Barfers, we need to talk. About something important: reality television.
Reality TV is the newest way to make a living doing almost nothing, and you have to love that. How else would you explain the existence of this person?
Or this t-shirt?
This is the heart of the issue. What’s better than coining a catchphrase, then hawking merchandise of said catchphrase? Only saying something stupid and planning to hawk merchandise WITHOUT putting time, energy, or money into the graphic design.
Like this person: Alex McCord of Bravo’s The Real Housewives of New York. Alex says something stupid in the series’ latest episode. 30 seconds in, she declares fellow housewife Sonja Morgan is a THUG IN A COCKTAIL DRESS:
Luckily, Alex is a graphic designer, so her merch is ready and standing by!
LORD. It’s a who’s who of bad fonts. What kind of body fits that dress? It’s like Betty Boop with implants. Maybe we can get the thug out of the cocktail dress and into a graphic design class. Just an idea.
Don’t get all aggressive on me, I’M JUST BEING REAL.
As the world celebrates the new year, we’d like to take a moment to look back at 2010.
Many of the worst logos of 2010 have already been covered. Did you see them? Here are our top three posts in 2010 (or at least since we came back online in August):
2. Barfy by Design, Volume 1. We did 5 posts worth of businesses with “by design” in their name and crappy logos. This was the first, and fan favorite.
3. The Drake Advantage Logo Gets an F. Drake University in Iowa launched a new marketing campaign with a poor vision and a worse logo. Take a look.
And here’s one for the road, 2010. This is for the International Conference on Interactive Design and Children. What are they doing to that child? I think he’s trapped in the internet.
Scary Bad Logo week wraps up with some ghost-themed logo designs. Happy Halloween barfers! Be safe out there. Heading to a Halloween party? Bar crawl? Last minute costume shopping? Bring your camera. We know there are more Scary Bad Logos out there waiting to be found.
Fire. Ice. Ghosts. Also the ice is on fire. And there’s no ghost.
This is for a gun holster company or something? Classy.
Boo! Best way to remain invisible? Clip-art ghosts.
I don’t think the Grim Reaper would ride a crotch rocket.
Established 1999. Last updated: 1999.
Millions of ghosts come to this thing every year but nobody knows because you can’t see them.
This is a “Bath and Tennis Club” logo. Featuring, of course, an angry ghost-person that appears to be walking in water.
You thought we’d reached the end, didn’t you? You thought, “There’s no way they have more By Design logos. They’ve already posted 120 of them.”
How I wish that were true. Nay, if anything, I fear that we have only scratched the surface of this nefarious naming cliche. Perhaps this, Volume 5 of Barfy By Design, will serve as powerful attack in the war against bad logos. If we can win the battle of “By Design”, we might just win the war.
Definitely the most legible text placement you could have picked.
Barf? Bullshit Pseudoscience, Attractive By Design. (Thanks to barfer Kristina for the submission.)
Without barf, we couldn’t puke and rally.
This is not an alternate. Different business, just as barfy.
Hard to read, but the bottom says “Strength and Dignity are her Clothing.” I tried that excuse with the cops once. Didn’t buy it. Chalk up another indecent exposure.
“Good God. At the rate that ‘I’ is growing, we fear it may cover the entire country in less than 12 hours, and the entire world in just three days.”
I have that font. It’s called “High School Web Design Class”.
Clip art tree. Drop shadows. Wavy words. Script font for “by design”. Green for a landscaping company. I think they mean “creative” ironically.
For some reason this makes dental sound dirty in my head. “Let’s get dental, baby.”
Nothing says “confidence” like pointing out that you’re a member of a certifying organization and listing your number out.
“While your white on white design was genius, the target audience found it hard to read. I added a pencil thin stroke to fix things right up for you.”
Well, you know, half a face, anyway.
This is what it looks like if Fairies smash into your windshield and then you try and clean it off with the windshield wipers.
Sue Gilbert Gardens by Design. Unlike that bitch mother of hers that just gardens all willy-nilly.
