Hasta La Ideas

It’s #GuestEd week on the Creative Review twitter account and today Nick Asbury of Asbury & Asbury is in the hot seat. He wants to take the opportunity to extend an interesting invitation to CR readers: to show us your worst work…

Yes, today we officially declare a 24-hour Creative Amnesty. For one day only, share your most shameful creative projects with impunity. Post your contributions on Twitter via the #creativeamnesty hashtag. Pithy project descriptions are fine. Extra points for images and links. You can also blog about it in more detail elsewhere and tweet a link.

Nick has posted up some stories over here to get things going, including the time he agreed to write the horoscopes for a retailer’s magazine, weaving in subtle plugs for the retailer. We’ll be posting a selection of the best of worst, here on the CR blog (see below).

Asbury has this to say about the thinking behind the project: “It’s not often you get the chance to tweet to 380,000 people – about four Wembley Stadiums. So I thought I should take the chance to get a conversation going. We’re all good at sharing our best work, but there’s probably as much to be learnt from the worst. The real stinkers that we wince to recall. A project where everything that could go wrong did. An early piece of student work that you thought was genius at the time. Or a project you knew you should have turned down, but guiltily did for the money.”

Follow the action on Twitter via #creativeamnesty and we’ll round up some of the best examples here on this post throughout the day.

And we’re starting strong with Wet Lemon, an early web effort from designer, Jonathan Ogden (@ogvidius). It’s “one of the first websites I ever made,” he says. “I’m sorry, internet.” Don’t apologise, Jonathan! This may still have its day…

The full horror is:

Next up into the #creativeamnesty confession booth is Michael Johnson. Arriving in Sydney, at the tender age of 22, the young Johnson unwittingly carried with him a case of ‘brushstroke fever’. Coupled with a penchant for greys and yellows, Johnson got to work on a new identity for Manufacturers Mutual Insurance:

Johnson lays bare about the project in his latest Thought for the Week post. Though we imagine this is the one logo featuring here to have made it into a blockbuster movie…

Make sure you check out the shameful confessions gathering at checkthis.com/creativeamnesty. @Stuwdesigner, @Acejet170, and @Chris_J_Doyle have all recently divested themselves of some creative howlers.

Now here’s a beauty from Mark Wheatcroft of Wheatcroft&Co. Designed circa 1999, this is a set of ‘King’ playing cards for a once well-known picture library. Once well-known. Hmm.

“OK, how much are we paying the Elvis? Make him do some more moves…”

“I guess that will have to do.” Thanks to Mark (@WheatcroftandCo) for uploading his work to checkthis.com/creativeamnesty.

Now here’s the 7″ sleeve for Dannii Minogue’s 1991 top 20 smash, Baby Love (a cover of Regina’s 1986 club hit, music fans). So who’s behind it?

If you’re thinking, ‘Is it me or can I see the hand of Michael C. Place / aka Build in there?’ then you’re correct. And thank you Michael, for this one. Oh for a shot of the ‘Lim Edition 7″ Booklet’. (@BuildsBlog).

And if you would like to share your shame, please use the comments section below to link to your past disasters