LOVE THIS! Damn it, I wish more "designers" felt this way.

coreldraw indeed! that's something else. the old sign was so amazing... wtf.

Oo im glad this is on vimeo!

I definitely want to see this in its entirety.

Thank you for taking the video, for that kind of insight and sharing it here.

Hahaha!....that's sad....
good storytelling skills

Right the hell on. Art, music, everything seems to be dumbed down and packaged over the last thirty years or so. It's sort of like the death of craftsmanship.

I agree! (never been to the US though...)

How about you design something better for the motel and give it as a gift? Seriously! That sign was shite! I got $5 bucks I'll donate.

Heritage and aesthetics are really important. Thanks for putting this up.

Love it! Can't wait to see the entire piece.

Thank you man for posting this. I always do my best to offer quality work to clients for a good price. Don't worry. Good designers have your back. We'll keep America from being fuked. There has to be a part two.

Indeed! Make sure you show some good stuff in the show too! It's easy to point out the crap, since it's everywhere...you need to take this guy and have him show you what he thinks is good in modern graphic design, not just from the past. It's like a film critic, it's the stuff he/she likes that defines them!

This looks like an AWESOME project you are onto man! Good luck!

well executed...feel the passion...and cant wait for the docu..hurry up will ya....

haha nice I can't wait to see the full version when it's done. Love the passion, but there's a lot of truth to that. I'm tired of fkn papyrus EVERYWHERE and all the other stuff like that

Great video. Thanks for making it.

Reminds me of some of what James Howard Kunstler talks about. He points out that since the US seems to be going to war to 'protect it's values and culture', it seems there ought to be a place worth defending. Check his website kunstler.com/ for 'eyesore of the month'...

I agree so much with this video. The quality of design work that is produced in Hawaii is also for the most part horrible. btw, i love your site!

booooring

so right

...stumbled upon something that might cheer you guys up though :)

vimeo.com/1320972

MMMMM Futura Bold

i REALLY want to see this

It's nice to see someone actually care about design, and it's reflection on our generation.

And why would ANYONE want to get rid of that original sign?

I'm a civil engineer and I hate to be prejudice but the REALITY is foreigners who own businesses lack taste.. You go to any part of the country and this ain't opinion its fact.. Asians are the worst.. I'll tell that to their faces, their store fronts are hideous.

Blippo Bold... the horror!!! I feel your pain brother.

Only a hard core and truely convicted graphic designer could put this in such colorful terms...

"...(I see the new sign design is...) this hunk of sh$^ Corel Draw...couple gradients...couple a' bad line drawings of a bird...Sunset Hotel... IN BLIPPO BOLD!!!!!!
....BLIPPO!!!....was an ELECTRO-SET made in like
FU!@ING... 74-72-78...or whatever the fu@#...And it was like... NO history... NO respect for this great little motor lodge. I just wanted to go that sign company and just rip that fu@#$ing kids head off...."

LOL.... Classic!!!!!!

word.

This is so good. I can't stand two bit sign companies, it's almost as if they just change the text from client to client.

that was great

that was great! when will the docu be finished?

WOW. The response to this little clip is great. We're happy that so many people are on the same page. I do need to warn everyone that this "mini", and I do mean short, documentary is about Aaron Draplin. It's NOT about design. Draplin is a graphic designer and he does talk a lot about design and what he likes and what inspires him- but the focus is really about Aaron as a person. I originally asked him to do this just for fun , just for something new on my web site. We really had not planned for this kind of response. If you like his idea and passion from this extra clip then you will like the three clips to follow. He's an interesting guy with opinions that I feel are entertaining. That's really all there is to it. If you are hoping to hear some kind of revolutionary rant about design then I think you might be expecting too much. If you are looking to be entertained and hear opinions about design from a not so typical designer, then you will like this.

Thanks again for such positive feedback and for being so patient!!! I know this is taking forever but we are both really busy and this is our side project. Part one is coming.

Awesome. You gotta come to talk about this at Interesting New York. That kind of passion is just what we're looking for.
interestingnewyork.com/about

This is so freaking right on. The lack of respect totally applies across the board, to film, music. . .anything creative. The ease and accessibility of computers makes it far too easy for people with no concept of composition to throw something together, get it in front of people, and somehow pass it off as art. You don't have to apprentice anymore to get anything done; I think that's half of it. All these snot-nosed kids who think they've got it sussed...
When Kelly Clarkson is calling Clive Davis "old" and "irrelevant" and people are caving to HER whims instead of an incredibly wise man with over 40 years' experience in the music industry, where is this generation headed?

