It would be a mess of chemicals with no directions for use. I’m sure more than one person would fry their follicles out of their skulls if this were our reality. How many accidental overdoses would we see every year if the FDA didn’t have regulations in place to let consumers know exactly how many pills we can take safely and who can take them? Would yogurt with granola be half as appetizing if the granola was mixed in with the yogurt from the start? No, it would be soggy and unappealing. Buying anything liquid would be an exercise in frustration if not for premeasured containers built to withstand the weight and possible carbonation or abrasiveness of our favorite beverages and cleansers. If not for proper labeling, how would we know how much of something is in a package? We wouldn’t; we would just rely on trial-and-error.

And that’s not to say we shouldn’t work to reduce the amount of material or use renewable materials in packaging. The packaging industry, like all other industries, has a responsibility to its consumers to provide the best option for our planet. But it cannot come at the expense of safety, as these recalls would suggest.

Windows unveiled its new logo in February in the build up to the release of Windows 8. It is certainly a break from the previous marks, as the entire logo is rendered in a single light blue. Let’s take a look at the history of the logo:

As you can see, the new Windows 8 logo is a modernization of the Windows 1.0 logo. However, Windows really came of age with the releases of 95 and 98. That four-colored windowpane has since come to symbolize the Windows operating system. From the release of 3.1 to Windows Me, the multi-colored panes were encapsulated with a broad black border and pixels trailing it. With the release of XP, the black border was no more, and the windowpanes were redesigned with more upward motion. The lighting effects were edited for Vista and remained consistent with the release of Windows 7, which brings us to the Windows 8 mark…

The new logo has received mixed reviews. While some are calling the new mark bland and boring, others see it as a refreshing dose of simplicity. The overriding rhetoric from Microsoft is that the logo had become a flag, and this new offering was returning to the window iconography used for the Windows 1.0 logo.

I can respect the concept of reviving the elements of the original mark, but the execution of the Windows 8 logo leaves something to be desired. The multicolored window flag had plenty of brand equity, as it didn’t even need the name of the product to be recognizable. The light blue seems trendy instead of targeted, as a similar shade was just used on the new Big Ten identity.

The new typeface is in line with Windows’ evolution from Arial to Calibri, but the window icon is where I have to take issue. The vertical line running through the middle of the window is slightly left of center, to reinforce the perspective created by the angled quadrilateral. However, the horizontal line running through the window is flat, with no perspective, which creates tension based on the viewer seeing a design that doesn’t quite look realistic in the way it is sitting in space. If the window and vertical bar show perspective, so should the horizontal bar on the window.

Above, I have an example of what the Windows 8 logo would look like if the perspective were consistent throughout the icon. As you can see, this edit would help the mark flow more smoothly without the tension of a flat element being positioned over one that is receding into space.

Now this looks like Windows. Bringing back the primary colors (plus green) combines the new mark with the years of brand equity that Microsoft has built. The converse argument to bringing back the old color palette is that Google also uses a similar scheme.

In addition, Microsoft has stated that Windows 8 is a complete reimagination of the Windows operating system. Between that philosophical shift, and Microsoft’s escalating competition with Google in the web browser and smartphone spheres, a new color scheme starts to make sense. However, the blue chosen lacks something when displayed against white. Here is a revised mark that pairs the light blue with a charcoal grey, so the wordmark doesn’t get lost in the lockup treatment:

Windows obviously put a lot of thought into their identity, and there are parts of the new branding that are sophisticated and contemporary. However, design is in the details. So when something like a color choice or the perspective of an element seems off, that’s the first thing people will notice. And they certainly won’t let it go. That detail will begin to overshadow the rest of the mark. There is a saying that “great design is almost invisible.” The Windows 8 logo is just slightly too visible because viewers can see what is wrong with it.