The Good, the Bad & The UGLY: RV Graphics

For a long time now I have had a beef and it is now time to share it. It is an age old question that has plagued mankind since the dawn of the automobile: Why can’t someone with decent graphic design skills be used to design the worthless graphics on the sides of the RV vehicle?

I have spent countless moments of head-shaking and wincing while on the highways when I pass RV’s of all makes and models, only to be staring at badly executed attempts at “cool” graphics.

Mostly these graphics take on one form and one form only: The badly implemented and overly used design convention known as the “Nike Swoosh”. Now I have nothing against the actual Nike swoosh. It is probably one of the most simple and globally-recognized logomarks around. But any attempt at a logo for a tech company, telecommunications company, or computer services company always seem to resort to placing a crescent-shaped swoosh over the name or around it. Ugh!

That being said, this same convention has unfortunately littered our roadways in the form of useless, and randomly placed graphics on the sides of recreational vehicles. I guess the intent is to imply speed and make them seem like they are going faster than they are even remotely capable of. But this is such a farce.

Worse, their placement is undoubtedly managed as acts of randomness. There seems to be no order or thought-process as to where they need to be placed. In the case of the swooshes, they are usually overlapping, and visually seem to contradict where the eye should be directed.

And if it isn’t a swoosh, it is a random, sharp-looking shape or totally irrelevant graphic. And when there is a concept for an RV design, say where the RV is called the “Cougar”, and you need to have a graphic of a cougar on it (because let’s face it, people wouldn’t understand the name if you didn’t), it is a graphic that someone created who bought Adobe Illustrator two days ago and have seemed to master it in that amount of time, especially the art of gradients.

Now I am not saying that all RV’s should be devoid of any graphics. With a smart use of color and nice execution of the design, one can create a dynamic and nicely done application of graphics on an RV. One whose color palette is modern, and the visual lines of the piece actually all move in the same direction as the vehicle moves, thus having the design make sense.

Thus lies my presentation of The Good (only one), The Bad & The UGLY:

The Good

Not the ultimate in best examples, but you get the idea that if properly applied, it can be done decently.

The Bad

At least the placement isn’t so random and the graphics are used as mild decoration, not the emphasis. Hmmmm… love that bad gradient applied to the ribbon. Yum!