Right on point! If you're a designer (I am) you notice this shit every day. Architecture is the worst offender IMO & lasts/offends the longest. Go into any new suburb & look at the McHouses. The blind repetition of senseless design makes me want to hunt down the property developer & beat his ass.
Hey, make sure you don't turn this into a racist thing. Stupidity is a global thing. I travel the world pretty regularly & this kind of shit is going on everywhere. We've all become so dollar-driven that we forget about how our environment (man made or otherwise) effects us & that there is value to beauty & history.

this was great

Yep, that's sad

the werd is spoken.

15 thousand dollars? Sunuvabitch! I have throw away designs that are light years better than that shit.

Wow... I can't believe that, I would have offered a free replacement.. freehand line drawings of birds. The company that ripped her off is really just taking the proverbial pee.

Let's take em down., let's take em aaaaall down.

so right on...

Dude, awesome. Love the commentary.

Amazing. Looking forward to the whole thing.

Good or bad...all clients get the work they deserve. But, it is true that it pollutes the culture. But, if the culture doesn't give a shit, how can we change that? If the French didn't care about good bread or the Italians with their clothes, what could we do?

I share the sentiment here, then i click to go to the guys website.. (draplin.com)

good words,
put your passion into your website!

Nice video drap. Funny to hear your voice again after all these years. Too bad you're fighting a losing battle. This is PROGRESS - there was probably some dildo back in 1950 lamenting the destruction of the local whorehouse to build that pre-fab art deco piece of shit motel anyway. Get over it.

YES! Go get 'em!

Well I am glad I am not the only psycho who rants on about aesthetics like fonts, and signage, and American heritage.

I can't wait to see the whole thing.

Love it! Awesome!

It is possible the designer charged $15,000 after many proposal and revisions of a sign that would have actually rocked, and the Russian lady insisted on it looking the way it did. I have had clients that have opted for having their idea basically recreated in offset friendly format, even though their idea may TOTALLY suck and I may want to kill myself for letting something dumb and shitty make it to the public domain. If this was not the case with this Russian lady, she still has awful taste for accepting such a shitty sign. And if the designer really put in about an hours worth of work to pump out this crappy ass sign, somebody should ass-rape this fucker by shoving THIS very sign up his/her ass

so fucked up that drunken peeps buy stuff on ebay

If Aaron's so upset about them replacing the wonderful old sign, why did he pay to have it ripped down, take just a couple of arrows, and throw the rest in the trash? Seems like it's as much his fault as anyone else's that the old sign isn't around anymore.

the new owners of the motel were taking the sign down- for whatever reason. Aaron rescued what he could. When he said the rest just kind of went away he meant the people taking the sign down took the left overs with them. It's unlikely with the price of steel these days that the left overs were "thrown in the trash".

it's radio with pictures..

You just made my morning with this little clip, in fact I signed up for Vimeo simply to leave this comment. Right on!

So very right. I passed by a shop in Saint Louis the other day and found this:

flickr.com/photos/49004159@N00/sets/72157609381766743/

I won't bring you down with what the shop's new sign looked like.

Fucking radical. I love this guy's passion.

How much you think this guy charges?
tinyurl.com/5jhjet

The real reality. Amazing.

I read his blog daily. Dude's just so passionate about everything!! It's real inspiring.

Where has he been all my life! I always felt like this and really felt this strongly SPecifically on this topic!! Man, there should be a board of something, to really base price on something like this, rather then have someone buy that design for like 15,000, get it for 500 bucks or something. Wow, its good not to feel alone!

Recent Graph Design graduate. Work for a T-shirt company. They got me doing everything from silkscreening to the book-keeping; everything but what I went to school for. Graphic Design is like the fastfood business of the art world. 30 min or less or your graphics are free.

I think I love you. I have been saying this industry is so fucked and something has to be done about it.

Another recent GD grad. I stare at my surroundings and wish it could all be designed. Hell even our homes are just one blank canvas after another, our cars are the same bland colors. We need life and zest injected into our every day.

Happy to know there's a lot of us out there...we need to convince our environment it deserves to be designed.

Blippo Bold lol jesus!

Blippo Bold I hardly knew ye.
Well, as I used to say in my old retro magazine ATOMIC...some people just don't understand that we need to keep the old stuff sometimes. (even if it's just a couple arrows and lightbulbs)

The man is right. Absolutely right.

Great clip, I agree 100%.
If I had the $ and space, I would buy old signs on eBay and put them up elsewhere.

I think the guy's totally right.

I completely agree. This video constantly motivates me to do good work rather than just passing shit off just to get by. There are two web design companies around my area that basically do stuff like this and like Draplin says "pollute" the area with crappy design. Great video, can't wait to see the whole documentary!

I see it day in and day out at my work... We are a software company working for all US Native American tribes and the Original Logos and Seal these people have are wonderful - but recently they have been changing to corel draw gradient pieces of shit!

They are charged an arm and a leg for what looks like one of the logos you see on templates from Microsoft clipart.

I see so many WONDERFUL logos and seals just tossed aside and replaced with garbage. This includes huge signs and banners they use.

Wonderful video by the way.

the fact that you are blaming the design on CorelDRAW and trying to make it sound like it's amateurs toolkit, takes away any credibility from your argument. the fact is CorelDRAW is THE TOOL to have in sign business if you know ANYTHING about it.

The new sign is absolute crap.

But falling in love with the past is bullshit.


The old sign is gorgeous and well crafted, but to like it just because it's old is pathetic. Nostalgia is totally overrated.

Nostalgia is nice because it's familiar, it's cute, it's non-threatening. It requires no real thought, doesn't challenge us with something we don't understand. It's easy to get.

When you can't think of anything new.....get romantic about the past and call it kitsch/vintage/worn.

The designers of the new gammy bird gradient sign deserve a slap not because they got rid of the past, but because they have zero talent and charged $15000 for shit.

I just realized... portugal is so f*cked!

You mention motels and *ping there goes the iconography burning it's way through our collective consciousness... worldwide. Some things should not change including signs with significant historical value (read 'heritage'). Understand that I'm all for change but this kind of mindless money grubbing (yes, grubbing) ambition should be rooted out and stamped on and out.

Just my opinion in flow...

right on. period.

the new sunset design was worse that i was trying to imagine when you were building it up.

I am an designer and also very familiar (unfortunately) with Sedalia. I am not certain if that sign is a reflection of America, but it certainly is a reflection of Sedalia. That town is well past being in decline, it is crumbling skeleton. Sedalia in large part was built on the rail system which for the most part has given way almost entirely to the interstate and air. There is next to nothing cosmopolitan there - Sedalia rather is the pinnacle of rural Missouri culture, so much so that it is home of the Missouri state fair.

The old sign was nice even for it's time and the new one is shit - but in large part because the fine folks in Sedalia don't have a f-ing clue of what the baseline for a reasonable design is.

That sign "redesign" is so bad that it's almost funny...

Then again, we all listen to atrocious quality music in MP3 format... And most of us shave with crappy 25 blade Gillette marketing gimmicks instead of the far superior old school straight razors... etc... why? Because we have different priorities and/or we don't know any better.

As designers, we should keep in mind that we're specialists in our field and we need to respect people who are not. It's part of our job to educate clients and respect where they're coming from...

I agree to some extent with the guy in the video, but the attitude seems counter productive to me.

It's entertaining though, for sure... And a very well made documentary.

Love the video and thoughts from Aaron Draplin but the question on my mind is; where is the whole mini documentary? I would really like to see the rest.

I'm with you Jess!

I love this man. This man gives me HOPE... no... REAL HOPE... for America.

hells-to-the-yeah!

Oh wow he's not kidding. Here's a Street View link: is.gd/CLHG

great to see the passion! so right on.
and that lazy mentality of the sub-par gets exported round the world...
were I the chump that made that orangey yellow dreck, not only would I be ashamed, but pretty damn afraid of that visit by A Draplin.
would like to see the finished doc; good luck getting it done.

AWESOME. Let's firebomb sign companies with "in-house designers"! Let's destroy restaurants who have their menus done at Kinkos! Let's annihilate anyone who uses Corel Draw on a daily basis! Too extreme? Sighhhh. I guess we could go on an EXTREME LETTER WRITING CAMPAIGN!

I'm burnin' down the next restaurant or tanning salon that uses "Papyrus"!!!!!11!

suddenly extra respek for draplin. excellent all round

Wow, thats bullshit. I much rather stare at the old sign!

sad,sad sad, unfortunately there is no more real quality in so much around us. People tear down beautiful things and replace them with shiny new garbage. Blame it on Wal-Mart? I don't know-I feel your pain man.

Hilarious video!

so truthful.