Yellow Car Design: The Blog » stuff we don’t like

Hey, are you a book or a DVD?

ycd — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 19:26:07 +0000

Eat Pray Love

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Fight Club

The Beach

Trainspotting

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Recently I was in a bookstore where they had a display of the latest edition of the novel Eat Pray Love. The cover featured Julia Roberts sitting on a bench next to a nun, eating something with a sheepish look on her face and it really annoyed me. I wasn’t annoyed because of her – I don’t mind her, and same thing goes for Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ewan McGregor & company– but because of the whole “oh-now-that-we-made-a-movie-with-that-book-let’s-pretend-that-they’re-the-same-thing” thing. We all know this is rubbish, and that in most case movies based on books end up being very different (sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way).

So why did the publishing company felt like they had to put Julia Roberts on the cover of the book? Don’t we see her enough on the movie posters? See, if I want to own something with her face on it, I’ll buy the DVD. Because she is an actress, not a novel character. I might have been interested in reading the book –though the story sounds a bit too soppy– with its original typography-based cover because it had a concept behind it (“eat” written in pasta, “pray” in beads, etc) and wasn’t like “hey reader, we think you don’t have enough imagination to picture the main character in your head, so here’s a picture of the actress who plays the role in the film so that you have something to relay on”… How annoying!

Marc and I both recently read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo* (with the nice colorful jacket) and we also rented the movie to compare scenarios. Even though I enjoyed both I am very happy to have read the book without knowing what the main character looked like in the film and actually, in my head, she was pretty similar to the actress who portrayed her in the film. So now I can say “wow, well done my imagination, you worked well without being dictated how to picture the character by a book cover”. Do you know what I mean?

Anyways, it made me think about the whole “issue” and I’ve checked our bookcase and realized that a lot of the novels we own have been made into films. And that, strangely enough, only one of them, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, has the cover featuring Johnny Depp that was made after the film… And we almost certainly bought this version of the book because the original one wasn’t available at the bookstore! In the examples above, I think that the original non-movie tie-in version are all better… What do you think? Any example where the movie-inspired cover beats the original one?
Vick @ Yellow Car Design

*We strongly recommend it and can’t wait to read the sequel. The author was a graphic designer and there are lots of graphic design references… That was an added bonus for us

Creepy M&M family

ycd — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:09:31 +0000

Eat your burger!!

Is it just us, or is this M&M advert really weird? First, what mum is crazy enough to force an hamburger the size of her little child’s head down the little fella’s throat? Hasn’t she heard of the morbidly obese children syndrome? Second, why does the semi-proud, semi-disgusted dad look as if he’s been photoshopped from another picture to this one? Finally, why is the little girl so disgusted? Are M&M’s burger that horrible? Just wandering… Weird choice of picture for the latest M&M newsletter (who, by the way, is Canada’s largest retail chain of specialty frozen foods)!

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Troublant….

Est-ce que c’est nous ou bien est-ce que cette photo, choisie par les aliments M&M pour illustrer leur dernière campagne, est un peu troublante? En effet, quelle mère indigne force son enfant à manger un hamburger aussi gros que sa tête? N’a-t’elle pas entendu parler de l’obésité infantile? Aussi, pourquoi est-ce que le père, l’air mi-fier, mi-dégoûté, semble-t’il avoir été “placé” sur la photo à l’aide d’un logiciel de photomontage? Finalement, on dirait que la petite fille va être malade… Les hamburgers de chez M&M sont-ils si dégoutants? En tout cas, drôle de choix de photo… pas très alléchant pour un magasin qui, soit dit en passant, est le plus grand distributeur d’aliments congelés au Canada!

London 2012 Olympic Mascots

ycd — Fri, 21 May 2010 14:52:26 +0000

London 2012 Mascots

As regular readers may already know (if there are any left that is, sorry for the lack of updates we have been busy in a good way but it has meant this has had to take a back seat for a little while) here at Yellow Car design we’re big fans of Olympic Design and to tie in with the recent Vancouver 2010 Winter games we made a post giving our views on all the Winter Olympic mascots there has been (although Vicky’s favourite were the Vancouver mascots I have a soft spot for the fruity cowboy/girl bears from Calgary 88 ).

Yesterday the mascots were revealed for the upcoming 2012 Summer Olympics to be held in London and they’re unsurprisingly (after the debacle that is the 2012 logo) rubbish! They look like a cross between Earthworm Jim and the secondary characters in 90′s kids show Reboot which after been melded together have then being polished into an inch of their life.

Earthworm Jim

Apparently they were designed with the help of focus groups made up of children and families which to me is a major no no. All focus groups do is basically make everything flat and beige, anything that stands out or has character is taken away as somebody in the group won’t like it leaving you with a finished article that while has function has very little form. Could you imagine David Carson changing his early style because somebody who viewed say a copy of Raygun had trouble reading it? Of course not and had he we would have been robbed of one of the great Graphic Design innovators of the last 20 years and while not really such a big deal the 2012 Summer Olympics not only have a shitty logo but now also have two metal slugs to go with it, thanks focus groups you rock!

