Trump Gets Fired Up About Design

On this past week's episode of The Apprentice, the teams got to work with a real live Graphic Designer to design a brochure. Mr. Trump seems to work with a designer himself when putting together these project briefs.

Here is what it sounds like when Donald Trump says the illustrious phrase, graphic designer.

Feel free to put that into iTunes and randomly spice up any playlist with the inspirational tones of the Donald's voice.

So the underdog team, Gold Rush, was paired up with a graphic design dude from bsquared design & printing. How do we know the name of the company? Their name and logo was featured in the background of no less than 5 different shots:


I always get the feeling that when these companies find out they are going to be featured on the Apprentice, they run out to Kinko's and get a bunch of giant logos printed out and tape them to the wall. Not many offices have the name of the business behind every employee at all times, as if they were going to turn around only to be assured that they were still working at the same place.

Anyway, the guy at bsquared was working away on a Macintosh running OS X, showing off his copy of the Adobe Creative Suite, and using a shiny new white Apple keyboard and mouse while viewing it all on a nice flatscreen LCD monitor. Very hip, very modern, somewhat nerdy, but a typical designer none the less.



Meanwhile, over on the winning yet dysfunctional team Synergy, we have no idea who they are working with as their design company seems almost embarrassed to show their name (and as we realize later, for good reason). All we know about this mystery business is that they:

1. Use a HP laptop to browse the team's photos on.

2. Work on an older G4 tower sitting on top of the boardroom table.
   

3. Have the world's deepest CRT monitor taking up any remaining room.

4. Store a huge photocopier/paper shredder/ice chest thing under the table.

5. Utilize the slightly older and slightly less cool black & clear Apple keyboard & mouse from way back in the nineteen-nineties.

6. Are running Mac OS 9 and what seems to be some old version of Quark or PageMaker and an ancient version of Photoshop.

7. Help produce the losing brochure.

However, in the background of this one shot, eagle-eyed viewers will discover that this is in fact the very same company. What is still unclear is why this poor designer got stuck with the inferior computer, inferior software, inferior operating system, inferior monitor, inferior keyboard, inferior boardroom table, and ultimately, inferior team.

To give both designers credit, however, they were forced to put something together by a committee of potentially inexperienced people, which is bad enough already without the committee standing right behind you while you work. To top things off there is the small fact that millions of people all over the world will see your work and judge both you and your employer by how well you perform on a one-day, in-and-out, quickie project.

Graphic Design Lesson A: Get the latest hardware and software, and you will win. Always.

Graphic Design Lesson B: Touch a designer's computer screen, and you will lose. Always.

(Half) Truth in Advertising

Alright, just driving along, nice day. Hey look, Fitness World is having its Grand Opening, that's interesting. I'd thought that they would have updated their logo and chose some more current graphics for the exterior, but I'll investigate further.

Okay, looks good. They really went all out with the retro signage, but I guess that's the look they're going for. That girl is probably wondering what I'm taking a picture of. I'll keep moving along.

And here's the pitch: they're now enrolling low-cost memberships. That's fine, maybe I'll stop in and check it out. That action-packed illustration really makes stretching look exciting. Wait a second, what's this...

Grand RE Opening?! What the heck does that mean? Why is such an important piece of a word hidden away like that? Who designed this and just what are they trying to hide? When will they take down this tacky and misleading sign?

Cut to at least 3 years later, and this sign is still front and center on the local Fitness World. When I first saw this advertisement I thought it was crazy, but to my additional amazement it remains unchanged year after year: it's like they are in a constant state of cautiously optimistic reinvention. You could argue that everyday is another opportunity to re-open the place, but I wonder, is it really that grand?

Fitness World: more like "Fit-this Word in between these two giant words and make it really small so that you have to be standing underneath the sign to read it and we can keep it up for years on end without anyone really noticing."

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