This particular BC Liquor Store is located in Vancouver’s classiest shopping establishment, Kingsgate Mall. Home to the Worst Washroom in Canada,¹ Kingsgate also features stores that sell knockoff swords, hooker boots and hospital scrubs, as well as a Shoppers Drug Mart, which is usually the sole reason I go in there.² Also, sometimes Payless stocks Catherine-sized shoes. Mostly not.

On a side note, I was just buying a replacement bottle of vodka–my previous one having gone to a good cause: lowering the collective IQ of Vancouver’s Twitter community by about 2%. So this was more of an errand than anything likely to get my 2-day chip taken away.³

Being a smart shopper, I generally avoid buying alcohol in the evening because, well, who wants to be waiting in line for 15 minutes? Exactly: bored people.

While standing there, being told by a variety of drunk, jonesing, toothless and urine-smelling people that my hair, hat, paintbrush case and eyes were pretty, I noticed a display in the “impulse purchase” rack promoting Woodbridge cabernet.

The first thing that struck me about this display was not that it was positioned where the gum and Archie comics are supposed to be, but rather that it appeared that some of the other people in line with me had been given a copy of CorelDraw and hired to make wine ads.

I’m actually not really sure where to start. At some point, I’m sure there was a designer, art director, photographer, the whole deal. Sadly, it appears something happened on the way to the printers’. (“I said ‘creative’! Throw some more fonts in there!”)

Possibly the stock photo of the man and woman enjoying ham and pineapple with root beer floats is not the most representative image of “any evening” with “6 friends”, but hey, it looks like a really good ham, yeah?

I do like the fact that the inexplicably wordy “Enter to Win” bubble communicates its relation to the prizes mentioned in the ad’s footer by totally overlapping some of the text with its drop shadow. Pretty effective, right?

In fairness to Woodbridge, Robert Mondavi, and their staff of talented media professionals, the “ENTER TO WIN the following prizes!” bubble does implicate the importer, Vincor Canada. I do also get that $11.50 wine that comes with a chance to win prizes is unlikely to have its reputation besmirched too unduly by some bad drop shadows. However, I don’t think I can forgive the “yes, we’re using Arial” copy:

6 friends
any evening
2 hours enjoying the conversation
1 bottle of Woodridge BY ROBERT MONDAVI

You know, it’s not terrible. That sounds like a pretty good evening, actually. Fun times, am I right? Er, wait, what? One bottle? How big is it? Are we sure this wine actually comes in a bottle?

750mL, 13.0% alcohol.

I see: 750mL. Not being a huge wine drinker, I was a little confused, as this sounds to me like a fairly small amount. In fact, I can recall sharing a single bottle of wine with only one other person. Maybe I am an alcoholic. Is that one of the definitions?

So what gives? The LCBO, Ontario’s counterpart to BC Liquor Stores, describes a “standard” glass of wine as being 5 US fluid ounces (147.9mL) and a 750mL bottle as containing 5 glasses of wine. In fact, the LCBO goes further, providing a handy “Party Calculator” that estimates a more reasonable volume of wine for “6 friends” to chug back whilst “enjoying the conversation for 2 hours” is four bottles.

Sweet. I knew I wasn’t some kind of insane lush. Ad writers: you’re clearly there anyway. Make sure you run your marketing copy by the line at your local liquor or wine store. It’s important.

1. During my sole visit, I was able to accurately discern the height of one of the previous visitors to the stall. Think about that.
2. Shoppers Drug Mart is awesome.
3. Intervention averted!

Ultimately, I suspect I’ll roll this site into it.

Anyway, while the art style I’m using is very, very different than this, both use a nice slab serif typeface called Rockwell. While selecting it, I came across this this video I liked from a couple years ago: the “Say ‘what’ again. I dare you.” scene from Pulp Fiction, in type form.

For instance, this infographic from last year uses area and two states to visualize the loss of over $88 billion in value during the collapse of the US banking system. It’s very effective, conveys the massive drop in value well, and frankly, it works better with an animated transition than a static image would have.

This is an important point: just because you can make something “interactive”, it doesn’t mean you’re not better off with a nice, standards-compliant JPEG. (Hey, how’s it going, Canadian Press?)

On the other hand, there really isn’t a better way to represent the data available than how the NY Times has here. Colour me impressed.

Me: “Hey, a friend of a friend designed the font they’re using in that logo!“
Every single other person I know: “Yeah, that’s super, Catherine.”

As such, I enjoyed this analysis of the fonts and branding featured in Mike Judge’s 2007 eugenicist cult favourite Idiocracy.

“Haulin’ Ass, Getting Paid”: finally, the religious right and “separation of church and state” people can agree on a slogan to print on currency.

A quick synopsis of Idiocracy: stupid people outbreed the yuppies and nerds. Consequently, the average IQ drops steadily. 500 years later… FOX News employs sexualized models as anchors, all entertainment is lowest-common denominator, and clothing is covered with corporate logos. Er, wait a minute…

So the joke runs out pretty quickly, but it’s still an entertaining movie, if only for the sets and one-liners: “You went to law school at Costco!?”

Ahh, Starbucks, home of Exotic Coffee for Men.

Anyway, I referenced Vancouver’s own typographer Ray Larabie above because many of the design choices in Idiocracy look like his 1990s free fonts. Which is kinda cool, actually.

You should read the review, Idiocratic Design at UnderConsideration now!

By agreement with my boss, these posts will not consist of a giant sarcastic rant about the use of exclamation marks in names of proper nouns, how to end a sentence with ‘KRAZY!’, nor the thirteen different fonts Ticketmaster used on the tickets to the events. This last one in particular will be tough. One of them is Comic Sans.

The first post –featuring my thoughts on what a generally all-around swell guy Art Spiegelman is– went up a few days ago. Coming up, Tim Johnson, M/M Paris and Will Wright.

Do check it out, won’t you?