A great example of bad design disguised as good design. Yes, these little bottles are pretty, with the bold, gray font. These are some of the products set out at a Holiday Inn Express.

But – how do you wash your hands? The first purpose of package design should be to hold the stuff. The second purpose should be to let people understand what’s in the package. This packaging system fails miserably on count two! Yes, they’re quite pretty, but how would someone know if they want to wash or scrub or cleanse? You need to read tiny type on the back to know that “wash” is for your hair, “scrub” is for your bath, and “cleanse” is for your hands. How hard would it to be to call them shampoo, bath gel, and soap, and avoid the need to translate the names elsewhere on the package?

This is a great example of designers getting caught up in the gimmick of the naming convention (in this case using a verb instead of a noun) and losing sight of the goal.

originally posted May 12 2008

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2008-5-28 @ 9:05:43 pm [ Edit - Delete - Unapprove ]
Angela ( boog79@hotmail.com / http://mynewfavething.blogspot.com ) (IP: 208.120.232.252 )
For those of us who appreciate good design (and the correct usage of words!), gimmicks disguised as good design is a neverending peeve. Another case of bad form preceding function…

2008-5-28 @ 9:05:31 pm [ Edit - Delete - Unapprove ]
Angela ( boog79@hotmail.com / http://mynewfavething.blogspot.com ) (IP: 208.120.232.252 )
gimmicks ARE a neverending peeve!
(correct usage of words!)

2009-1-16 @ 8:01:10 pm [ Edit - Delete - Unapprove ]
Scott Hohl ( scott.hohl@yahoo.com / http://scotthohl.blogspot.com/ ) (IP: 68.104.200.141 )
They probably thought they’d make more scratch by using verbs as nouns.
You could blog about the habit of using nouns as verbs too, or how about nouns as adjectives? That would be dope!