Design Mistakes Really Bother Me

… and A Tiny Piece of Advice (really tiny)

There are a few things that bother me to no end, and design errors are among the top. I’m not talking about mechanical issues, like the fact that nobody seems to make binders for left-handed people like me or that car doors open in the most idiotic possible fashion; I’m talking about graphic design issues. Little things like signs with improper kerning (spaces in between letters) or websites that have little organic widgets in the middle of a geometric layout (Facebook finally fixed that on their site) or posters that use disgusting fonts (who made the Papyrus font? why?!).

On to why I’m even thinking about this:

I was going through MyMajors.com and saw a major design flaw. Namely, my design flaw. Whereas the headers on the tops of MyMajors tend to be cool colours, my picture borders on warm colours, and I appear to be the only idiot who made this mistake. Go ahead and look up at those shiny faces above this post. My picture at the time of this post sticks out like a sore thumb. What’s even worse is that I’m considering leaving it just like that because deep down inside every one of us wants to be unique in some superficial way. Even better, now that I’ve talked about it, I’m morally obligated to leave it there for a while so that people don’t go looking for this truly terrible picture choice and find a nice picture that matches with everyone else’s.

Talking about design, this is a perfect transition into the next topic that popped into my mind that will lead to the topic of school. Speaking of leading to the topic of school, don’t you love it when you manage to build a little layout of a paper or a post or something in your head while you go along and it actually makes some sort of sense? Love how we’re designed to make ourselves feel great about ourselves. So the next topic I thought about was Google+, since I mentioned design and Facebook earlier. Google+ was just released to the public, and as of today, Sept. 21st, Facebook has had a major overhaul in design and function that feels an awful lot like Google+. It’s going to be really, really interesting to see how the Google+ vs Facebook match goes. Google is so massive and such a generally loved company and Facebook is… Facebook. I mean, who really likes Mark Zuckerberg? Other than me. Zuckerberg is amazing, and it’s totally appropriate that he was born in 1984; however, I’m not really a fan of Facebook right now. Facebook is still really disorganized, and I find it difficult to keep track of people with it. More than that, the quality of media in Facebook is generally poor, especially the user uploaded pictures and videos. Facebook will be a lot better now that Google+ has the Facebook team scared though. I’m generally not a fan of capitalism, but in the case of two software companies competing viciously for market dominance, it’s one of the rare occasions in which capitalism actually helps the ‘average consumer.

Next time I’m going to talk about my first few days at McGill University (so far it’s great). I would like to give out a little piece of advice though, since a lot of the other guys who are blogging here seem to do that, and I’m going to fit in in some ways! even if my profile picture is wildly off. I’m not going to say it though. It’s straightforward and it’s in the image to the right of this text (if formatted properly…).

Have an awesome day! or evening!

Feel free to comment about anything. Or send me an email.

Oh, so far my major (seeing as this is mymajors) is a dual major in Computer Science and Biochemistry… without regard to the fact that it may kill me. I may change majors for the purpose that this combination is basically impossible to do at McGill University. Fingers crossed.

Calem

Calem is a wonderfully misdirected student who has never had much idea what he wanted to do with his life but has insisted on enjoying it whether a particular purpose comes or not. He works on numerous online projects and is generally willing to help out with whatever he can. Working together with people on projects is something he's found profoundly adds to his life. For any question, comments, concerns, etc, please email calemjbendell@gmail.com.

View all posts by Calem →

2 thoughts on “Design Mistakes Really Bother Me

  1. hi calem,u have a nice blog but what are talking about?u just critisize everything around u and try to enjoy life !take it easy…really!and if u want me to comment your pic,it’s sth that will attract everybody!(i’m kiddin’)u could’ve take a nice pic?why this?…..and to tell the truth u’re really funny…!

    1. Hey Marjan,
      first of all, sorry for not replying to your comment! I was expecting to get a notification upon any comments, but it seems I need to figure out a way to set that up properly still.

      And now for an answer of sorts:

      For me, criticising things is in many ways enjoying them as fully as possible. One way to go about enjoying things is to enjoy them at face value, which is great for some things (examples of which have escaped me for the past couple of minutes of thinking about it, but I know there are examples! the reason I can’t think of any is because my head keeps circling back around to the next sentence I’m about to write). Another way to go about enjoying things is by ripping them to shreds. This doesn’t have to be a negative thing. People do it when they’re watching sports, figuring out why a particular football play was chosen, why it failed, etc. We do it when enjoying food, trying to pick apart all the flavours with our weak taste buds.

      I thoroughly enjoy taking things apart, but doing so often comes at the price of comparing things overmuch. This can’t be escaped for me. Overall, I’d sooner suffer the comparisons and letdowns than give up ripping things apart. Particularly my own brain, which may soon explode upon the realisation that I just entered one of those thought processes that just goes deeper and deeper and deeper into itself. NOOOOO!!!

      And I did take a nice picture of myself. The problem is that it’s much, much too large. I take very few closeup shots of myself (just recently getting into the habit).
      The original picture can be found here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3049618/replication%20project%201%20smaller.png
      (a picture I never did go back and touch up, now I think of it)

      Despite how absolutely gorgeous I may think I am, I don’t have a camera anymore. So I do not have a good tool other than my phone camera to take pictures of myself and… everything else.

      Thanks for the comment! Hopefully this explains some of the contradiction I hadn’t realised I’d created in my post (the criticizing things vs being happy). I continue to absolutely refuse to believe that criticism has to steal away from satisfaction (though I may end up being wrong about it).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *