R.I.P. to the old IDs
Written by Charlotte Beck. Illustration courtesy of Shannon Langas.
At the beginning of this quarter, we all received new SCAD IDs. The previous card featured the 40th-anniversary head, hand and heart logo on a plain white background. SCAD’s 40th anniversary was the 2018-2019 school year, so it was understandably time for a change. But when we went to Victory Village to pick up our new IDs, the disappointment was palpable.
The background of the new ID is a painting by SCAD grad Justin Armstrong (M.F.A. painting, 2020, B.F.A. painting, 2016). His work is characterized by paint textures, brush strokes and overlapping rhythmic lines, similar to weaving. The full painting used for the card’s background isn’t featured on his website or the SCAD Art Sales website, but we can see his signature textures and bright colors.
This amount of detail as the background of something meant to identify someone is distracting. What’s worse is the transparent white box sitting on top of it. This element is necessary, as our names and ID numbers would be unreadable without it, but it disrupts the intricate rhythms and textures Armstrong established. Not to mention transparent blocks like these in graphic design are outdated. They were previously used underneath text columns in magazines and other instances where readability is crucial, but I don’t think I’ve seen it used since 2017. In this designer’s opinion, transparencies are a lazy design solution and rarely look good.
A better solution? Change the background! Any image with a moment of negative space to be placed behind our identifiable information would work. It’s an easy fix. SCAD seems to be rebranding to purple; their website banner is vibrant indigo, though not the same shade as the purple on our IDs, and the lanyards they handed out with the IDs are purple, too. Since they’re not being picky about the shade, a light violet background with a less complicated pattern would work.
As a design school with thousands of students and hundreds of professors who could make a better ID, the card begs the question: who designed this? There’s no designer’s credit on the back, so I guess we’ll never know. I mourn our old ID, and though this purple plastic will probably be my last card before I graduate, I hope that current and future bees will get a better SCAD ID.
To any SCAD higher-ups reading this: consider holding an ID design competition for students and staff and selecting the best one. Something tells me it’ll be better than this.
Charlotte Beck is a junior graphic design major and the creative director at District. She leads the design of District’s publication Square 95, as well as SCAD’s Port City Review. Charlotte is also a lover of all things music and poetry.
