It's not news that one of the most watched beauty pageants of the year turned into an anticlimax and a feast of memes.
Considering it was the MISS UNIVERSE pageant, who even
knows, aliens in other universes might be
having a field day too laughing at Steve Harvey's mistake of the century.
While some were advocating on twitter that A
Snafu Hall of Fame should be created with Steve as its patron saint, I took out time to look at the announcement card again and GOD knows I have a huge problem with its design.
A lot of people would have made the same mistake with the way that card was put together - the designer is the one we should be flaying the most here not Steve Harvey.

First, let's act as though I didn't see the typographical error in the word ELIMINATION -
anyone can make that mistake in this age of
spell checks and auto correct especially on a
card that ideally shouldn't have been put out for public viewing (I still don't forgive the organizers though).

Now to the main issue.
How does a designer put the most important
information on a piece of card at the BOTTOM
RIGHT CORNER? I mean that's where you put
the bloody RSVP and who reads the RSVP
anyway? Whatever happened to TOP CENTRE
or even BOTTOM CENTRE? Yeah! before you
crucify me, I know everything can't be in top
centre all the time, still, modulation of font
sizes, emphasis with colour, highlights with shadows and a gazillion ways exist for telling
even the unsurest of persons what the most
important information on a page is but whoever put this card together has failed to recognize that.

Another problem I have is with the scattered
layout of the information on the card. The three names were expected to be announced in succession - the layout has failed to show any
succession or even the remotest thought that
the 'stuff' on the bottom right is connected to
what is happening at top left.
So we have USA and COLOMBIA on one side and a visual mile away is a very BOLD MISS UNIVERSE 2015 and PHILIPPINES in smaller font below it.
For all the reader cared, the 'stuff' under the MISS
UNIVERSE 2015 might as well have been the website of the pageant organizers or a phone
number.

The design team may argue ad infinitum that separating the winner's information in this manner is a conscious effort to make it stand out but for me, putting the page highlight where they put it is definitely a NO NO.
I mean, there is a reason newspaper editors have the headlines written in the manner they write it and I am yet to see a deviation from this layout in the over hundred years of publishing.

So, while we go back to our meme-fest, racial
slurs and the jokes and banter that come from
this kind of fiasco, please find space between
the cross hairs for the designers of this card.
And if the organisers had just asked an intern
to print 'stuff' on a card, then shoot the
organisers instead.

GOOD DESIGN ALWAYS MATTERS

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