Saturday, May 30, 2009 3:50 AM
For most developers going to the DBA for any sort of request was usually a mixture of concern, apprehension, strife, and anger…because while you just wanted to cold-cock the snarky bugger, you knew that you’d have to play nice if you had any chance of seeing your stored proc change getting put in place before the next release.
Now it appears that developers need to look both ways before crossing the street, and the threat comes from the one group you’d think would be shy and timid: the designers!
Oh sure, they’re usually dressed better than developers and carry Macbooks and go on and on about how Flash is great and Adobe is God’s company, etc., but under that Starbucks grande-triple-shot-two-pump-vanilla-latte-with-extra-foam-and-extra-hot demeanour lies a CAGED ANIMAL! And we have Microsoft to thank for unleashing them on the world.
Or more specifically, we have bing to thank.
Graham, a freelance log and brand designer from the UK recently set up the Bing Logo Design By Microsoft – Vent off here post on his blog to allow designers everywhere to weigh in on the new logo for Microsoft’s upcoming search initiative…and weigh in they did! Let’s look at some comments.
First of all, a reference point. Here is the bing logo:
And here are the comments:
Graham was very clear in his feelings:
“There is nothing about it that makes sense. Every thing that could be done wrong pretty much has been. The whole personal taste, the beauty is in the eye of the beholder, its subjective doesn’t cut it here.”
Tom felt the logo was horrid and an aberration. He comments
“I think JWT designed this piece of crap. I can’t imagine this logo being final. I can’t stand looking at it.”
Nick noticed the
“aches of space between the i and the n.”
*Aches* of space?! Is that even an actual design term?! Can your eyes feel physical pain from too much perceived space?!
Chris created a brand new word in voicing her displeasure:
“With a name like “bing”, a word with such strong onomatopoeia I would think the logo would carry that same chime/ring-like feeling. To me it says “blah” more than “bing” and yes, is technically poor even in its own lame style.”
WTF does onomatopoeia mean?! If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, Designers are from 5 light years away in the bat-shit-crazy nebula.
Now of course, this post is tongue in cheek and I realize that in the same way non-developers probably look at us talk and dissect our unit tests and TDD practices and clean code and design pattern implementation, its totally the same thing here: people who design for a living are going to be harsher on design-ish things the same way real developers are harsher to Access devs.
But for me, I don’t feel that the new logo is really all that bad…I definitely don’t see the *aches* of space between the letters…maybe that’s just my non-designer eye. I’m more interested in what functionality and value bing will provide as a search platform. And maybe that’s how it should be: let the designers focus on their main interests and I’ll focus on mine.
But just realize that designers are no longer being the shy quiet types…oh no…now they've realized that they can voice their opinions. Nothing good can come from this…nothing good!
D