There’s an interesting piece of design catharsis going on right now over at howlowcanyourlogo.com, and it’s got me thinking about Dunning-Kruger effect in graphic design.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

If you’re not aware of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, here it is in a nutshell: People who are grossly incompetent at a particular skill will not recognize their own incompetence, because they are too incompetent. There are lots of reasons for this, and we all know people who fit this description.

The reason that this contest makes me think of the Dunning-Kruger effect is that, like all of these types of “let’s make something awful” contests, the best entries are things that we’ve all seen executed earnestly by people who are unaware of their incompetence.

Clash Day

It reminds me of “clash day” in high school, a day on which, to demonstrate our school spirit, we wore clothes that clashed. The great irony of this day is the students that wear things, which do clash, that other students would wear on any other day. There was the fashionista that wore black on black on black, but all different fabrics and dyes, so some blacks were blueish, some greenish, some purplish. There was denim on denim guy. There was me: Black shirt with red polka dots with a red tie with black polka dots...and gold pants.

There’s inherent cruelty in this type of thing. I know in high school some people felt like others were wearing costumes of them. Both our art teachers wore a lot of mismatched black on black, by necessity. Our community was a mix of suburb and agrarian, so there was a fair amount of earnest denim on denim as well.

DKE in Logo Design

There’s a lot of incompetent logo designers out there. I’m not really sure why. Maybe it’s because it seems so simple on the surface. Maybe because there are just a lot of incompetent designers out there, and if you’re an incompetent designer, logos seem fun and easy. Maybe it’s because there are a lot of misunderstood metrics for success in design, logo design specifically. Looking at the entries for this contest, the most interesting entries are not the ones that scream, but the ones that sit quietly, and could very well exist in the real world.

• We’ve all had clients who insist on using their corporate colors, which are: red, green, blue, yellow, and purple, but NOT ORANGE.
• We’ve all had clients insist on referencing their dog or cat. More dogs though.
• We’ve all had clients who wanted to mimic or parody something else that is popular at the time.
• And, last but certainly not least: We’ve all had clients who are in love with Papyrus.

Why do we all have these similar experiences? Well, that’s easy: those clients are not competent designers, but they don’t know it. That’s not saying that they aren’t intelligent, hardworking, or awesomely competent at something else, just that they are unaware of the measures of success in design, and therefore are unaware that the decisions they’re making are fundamentally flawed because of it.

Are You Incompetent?

The glorious thing about Dunning-Kruger is that people are unaware of it. It’s even probable that a DK sufferer thinks that everyone around him or her is incompetent, because they have developed their own, albeit irrelevant, measure of success.

So, while the contest gallery for HowLowCanYourLogo is filled with absolutely brilliant, ludicrous, joyous insanity, it also contains work that some participants probably see as perfectly fine, which is what I find interesting about it.

When discussing logo design, designers frequently talk about very subtle things like negative space, kerning, gradients, reflections, or color; but none of those things make your logo successful. So, I guess my questions is: What is worse? A flaming ball of rainbows and laser cats, or the 4 Millionth all-caps Gotham logotype?

Who is more incompetent, the client who asks for something crazy, or the designer who convinces them to accept something mediocre?

The entry deadline for this specific contest is today, so I guess we’ll find out soon. If you haven’t already, check it out here:  http://howlowcanyourlogo.com