Can wrong design be good design?
Some days ago, a friend shared the above image that some genius made and became a thing on the internet. I am a big fan of David Bowie (who isn’t?) and my first reaction was, “yes! this is totally right!”
Looking at it again though, something seemed wrong. No, it wasn’t the conspiracy theory this can suggest. It was its design. Whoever made the (definitely spot-on) thinking, then prepared the image to share the idea obviously very quickly. From a graphic design point of view, the image is wrong. Allow me to geek about it a bit.
First, there is no obvious title. Even if we accept that ‘things going to shit’ as the title, its size is the same as the date label, which makes it look like another label next to a graph arrow that goes closer to 0, so the whole graph reads more like “after the death of David, on Jan 2016, fewer things go to shit”. Also, that ambiguous zero at the beginning of both axes makes things far more complicated.
So, I redesigned it to make clearer and easily read.
Is it better? I’ll leave this on you to judge. Even if I succeed, it took me extra time to fine-tune the original version, which was already —by the time I was done— an old meme. Remember that dilemma? This is a perfect example of something “wrong” but done and efficient. People understood it and shared it. Of course, the important detail is that the mistake here is not harming anyone.
Wrong can be right sometimes. Or, at least, it can be ok.
The worse design is one that looks right and beautiful but, in fact, is harmful to people.
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