I’m always noticing work that flies in the face of everything I’ve learned in school. It can be downright annoying to mentally critique everything you see, a common problem among designers, but what I didn’t expect was to start appreciating some very ugly work for the same reasons. It could be a personal factor of coming from a school and city over-saturated with design students, as you can only see so many clever phrases set in Helvetica before you start WANTING to be assaulted by some crudely scrawled electric type with no rhyme or reason, just to keep your sanity and challenge your eyes. We do things so cleanly and deliberately here at Mode that I get the occasional urge to stretch type at random, maybe throw in some neon unicorns. You know, just to mix it up. I guess many designers regularly embrace this type of stuff from an ironic standpoint, and normally I’m appreciating it only for its comedic value too, but sometimes it really is perfectly appropriate. More »