What’s the best part about going on vacation? The time off work? The fun? The relaxation? Absolutely not, the best part of vacation is the plane ride, because that means a meeting with my good friend The Sky Mall catalogue. Just pages and pages of stupid stuff no one would ever ever want. Dog in a suitcase? Gigantic crossword puzzle designed to finally kill off grandma? An authentic popcorn cart (really?) But, nothing had ever come close of course to topping the ultimate skymall product; zombie escaping from the garden.
However, yesterday on the plane I found something that might shake the zombie off the “worst product” mantle. A true example of how important a competent design firm is to your business. A stark reminder that do it yourself or discount design will do nothing but hurt your companies’ face and presentation to potential customers. I present to you, Gravity Defyer Shoes:
Who who who, thought to themselves that we want a series of athletic shoes and we want to brand them like Nike. Except instead of a swoosh….. we want to use a sperm. People will love to rock sperms on their shoe! In fact, we should make our logo two sperms. Seriously, tell me I am wrong, what else could it be? What the hell were they thinking?!
Supposedly the Nike swoosh was an icon drawn on a napkin by Phil Knight’s secretary and has become one of the world’s most recognizable brands. So I envision the Gravity Defyer design process went down something like…. the CEO’s 6 year old blind niece drew this in her 1st grade art class with crayons and construction paper and threw a tempertantrum until daddy used it on the shoes. Or maybe a 6 year old is the ceo. Or maybe it was a bar bet between two drunk college frat boys. I don’t really know how this came to be and frankly I don’t really care, but more I’m just emploring to all of you. GET A REAL DESIGNER! Otherwise you might end up with sperm shoes.