My work stressed me out and pissed me off. Cant you DO things for YOURSELF??
I went into the japanese department store on Bourke street and found the most useless gimmicky things in the smallest amount of space. If we were to play a game, where we had to buy each other the most useless /random/unlikely thing in the world I would surely win:
- Scented sticky tape to put on walls to catch and keep flies (imagine peeling that sticky tape off and staring at your collection of dead flies) 'oh my house is so clean!'
- Fake crow to scare the birds away
- Plastic spikey tiles which shows a cartoon of cat stepping on it and in pain (morbid)
- Spectacle holder lined with faux leather
- Miniature tool set
- hankerchief to wrap your lunch in like the good old days
- cases for your chop sticks
- double eye lid maker glue
Its even funnier because there is no english on these packages. You have to go by the playful cartoon characters who demonstrate the use of the product. Sometimes there are handy little translation papers that the sales assistants stick on the racks. They say things like 'Double Eye Lid Maker' or 'Great Popularity!' along with a cute cartoon with highlighter borders. Definitely a culture clash here. We went to a Korean/chinese hair and beauty shop. Absolutely EVERYTHING was in non-english. There werent even prices on them. Where the packaging didnt portray 12 yo looking asian girls with large eyes, eyelashes and double eye lids there were manga cartoons e.g. mascara packaging - manga cartoon. I cant relate to a manga character when I am looking for a good mascara. I want to know what im putting on my face and im not trusting a blonde fob girl to translate for me. And its not like these girls offer to help you anyway. They just follow you to make sure you dont steal shit. How do these people make money in Australia? Why are you being so racist-exclusive??
Double packaging or useless/gimmick items annoy me. At design school we have to design with as little as possibile, only use what is needed, include what is necessary. The rest is useless junk which creates more physical waste or confuse people with indirect messages (in terms of excessive use of graphic elements). WHY do things need to be double packaged?? WHY?!
Make a stance. If you see a shit advertisement or any shit/unappealing/misleading/confusing/ugly communication design piece just ignore it because design is the fight against all these things. The fact that you paid attention to it is more than it deserves. A good design piece should be self-explanatory, you shouldnt need to stand there in confusion trying to figure it out. Design is a fight against waste, inefficiency, disorganisation, miscommunication or any unnecessary communication pain we think we need to experience before the end result is achieved.
