I usually avoid mixing this space with the design part of my life, but am violently, uncontrollably compelled to note something I saw earlier today. I keep pretty good track of local culture, but managed to miss this past summer's rebranding of the New York City Opera. On a bus going down Central Park West a few hours ago, I noticed banners hanging from almost every single light pole advertising the Opera's new season. The banners were white, with black sans serif type at the top and the bottom, and smack in the middle: a big black dot. Very big. Solid black.
I pondered this for block after block, checking to see if perhaps I'd spied an incomplete or defaced banner. No, they were all like this.
Did the dot represent a super-sized, filled-in "O" for Opera, like I used to do as a kid with a ballpoint pen to all the words in my mother's magazines? (Any letter with a hole in it was fair game.) Was it cultural commentary on the endless vortex of bad taste begging to be filled with high culture? Or tongue in cheek (opera is a black hole that will suck you in for eternity if you're not careful)?
I couldn't guess, but could tell that it was really ugly.
I guess I move in the wrong circles. Here's an explanation of the dot. I admire the designer's chutzpah, and the client's sense of adventure. Occasionally, in the world of graphic design, ugly spends some time as the new beautiful. I imagined presenting this concept to my most forward-thinking client; even they would laugh nervously, and check to see if I had a fever.
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