A soon-to-be-regular series of posts documenting the various things that attract a designer’s attention. 

“You’re designers. Things will bother you that no one else will ever notice.”-Michael Beirut from a talk given at Notre Dame, October 21, 2005

Do you know where I can find a 1040? Oh…Here they are…in the astonishingly large type section…

I went with the snarky section title because it amused me, but in reality, I was impressed with the design of these forms. I like designs where the form follows function sometimes to such an extreme that form is kicked to the curb entirely.

Really, what more does a 1040 have to be? Does anyone enjoy filling them out? Will anyone ever stop and consider the elegant layout? No. They have to be easily accessible, cheap to produce (notice the cheap newsprint and one color printing), and presumably, as easy as humanly possible to complete and mail back. 

Anyone going to have any trouble finding the 1040 forms? Doubtful. Was that only purpose of the cover design? Hell yes. That makes this a valid design in my book. (There really should be a W3C inspired validator for graphic design, but that’s a subject for another post).

Feral Line Breaks in the Wild

I could not walk past this.

Life should come equipped with a Shift+Return option like InDesign does. (My wife pointed out that they were actually missing volumes 12 and 13…but still!)