Bad Design, Bad Photoshop Beatdown: The Boxing Business Card with a Black Eye

Hey guys,
Couldn't help but share this example of Bad Design/Bad Photoshop with you; a few days ago my boxing trainer showed me this card he had made years ago. Can you say, "Ouch?"

This card definitely looks like it went 2-3 rounds in the ring too long; and GOT BEAT DOWN.

When there's so much wrong with this card, where do you start?

• The "cartoonish and clipartish" look and feel
• The ridiculous white border
• The staggered and unsettling alignment of the text
• The lack of contrast
• The unusually large amount of tracking used
• The word "Personalized" is an orphan

I am sure you might have some more, but my fingers are tired from typing so I'll stop the bleeding there, but it's safe to say this card is a train wreck. I actually felt so badly for the trainer that I agreed to redesign the cards for the guy for nothing (kind of a trade since he's working with me up in the boxing ring).

To the right if you click on the thumbnail you'll be able to see what I came up with. Chris is a tough guy (like most boxers) and he wanted his card to reflect that. I did advise him that this card would probably scare both female and newbie boxers of both genders from working with him. "That's cool", he said, since he works with guys that have been boxing for a while.

Since Chris' first card was so bad, he really had no idea what would be creatively possible so he kept telling me that he wanted the same card (just front only), he just wanted the boxing gloves to be red. I responded with, "Why don't you let me come in and take some photos and see where it leads?" Fortunately he trusted me, and I'd like to think it paid off for him; he was thrilled in what I came up with; how could he not be, the previous cards looked like a middle-school student with Photoshop LE created them. 

To be fair, maybe the designer that created the first cards has improved (you never know), and perhaps this wasn't his best work and he knows it.

Actually both are true.

Embarrassingly enough; the guy that redesigned the second cards is the same guy that created the first ones (Yes, I did both).

I guess this shows that we all start somewhere in design, we all improve (hopefully) over time and that none of us should take ourselves or our skills too seriously - we were all bad amateurs at one time.

Comments

[Kimberly Hoffman]

I LOVE that you were so candid in this posting! While I was reading it, I was thinking that first card looked like something I would have done in the beginning of my career, about 20 years ago. Thank you for this. It's good to be reassured that we all had to start somewhere, and can't all be creative geniuses from the beginning.