Tara over at graphic design blog started a Design Bloopers Competition contest a few weeks ago.

Below is what I decided to enter, against my better judgement. What would ‘better judgement’ be? Bury the incident and pretend it never happened!

About six months ago, while I was still in the employ of an agency and attended office daily, I got a call from my wife. She said that the partnership she was entering into with a local fashion designer had come through and she now needed a logo — by the evening, if possible!

I was in the middle of a ton of stuff, but figured that if I pushed this task, I’d get hell when I get home. So I thought about it for 10 minutes, had a sort-of-obvious idea, found a roundish font (Bauhaus) and went to work. My wife’s name is Batul and the fashion designer is named Umar. He’s more prominent, so I knew his name was going to come first. The symbol was going to be UB in lowercase letters — ub — followed by their respective first names.

15 more minutes editing the letter shapes and I was done with a B&W version. I sent her an SMS telling her it was done and to check her mail. She checked and messaged back — “Looks great. Thanks” . I got home and she told me she wanted it to be blue and green. This is what it ended up looking like.

The next day, she got someone in her office to create the bags, labels, tags, etc and the art was sent for printing.

That was that.

About a week later, I was at work where a visualiser and copywriter were working independently of the rest of the department to come up with some concepts and layouts. I walked in the conference room to check on them and saw a full page ad printed in the Dubai newspaper, Khaleej Times.

I stopped in my tracks. I looked at the paper a little closer. I crapped my pants. I then caught my breath and moved on to find out how they were progressing with their task.

This is what I saw.

Tara announced the results a week ago, and it turns out that no one produced, or admitted to producing, a gaffe as superb as mine!