WHAT IS THIS???

I have been anticipating the Lagos@50 logo for a while and what I witnessed on Tuesday 14th, March 2017 was the most disheartening piece of design work.

Lagos, a city that has given so much to a lot of us; a city filled with all manners of creativity and recently a landscape transformation that signals hope of a truly MEGA City would be "golden" and then this is the best we can do?!

WHO APPROVED THIS?

I went through the members of the committee that is in-charge and I was traumatised by the calibre of people that gave thumbs up to this. "This is why politics alone can not take us to the future".

Design is meant to make things beautiful,

Design is meant to simplify all manners of complexities, non of which is portrayed in the logo above.

THE IDEA is very good using some of the symbols of Lagos but it wasn't carefully arranged.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS LOGO?

It lacks form, discipline, order and professionalism all of which Lagos represents lately and why use black as a background?

A logo that looks good on screen and does not look good on any other medium it is printed on is not a job well done.

The world is watching and what is used to describe us is very paramount to what we want to achieve and where we are going.

We are here, we are professionals, we are plenty, we know our onions and we would not accept mediocrity any longer in our society.

If only the committee had made this a professional brief, I am very certain that some professional Nigeria graphic designers would murder the brief and shred it into pieces.

Is this how we "Advance The Future?". It is surely "Enhancing our heritage" of playing politics with everything that matters and not giving the job to the best hands. This celebration is meant to attract tourists and investors as "they claim" which I believe would happen but at least let us show them what we are truly made of by letting "professionals" handle their things. We can export great services too.

I am just pissed!!!

I do not have any personal beef for the designer. I don't know him from anywhere. I like his idea like I said earlier and I do not intend to create another logo to compete with his (the competition was a year ago). I just applied design principles to the work and show what it could be. We need to start applying strict design principles to our works. We apply these things in architecture, interior design, product design etc. why should graphic design be left out?
Works produced through graphic design and displayed in any city around the world is part of the landscape and would be a reference point for a long time (LONDON 2012 is an example).
While art is freedom to express anything, Design puts form and order into it. Every product, every brand, every beautiful object we might love were sketches first (the reason why scamping is very relevant today) but as soon as it is to be executed (outdoor prints inclusive), the game changes and only those that apply design principles would be able to deliver the work as it was sketched or far better than it was sketched.
If for the sake of ART, then I would let it pass.
If for design, my stand is NOOOOOO!
It does not "werk" for me.

If design principles like uniformity, clear space rule were adhered to, "maybe" it would look like what is below. Again, I am just applying design principles to the logo above and not creating another one. I am very sure several graphic designers I know would have done something better.

Badges could be sold which people would wear proudly

PRO(duct)-DESIGN

I got into the office early and I noticed the red can on the left in the picture above on one of the tables. In a split of a second, I thought "what was an insecticide doing in here?" as I couldn't smell the choky smell of it being used. Obviously, the office assistant forgot to take it along after cleaning.

Anyway, I sat at my desk trying to get into the day's work when I noticed a creepy spider on my wall. I got up like "den! den!! den!!!" you are dead. I rushed to the table to pick up the can I spotted earlier, dashed back to my table and sprayed the hell out of the spider. My nose was subconsciously insensitive to the smell as I was prepared to capture the spider's fatal fall and death under the choky smell of my wicked deed, then I realised the smell was odourless and the spider was gallivanting joyously. I was hit by the brick-wall sound effect "windows" always makes with a big speech bubble that read "NTOI!" from the spider.

I looked at the can again, then I saw "Mr Sheen multi surface polish" for wood, glass, metal, plastic. I shook my head in disappointment and said to myself, "Another failed design".

The reason is this simple. My mind has attached red in that space to insecticides which automatically made me think it was an insecticide in the first place. According to the psychology of colour as shown below, red might not be a very good choice of colour for "Mr. Sheen" but hey! the product has been in existence before I was born.

For polish and stuffs, I expect cool colours to be used like blue etc.

Perhaps, products could be designed for design sake and just let people get used to it by constantly shoving it in their faces or design could be done with the user in mind to deliver great products and experiences.

Anyway, I have learnt to read the labels on every product before use so as to cure my ignorance. I hope you do too.

WHEN DESIGN FAILS

GTBank

So, design is supposed to make our lives simple and functional but at the same time beautiful. For some time now, I have been noticing this fountain installed by GTBank at Opebi Round About and it is not just friendly to my eyes coming from one of Nigeria's top brands that once set a tone in Lagos' architecture. Water ejected from such installations are meant to be free and not hit any barrier whatsoever like this. It's like trying to dunk a basketball into a closed net or trying to use an escalator that leads to a brick wall.
This is a #DesignFailure #KoWerk
Perhaps they are trying to achieve the installation shown below. Thanks to Olabode who shared the picture.

Floating Cube Fountain well executed. Source: visualfunhousecom

APPLE

The new magic mouse (left) and the old magic mouse (right)

I have been an Apple user for a while now and even though I was very excited about the magic mouse, not minding the cost and maintaining it with original AA batteries as long as it was in use. I was given the latest iMac at the office to be able to deliver on the job and it came with an exciting rechargeable magic mouse. It is "BADLY DESIGNED" as far as I am concerned. In fact as I am writing this post I am equally charging the mouse like illustrated in one of the images below breaking my flow and rendering me useless for as long as I charge for. How can a design driven company like apple be so ignorant of human focused design?
Thank God for Microsoft Surface Studio which comes in 2017 and I wish they could let me exchange my iMac for a Surface Studio. I would gladly do it without hesitation.
In conclusion, Apple should wake up because we are no more in the era where they design to a consumer that do not know what he wants. I know what I want and it is might not be an apple product going forward.

Just for laughs, please watch this hilarious video

reflections

WHAT IS THIS???

PRO(duct)-DESIGN

WHEN DESIGN FAILS