Okay deep breaths, reading through the BBC article linked above there is the odd good thing about them: while at first the names seem pretty lame the reasons for them are quite good and the linking back to the history of the Olympics and how Britain played a part in the modern version is a nice touch and maybe gives kids a reason to study the Olympics in more detail as well as showing Britain in a good light. Also trying to bring other parts of the country into the Olympics by showing how they helped in the creation is a good idea although I’m sure if that’s how you’re going to be included they’d rather not be.

But then they ruin the good will by telling us that the mascots wear the Olympic rings as friendship bracelets which is just tacky… If these Olympics had been when I was young the mascots would have ended up looking like Mr T then having Olympic themed pogs, stickers, Game Boys or whatever else was flavour of the month in the school yard at the time. The same children who gave these ideas have probably already moved onto many different things leaving the mascots out-dated before they Olympics have even taken place.

They’re also going to have their own Facebook and Twitter pages, sign up kids to read riveting updates such as ‘Sport is enjoyable’, ‘ The Olympics are good’, ‘We’re having acceptable levels of fun!’. I’m sure there also going to be an iPhone app on the way as well as whatever else is considered to be at the forefront of Internet technology. While I understand the reason for using these methods to connect I really just hate the way everything has to feature them in some way. If you ever watch the CBC Toronto news and the iDesk with Mike Wise 90% of the content is just whatever Apple, Google, Twitter and Facebook are doing that day. It’s like the easiest and most pointless job in the world but for some reason gets a major slot on the news where it just basically gives free advertising. Even though they have all innovated in the way we communicate and use the internet, at the end of the day (and maybe this is just me) it’s all rubbish and I would rather have a proper catch up with somebody I haven’t seen in years rather than have them ‘like’ my update on what I ate for dinner…

This is going on way too long, the 2012 Olympic Mascots are awful and sit proudly alongside the terrible logo if you want to see for yourself in more detail please click this link.

Ugliest Hand Ever Drawn…And it’s all over the city!

ycd — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 18:22:40 +0000

This is a picture of a pedestrian crossing as seen in our neighborhood. Nothing special… but take a closer look at the hand:

Isn’t it an awful drawing? Floppy, boneless, wrinkly, ‘wristless’ and with the most bizarre manicure I’ve ever seen! This hand is traumatizing enough to come and haunt you at night…

Seriously, I might be slightly exaggerating but seeing bad drawings like this makes me wonder who actually creates those signs that we see everywhere. And most importantly: where did they get the idea that they were good illustrators and how come were they commissioned by the City Council to do the work (because I’m assuming that the City is responsible for putting up the monstrosities)?

I truly believe that by paying a closer attention to details such as pedestrian crossing signs City Councils would contribute to making the towns nicer. Just as flower displays, parks and sculptures, these signs are part of the cityscapes and their design is as important, according to me, as the design of tourism brochure and attractions.

The best example I can think of would be of Berlin’s use of very special pedestrian symbols (named the “Ampelmann”) in the East part of the city. It was cool enough for me to want to take a picture with the actual man from the sign:

The Ampelmann is, in fact, so popular in Berlin that it has it’s own shop and website where tourists can buy merchandise featuring the weirdly shaped little guys. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that the City of Hull could start selling t-shirts and mugs with the hideous hand printed on it…

Fake t-shirt...

Urgh…

Ugly, but useful.

ycd — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 01:39:12 +0000

Spot Talk

This “lovely” flyer was in our mailbox today, along with a couple of pamphlets from various pizza places and two bulletins about Toronto’s waterfront real estate market (those didn’t even make it to the apartment – they went straight into the recycling bin). This is a very hideous flyer: the colours are awfully bright and what’s with the thick outline around the numbers that make the two “6″ look like they’re on top of the “4″? Anyways, despite the ugly design, we thought that Spot Talk (a cheap long distance company) had a great idea by incorporating a sticker with the number to dial on the card. No more rummaging through our million of notepads to find their number! It is now conveniently located directly on our phone. Yes, we wish that all designs were functional and beautiful. Alas, this is a bit too much to ask from a lot of companies…So let’s appreciate the fact that they are, at least, offering us cheap phone calls!

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Affreux et pratique

Ce “charmant” pamphlet était dans notre boîte aux lettres aujourd’hui, accompagné de quelques circulaires de pizzérias et de deux rapports sur le marché de l’immobilier Torontois (ceux-là sont allés directement dans le bac de recyclage!). Pour en revenir au pamphlet, il est vraiment affreux: les couleurs sont beaucoup trop voyantes, et c’est quoi le rapport de l’épais contour autour des chiffres du numéro? On dirait que les deux “6″ sont par-dessus le “4″… En tout cas, même si le design est médiocre, Spot Talk (qui est une compagnie offrant des appels interurbains à coût modique) a eu la bonne idée d’incorporer un autocollant avec le numéro à composer sur la publicité. Plus besoin de fouiller à travers nos calepins afin de trouver leur foutu numéro! Il est désormais bien collé au dos de notre téléphone. Oui, nous aimerions que tout design soit pratique et joli. Hélas, c’est un peu trop demandé de la part de plusieurs compagnies, alors nous devons nous contenter de leur offre d’appels cheap!