Godfrey J Pantone's own special red

Every Christmas there is some design mag or, these days, high falutin' design blogger, who writes about the ugly visual nature of Christmas. Which is bollocks, obviously.

Christmas is a time for family and friends. For pausing. For over eating and for getting drunk. And Only Fools and Horses. Nothing to do with graphic design whatsoever. Your Christmas should be as naff, or as gaudy as you like. Similarly it should be as elegant and as well designed as you like. If your front room looks like an episode of The Royle Family that's fine by me. If all your decorations match the front cover of Elle Deco, then that's fine too. It's Christmas.

And besides there's a far more visually offensive festival just around the corner. May I introduce you to the graphic design horror show we have come to call Valentines Day.

I hate Valentines Day. For many reasons. We do not celebrate it. I judge you if you participate in it. But let's concentrate on the awfulness of the design.

I have never seen anything well designed in conjunction with this horrible occasion. Unlike Christmas there is no elegant Elle Deco version of Valentines.

Let's start with the colour. Red is possibly the most useful colour in the world. There are a lot of nice reds in the Pantone book. And I'm partial to a bit of pink. I'm even wearing a pink jumper today.

But Valentines designers never use a nice pink, or a nice red. If you looked up Unelegant Colour Combo in the dictionary you would see this.

Every single fucking cliché known to cupid is dragged out and used in February.

You want cheap and tacky, you got it. With most things in life, you pay more you get more elegant marketing collateral. Not Valentines. You get shit pink and shit grammar.

Lots of Love from Him. Him? The Good Lord Above? He sent you a Valentines card. Whoda thought?

I know what you're thinking now. Oh he's wrong, he's just picked some bad examples. There are loads of nice Valentines cards out there. Maybe some vintage ones would be nice? Wrong.

I'm sure you're all at home hand printing beautiful Valentines cards using Godfrey J Pantone's own special red. But they are not nice either. Trust me.

Comments

[matt]

whilst it's not marketed straight at Valentine's day... this proves there is a better alternative : http://www.supermarkethq.com/product/pretty-sure-type-poster

[caroline]

Blimey, what a miserable post!!! Are you hoping to make a book 'Grumpy Old Designers'? A lot of people don't like Valentines day because they are single, in unhappy relationships or very 'male'. Men will say they don't see why they should be forced to show their love on one particular day..but for a lot of men this will or has historicly been the only day their wife/GF/WTeva has been shown some tenderness. Yes it is a big pile of bollocks in theory but, you would have to be a bit of a dumb ass not to get your other half something to say 'I love you'. nearly all the women I have ever met are 'into' valentines. a lot of them tell their other halves they arent because its easier than expecting something nice on the day. Yep, I think theyre stupid too. Its no big deal to be romantic on one day inparticular, the same as its no big deal to remember the work mums put in on mothers day etc etc it is more hypocritical for a nation of non christians to go bananas over the birth of christ. And anyway, Easter is the biggie for christians, I should know, I was one.
But I totally agree, the design sucks the colours suck, what is on offer is mainly not romantic at all, do men still think girls like badly fitting underwear with itchy lace??
But, what about something from Rob Ryan? or do what my husband did and made a montage of tiny pictures of all my favourite things in the world, and popped it in a clipper frame.
Please feel free to not leave this on your comments.

[Andy]

Letterpress Valentines card, with others on the side.
The only pieces of decent design I have seen related to this made up day..

http://www.blushpublishing.co.uk/index.php?page=ty065&cat=type

[John]

That's not a pink jumper.

[dan]

you've been married some time, yes?

[Paul H. Colman]

What Dan said...