Every once in a while something that I have probably seen 5,000 times but never noticed catches my attention. That’s exactly what happened to me just recently when I opened an Adobe PDF document on my office computer. Here is what I saw:
The design of this ‘welcome’ screen irritates me. What is the deal with the jumping man? The jumping man definitely doesn’t set a very good tone for the Adobe brand in my opinion – a brand that is supposed to be on the forefront of high technology! The Adobe Guy looks like clip art from the 1980s gone wrong…
On second thought, why must we see this opening screen at all when I open a PDF? Do I need to know all of the patents? I could think of many other things that I’d rather see in the few seconds it takes to open a PDF document…
For what it’s worth, I downloaded Adobe Reader 8 and the new welcome screen looks like this:
MUCH better design, Adobe! Simple works, and sets a tone that inspires confidence…I’m glad they fixed this so we no longer had to be assaulted with the atrocity that was the “Adobe Guy.”
Images courtesy of vincentarsenault.wordpress.com and debianadmin.com.
Garret Ohm
http://www.orange-element.com
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Dugg!
http://digg.com/design/The_Adobe_guy_WTF
so…. that could be because you are using 6.0! Dude… we are at like 8.0 or something crazy! Sweet noise about the Adobe Guy, though… he totally doesn’t hit the mark.
I am actually a big fan of the highpants and the jazz hands. But truly a little dated… nice post…
Hahahaha….so true. Quite an entertaining post, and yet so relevant to how design design is such an essential part of conveying the brand message.