People who design forms never cease to amaze. This was very obvious in the era of paper forms. You’d get forms with fields that are patently too small for their content; like this snippet from one I recently filled: Name ______________________________ E-mail ___________ Cellular: _____________________________________________ What were they thinking?? Many email addresses won’t fit on … Read more
I was visiting an office where they had one of these delightful Espresso machines, an Espresso Point by Lavazza, and tried to make me a cup. I put in a paper cup and a coffee cartridge, pushed the button at the right of the panel next to the size I wanted, and instead of that … Read more
I’ve discussed before the silliness that results when overcautious lawyers and thoughtless designers cooperate to create silly “serving suggestions”… and here is a lovely new example. In itself this salad may be a good serving suggestion for a package of cucumbers (or of parsley, perhaps)… but this is not what this image is displayed on. … Read more
We got this new Samsung flat panel TV, and when I first turned it on it went straight into a “first time setup” sequence. The first question that appeared on the OSD (On-Screen Display) was which language I wanted for the OSD; I started scrolling among the options, and my finger slipped and hit the … Read more
In times of old, intrepid European explorers who ventured into remote countries like China or Africa would return with travelers’ tales of amazing creatures such as have never been seen. And apparently such wonderful animals still exist in far away lands, reflected in the meager evidence that filters back. Take this sighting… I saw these … Read more
I was in a shopping center and I saw these two signs on different floors, pointing out the emergency stairs’ entrance. Now, the sign on the left is well drawn and clear – the guy is purposefully descending the stairs. But the sign on the right has something very wrong… It’s a bit hard to … Read more
When we spent a while in the US in the eighties I was amazed and amused by the silly warning “serving suggestion” found on food packaging. I mean, what were they afraid of… a flood of lawsuits by people that opened the soup powder sachet and failed to extract a steaming soup tureen?… Like many … Read more
People who design signs ought to be careful, because thoughtless signage can so easily lead to confusion… Public restroom signs are a case in point, because people who see them make assumptions. For instance, as someone once pointed out, if one sees a WC sign of the opposite gender and the one for one’s own … Read more
You need to speak Hebrew and French to detect the hilarity of this photo: Here’s the thing: the package contains a local make of Petit Peurre cookies, a timeless biscuit design. However, someone decided to brand it as PTIBER GADOL – literally, “Large Petit Beurre“. Except that Petit, of course, means Little… Oh, and incidentally, … Read more
Was looking up RosettaStone, that Rolls Royce of computer-based language teaching tools. They have a nice web site with demo videos and all – very handy. And they had a video there promoting their system, and as it zipped past something seemed wrong. I rewinded a bit and there it was: my native Hebrew language, … Read more
