Ridiculously silly concept.

Can anyone decipher the following ad for me?



This full page execution for FAGE yogurt appeared on the inside back cover of February's Bon Appétit.

My only question: what on earth does it mean?

You'll have to excuse my dairy product naivete here, but is ridiculous thickness an ideal quality in yogurt? I have to assume so, if that's the USP they're going with. I assume readers of food publications like Bon Appétit would understand better than I do, but the ad makes zero sense to me at all.

What does the thickness have to do with bees? Are you saying bees could use it to make honeycombs? I really think I'm missing something here, so I set out to investigate.

The website all follows the same motif, and quite frankly is really well done as far as intertwining graphics and web design while still having a navigable site.

The navigation bar sinks into the ridiculous thickness depending on which side you clock on. Props for that.

Things I learned from the website:

• FAGE is a Greek company founded in 1926
  
• FAGE is pronounced Fa-yeh (but it's all Greek to me...rimshot)
  
• They "never make a product that we would not give to our children"
  
• The thickness comes from the use of 4 pounds of whole milk in every 1 pound of yogurt
  
• The containers it comes in are called "pots," which kind of gives off that homey feel that grandma is churning this stuff out in her kitchen. That may or may not be a good thing.
  

Things I did not learn from the website:

• If beekeepers are beginning to use the yogurt to build artificial hives for their bees.
  
• Why FAGE is still paying their ad agency to come up with honeycombs pressed into really thick yogurt.
  

The lesson here, kids, is that although we can do some cool things with graphics, it doesn't mean we should. While yogurt is about as boring a category as you can get (wait, what am I saying? What about GOGURT!?), you don't have to throw all logical strategy out the window in order for people to look at your ad. In fact, I'm not sure I would have noticed this if a friend wouldn't have asked me, "do you understand what this means at all?"

If it doesn't stand out, it doesn't make sense and it quacks like a duck, chances are it's not a good ad. Unless it's selling yogurt pots by the busload, in which case, go nuts Fa-yeh.

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Comic Sans: Sans Purpose.

I’d like to think that as a student of advertising with some graphics experience, I have somewhat of an eye for design. And yet, I know a lot of my notions about visuals aren’t just from education. A lot of people can tell you something generally looks good (or especially, bad) without any sort of formal training. This then begs the question, why does Comic Sans exist?

Comic Sans has been a default Microsoft font since Windows 95. It was developed by Vincent Connare, an early Microsoft programmer/designer who was distraught when he saw a comic strip that used Times New Roman for the dialogue. He sought out to create a more fun, cartoony font. The monster he created became arguably the worst typeface for 99% of type, projects, and signage.

“What’s so bad about it,” you might ask? “I think it’s whimsical!”

Try reading an entire paragraph, or an entire page in Comic Sans. Even better, go for the all popular ALL CAPS COMIC SANS. The strokes are too fat, the letters and the spacing are uneven, and extensive exposure to this immature little font has been known to cause retinal bleeding in adults and pose a threat of birth defects to pregnant women.

If you want your restaurant/auto repair shop/day care to look like it’s owned by a six year old, buy some big neon Comic Sans signage.



Tom Fauls, associate professor of advertising at BU, has said:

“Good typography should be like a wonderful clear crystal goblet that holds wine, much better than a golden goblet that has jewels on the outside because the point of the crystal goblet is that you can see the wine that’s inside, you can appreciate the colors…”

Going on that metaphor, if good typography is a crystal chalice, Comic Sans is a lime green tippy cup you find under the couch when you move your furniture, when you haven’t had young children in 17 years, that still has a little chocolate milk in it from its last use.

Just about nothing looks appropriate in Comic Sans. Many people who would claim to having little to no design experience could spot the problems here:



Needless to say, you can’t be taken seriously if you choose to use this font for just about anything. That is why I’m calling for a personal boycott on any business caught patronizing Mr. Connare’s wonderfont. If you don’t show the creativity or effort to pick out a font that isn’t Comic Sans, I’m no longer going to trust you with my business.

I have been beaten to this cause by the website bancomicsans.com The creators took up their cause in 2002 to get the font removed from the defaults in Microsoft programs, and have a massive online petition. As much as I fear that their signatures will fall on deaf ears (as they have thus far), I only hope to spread their message in the hopes that people can gain a tiny little bit of an eye for design and some self respect and stop using Comic Sans.

Or else...


Please.

Gestalt Magic

Disclaimer: This entry will not include a political message...

This pop up ad came up on my screen the other day, and there are several things I find funny about it.

1) BO's mugshot. It really looks like he just got taken in for DWI after throwing a few back at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. That's our first subtle clue as to what the people who designed the ad thought about the answer to the question.

2) The word "No" is highlighted in black, while "Yes" is greyed out. The options on the ad didn't flash back and forth, this was the solid image. Obviously the eye is guided towards "No," another clever hint about the conservative "correct" answer.

3) At the bottom, the word "Free" is ironically also greyed out. Could this possibly be because just like the designers of the ad don't think BO will fix the economy, they also know the prize is not actually free? I wonder if maybe answering the question will actually just open your computer up to more adware and you'll never actually get a t-shirt or a generic $50 gift card. Just maybe...