Two G’s in the name. Four G’s in the logo.
We were so inspired by the design of this fleur-de-lis clipart, we used it for our logo.
Wow! Usually wavy-armed stick people eat up a whole logo. This designer made the reserved choice to only use it as the Y.
I’m torn between my hate of the “By Design” cliche and my hate of people who do not lead athletic teams calling themselves “Coach”.
Love by | esign.
This. This is the shit that is going to kill me. My blood pressure just went up again.
Will you at least apologize for your poor color choices, drop shadow, and unnecessary italics?
You’re not even doing it right. “Specific Thing By Design” doesn’t work. It needs to be “Seemingly Mundane Thing BY DESIGN.”
On the occasion of opening your generically named store with an un-logo, we’d like to offer you this gift basket of oatmeal and number 2 pencils. (Thanks to barfer Alan for the submission.)
That’s what she said?
That looks like a fucking hoot to design around. Many logos have compact, horizontal, and vertical iterations. Results By Design. LLC’s “designer” went whole-hog and gave them a diagonal version.
Designed exclusively for you, person we haven’t met yet!
It sayyyys official. Something about the pixel wings isn’t giving me a real “official” feeling, though.
At least they spell checked. “Seperation” makes me want to hurt people.
And there it is in the wild. Busy…separating things. By design.
I’m guessing it stands for something else, but this gives the impression that they misspelled their own acronym.
Hey kids! Do you like stars? And…outlines? And…circles? And ENORMOUS books? Well, have we got the…thing for you.
If Style By Design and By Design Interiors from this post were in the same strip mall it would be the most epic bad logo photo opportunity ever.
I started writing something about tigers and then noticed it was a leopard and then I lost my train of thought. Whoops! I’m out of steam, sorry. This makes 150-some barftacular By Design logos. I need a break. And a beer. And an eye-ectomy.
Not enough punishment? You want MORE Barfy By Design logos? Seriously? Jesus H, man. Don’t say we didn’t warn you:
If this blog was a TV show, I would be on a spaceship with two talking robots and some mean lady and a gorilla would force me to look at every By Design logo ever made before I can return home.
That’s not the case, so I couldn’t really tell you why I keep putting myself through this. You’re welcome.
Catch up! Here’s Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3 of Barfy By Design. You can also view all the posts together using the By Design tag. (Volume 5 is forthcoming. Yes I’m serious.)
A) Only characters on Frasier say “superb”. B) It is a miracle that I was even able to discern the word “superb” from that hot mess.
We’re such big Chargers fans we stole their lightning bolt twice.
Another double cliche: by design and barrel-of-monkeys letters.
Get a few whiskeys in me and I’ll start preaching by accident.
Doggies By Design. This woman receives checks written out to “Doggies By Design”.
“Design to sell.” — Advice NOT given to her graphic designer.
Think about it. Keep thinking. You’ll get why this is so horrible, I have faith in you.
What an original name, that took some smarts alright.
Kids: don’t limit yourself to one terrible design decision. If someone tells you you can’t have a cliched name, a terrible font, pixelization, clipart, unnecessary textures, and a nearly illegible meaningless tagline, you say, “But what about Landscapes by Design?”
Giggity.
Old timey alarm clocks, apples, and egg dollars: the building blocks of any strong family.
Ahahahahahaha. Okay.
If they’re my words why do you need to design them? Also, quill and ink, very original choice. You must have hired Smarts By Design for help with that.
Okay, seriously WTF. Is there some technical college design textbook that says “use an out of control fire in fire prevention logos”? There are so many of these.
I’m always down for dancing that involves double-D’s.
I’m not an expert on what is and is not sacrilegious, so I’ll just leave it implied.
“Web By Design – When You Need Graphics for the Computers in your InterTubes Dot Com”
So this is for a company that literally helps enable disabled people through good design. Okay, fine. It’s still cliche and your logo is still kind of not great.
“Oh yes ma’am, that price is by design. The furniture? We just kind of wing that.”
