Unbelievable. Aided only a 40-oz., and using only a reference-letter-seeking grad student as a nervous sounding board, Steven Heller turns out 5,000 words of derision for the "lackluster," "atrocious" design of Sforzian Backdrops ["all the subtlety of a PowerPoint presentation for a financial-services company"], all without betraying the slightest clue about the how or why or what for behind them.
Seriously, the entire thing is about typefaces and dropshadows. Does he not recognize the television and cable news origins of the backdrops' "style"? Does he not question for a second how well they might perform the multiple objectives they're designed for? What their purposes might actually be? Who their intended audience is? What their effects or implications are when they're published and broadcast? All of these questions have been widely researched, documented, and commented on--not just here, either, but by the creator of these graphics, Scott Sforza himself.
Someone is in need of a serious education in Google.
POTUS Typographicus: Appealing to the Baseline and George W’s Typographic Legacy [metropolis/aiga.org via designobserver]
