I was catching up on The Apprentice last week. I know, it’s complete trash TV with a formula that is designed to set up jackass business people for failure, all for our entertainment and as a way to keep Alan Sugar relevant.
I digress… so during the episode there was a branding and advertising challenge where the teams had to produce a logo and billboard ad for an electric motorcycle.
The punchline of these challenges (that they do every year) is usually a god awful logo produced by a frustrated designer trying to incorporate every terrible idea from the clueless team, in a window of around 30 minutes.
However, the reason I’m writing this post is because of one term that kept being thrown around during this task:
Make it Sexy
…
Absolute HORROR. I’ve heard it a million times. I’ve been asked by many people to ‘make it sexy’, and let’s ‘sex it up a bit’
Let me be crystal clear. Unless you’re designing lingerie or a topless model’s website (which I did once, and on that occasion I didn’t mind the term sexy being thrown about whenever), there is VERY little reason to be using the term ‘sexy’ as feedback or during a brief.
Most clients I’ve worked with have NO reason to be using this adjective in their line of business. Also… what the hell do you even mean when you say that?
- Should I add some more cleavage on this insurance firm landing page?
- Do you want me to photoshop all of the images of construction workers to just be wearing thongs?
- Just add the track ‘Horny’ playing in the background of your website on repeat?
I’d rather have someone ask me to ‘make it pop’ to be quite honest.
For a final laugh… this was one of the logos produced during that episode.
Sexy.
