Is Graphic Design Harmless?

People say graphic design is harmless. People say it's ephemeral. People say it's cosmetic. People say it doesn't really mean all that much.

But you can ruin the world with graphic design.
(In Syrah, we haven't quite done it yet.)

This lady, whose name is Theresa Lepore, worked for the government in the year 2000, and one of her tasks as a government worker in the United States was the tedious act of laying out government forms.

One of the forms she had to lay out was a ballot for a presidential election. She worked for the Board of Elections in Palm Beach County, Florida.

Maybe you remember what happened there in Florida, if you read some history books, that was the year that George Bush ran against Al Gore, and election night, bizarrely enough, the entire country was tied.

It was a tied vote, and it was all going to depend on how the vote came out in Florida. And Florida was nearly tied.

It was all coming down to the votes in Palm Beach County.
This is what Theresa did.

Okay, you were picking between George W. Bush in position number one, right?
Your second choice is Al Gore in position number two, right?

The intention was good: “Palm Beach County has a lot of elderly voters. I was trying to make the ballot so that it would be easier for the voters to read, which is why we went to the two-page, now known as the butterfly ballot" she said.

But she had too many things to lay out, so she laid them down to one side, then laid some other on the other side.

The way you voted was you took a small punch, and you punched a hole in the middle.

So if you wanted George Bush, bingo! Hole number one.

You want Al Gore, hole number two, right? Wrong!

If you did hole number two, you were voting for this guy on the other side, Pat Buchanan.

Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore was under fire for her design of what came to be known as the “butterfly ballot,” which left many voters confused and led to overvotes and unintentional votes for the wrong candidate.

The visually challenging punch card ballot design turned about 1,000 people claiming they voted accidentally for Pat Buchanan; they meant to vote for Al Gore.
And many more voters picked more than one candidate in the crowded 10-candidate presidential field.

The recount of ballots in Florida during the 2000 presidential election created a debate about the reliability of punch card ballots and precipitated a national crisis of public confidence in voting systems in general.

Gore asked for a recount of ballots by hand in four counties where his support was believed to be strong. The mess resulted in a 36-day recount battle.

And guess what? By some counts, and people dispute this, but by some counts, Al Gore lost the election in Florida by 700 or so votes.

So, because of graphic design, that kind of crappy job that every graphic designer faces during their career: too much type, not enough space, one color, government standards form, do it fast. It just has to be out there, bad printing: this is what happened.

And what happened after that? The invasion of Iraq, the invasion of Afghanistan, you know.

Good design is cheaper in the long run and much more humane. It shifts the burden of difficulty off of the hundreds of users (or thousands, or millions) and towards the few people creating the design.

In the hands of a design professional, in fact, good design can even be cheap up front.

If anyone asks you: Design Counts.