Mix some greenwashing cliches with the by design cliche and you’ve got one forgettable logo!
“Joey. Letsa meeta by-a de sign for some dinner. We’ll have dinner by de sign. We’ll-a eat some spaghett.”
Woosh! The wooshes represent the sound made by your life passing you by.
The type looks like it was airbrushed on the side of a van.
Can I use my double-d’s joke again? I can? Awesome.
I’m curious why this thing is so fucking dark.
Purple on pink and scripty as shit. That says elegance alright. It’s a little hard to make out, but the “@cablespeed.com” email address is pretty classy, too.
It’s a logo, I promise. Construction by Design. Obvious, isn’t it?
They get points for not wasting time overdesigning a completely cliche name.
“By Design Multimedia” aka LIGHTNING BOLTS AND GRADIENTS WHOOOOO
Web and graphic design solutions. Final solutions, that is.
Please stop. Stop naming your company “Thing-We-Do/Make By Design”. It’s not cute. It’s not clever. It means nothing. It’s boring. AND EVERYONE DOES IT. Don’t believe me? Check out Volume 1 and Volume 2 of Barfy by Design. We’ve got at least two more in the queue. And those are just ones we’ve found on the Internet. Heaven forbid we start flipping through small town phonebooks. By our estimates, companies are being formed with the words “By Design” in their names at the rate of 18,364 per SECOND, and it’s been increasing steadily since 1982. Scientists predict that by 2012, there will be more companies named “[Something] By Design” than PEOPLE ON THIS EARTH. Loyal readers, we need your help. Please help us extinguish this blight upon our planet by submitting each and every terrible By Design logo you can find in your own backyards to logos@yourlogomakesmebarf.com. Provide whatever context or links you can. Remain strong. We’ll get through this together…by design.
“I see a lot of horrible bridesmaid’s dresses in this line of work, which inspired me to have an obnoxious, purple, textured logo.”
Go towards the light. Only there will you find peace from this terrible logo.
A logo so nice it made us barf twice.
Always shift by design. Shifting by accident can ruin your transmission.
This is a graphic designer’s logo. Yes, I’m serious.
This dude does two things: hypnosis, and something else. I’ll let you know what the other thing is when his fucking flash site finishes loading.
I uh…yeah. Wow. A) Poltery. B) There is a fucking sheep on your logo. C) The capital-I in that font makes me want to rage. D) That entire font makes me want to rage.
Also a website/graphic designer. *Shudder.*
If the landscaping thing doesn’t work out this company name and logo could be sold off to a creationist’s organization.
*See previous joke.
This looks like it belongs over an image of a black-gloved hand holding a knife on a cheap murder mystery paperback.
TRIPLE BOOMERANG OH MY GOD.
Do nightmares count as memories? If so, congrats, you’ve succeeded.
E.G. Barf
Even frigging MULE FARMERS are using this stupid naming cliche. Stop it. Stop stop stop stop stop.
To be fair, if you’re into faux finishing enough to hire someone to do it for you, your aesthetic sense might already be busted.
Nothing says elegant spa like a logo that resembles a tramp-stamp.
I wish I could “De See” this.
I would expect nothing less from a Fashion Design institute program in South Dakota.
Why mess with greatness?
Literal Logo Choices of the Year Award goes to: Copper By Design. Copperplate? Check. Made of copper? Double-check. Oh yeah.
Classy.
I’m not going to lie. I don’t know what Multi-Variate Data Analysis. What I do know is them’s some science-y sounding words, meaning that anything script is an extremely inappropriate font choice.
Tastes like pixels.
“Concrete is pretty exciting, we’d better go with a really bland logo so as not to overstimulate people.”
Something…something is wrong with your pencil, man. You might want to get that looked at.
The shapes. Oh, those shapes. (They make play forts BTW, not real castles. I know, I was disappointed too.)
The designer pulled this one from his notebook full of custom-designed Star Trek insignia doodles.
The art is by design. The typography is by MS Paint.
