There are a set of tropes designers use to critique, principles that are ingrained from the first days of design school. Some of the more repeated rules include, never stretch type, more than two fonts are yucky, gradients are bad and of course kerning, the kerning is always bad. Designers, myself included, make sport of hunting for, and pointing out these kinds of mistakes. Examples of these design no-nos can consistently be found in work done for local small businesses and self-employed folks. As an exercise, critiquing is fun and often useful, but too often when designers find the weight of the missteps too egregious, they advocate for taking the next logical step; fixing stuff. Being ugly and working are not mutually exclusive. It is possible that something is aesthetically distasteful but does its job. Design is concerned with solving problems. Ugly is not a design problem.
Image Jo’s Cup-O-Joe. Jo’s coffee shop has been in business for 20 years and has made a good living for her and her family. She has used the same amateur logo since day one. Jo, would be the first to tell you the logo is pretty crappy, but it also does its job and everybody in town recognizes it. It’s on the sign in front of the shop, on the jerseys for the little league team she sponsors and in the ads they run in the college newspaper. Jo plans to run the business until she retires. She has no ambition to franchise or expand. Objectively any changes to the logo would be an improvement, but to what end? Jo doesn’t have a problem that needs to be solved, she just has an ugly logo. There is nothing here to fix. In Jo’s example, graphic designers missed the boat, let the ugly thing live.
I am not advocating for bad design. If the design is bad enough that it is broken, certainly fix it. I am advocating that we stop conflating ugly with broken. I am advocating that we help people before they settle for cheap, quick, poorly designed things. Ugly is the only option for some people. If you’re looking for problems to solve you can start there.