Becky Rallens

10/10 for legibility, visibility, and typography

for years now, this industry has been stubbornly clinging to an idea that has become too cumbersome. if you will indulge me, I will now rate 2023’s new designs:

5/10 best I can say is “it gets the job done.” it does clearly read as 2023, but the typography is bad & the visibility leaves much to be desired.

2/10 happy 20?3, i guess. they started with a decent font, but these are illegible and everything about the eyehole placement sucks.

6/10 hear me out: this is an okay compromise. it’s a cop out, sure, but it’s a viable alternative. it satisfies the basic requirements of legibility, visibility, and typographical acceptability, yet it lacks all whimsy. this feels like when you don’t do a project the way the teacher intended but you pass anyway on a technicality. this isn’t school, though, so i’m failing this design.

1/10 come on, guys. if you’re going to use the top of the 2 as an eyehole, at least use a font with a more open design, perhaps something art deco. at least when you look in the mirror with those LEDs directly in your line of sight, you won’t notice how bad the glasses look.

7/10 now we’re getting somewhere. like the first design, it uses the 3 as the second eyehole but it does so without compromising the shape of the number. unfortunately, the lack of outlines does negatively affect legibility and there may be some visibility issues for the left eye.

9/10 this is as good as it’s gonna get, folks. an actual graphic designer was clearly involved here. the typography is appealing, the color works, visibility looks good. nicely done.