Someone linked me this beautiful poster, and I'm just really impressed.

My contribution:

fascinated by this. seriously? you think it makes total sense? read the tags in the notes, and note how many people totally failed to realize the "intended" pattern was even possible. yes, people tend to start with a brightly-colored thing, but once they start reading, they tend to read nearby text next rather than jumping around.

so once you've read "it is against the law to", your brain isn't coming to the poster fresh looking for the most brightly colored text it can find, or looking for something on the same circle but oriented the opposite direction with respect to the circle's path; it's going to look for a new line of text that starts just below the line of text it just read, and get "keep alcohol out of", and keep doing that, getting "it is against the law to keep alcohol out of the hands of youth supply alcohol to minors".

if you don't follow that, well, look at the mockup i did, and note how many people read it as "graphic passion is my design", because top-down wins over outside-in.

this is one of those things where if your academic model of the thing is not predicting the real-world outcome, it's very important to recognize that since graphic design is about communication, and communication is about what people actually get from seeing the work, if lots of people are "reading it wrong", that means it is designed wrong. doesn't matter that you have an abstract theory about how they "should" read it.

And the kids are like "but they get into our bug traps" and "we didn't catch him he followed us home"

And their parents are like. Please i do not believe that 6 fucking pixies smuggled themselves into our garage on the underside of your bicycle saddle and then set up shop in the old dolls house. These are living beings they're not toys it's not kind to treat them like this

And the kids are like we are NOT treating them like anything you said we're not allowed to trap them and they always get into our traps so we always run away when they see us and then they follow us and get inside our backpacks and stuff

And the parents are like

Stop lying!!!

And then they set up wildlife cams and not only can pixies apparently do all of that and are very desperate to hang out with these human kids (who have fun life-sized toys and are covered in wonderful things like glitter and are a free source of fresh bugs and pop tart crumbs)

But they can also like. Fully just pick locks and shit.