5 Hilarious Misuses Of An Online Web Design Degree

You would think that those who earn an online web design degree are almost prone to become great designers; with all the free time and flexibility online classes allow, there are a million blogs on good and bad design just waiting to be read. However, there are no exceptions to the idea that every great industry has at least a few bad apples.

Here are 5 hilarious misuses of an online design degree that will leave you wondering why these people ever bothered finishing college at all.

Photoshop Disasters

Photoshop disasters have become so popular that there are now multiple websites dedicated solely to those types of images. These disasters feature poorly photoshopped advertisements found in magazines, newspapers, popular websites, and tabloids from around the world. Just imagine how embarrassed — and unemployed — you’d be to have your awful work featured in a post that’s gotten over five million hits.

From participating in and supporting racist advertising by photoshopping the black guy out, to letting an extremely anatomically incorrect model get printed on millions of product, most of the disasters on each site are pretty bad. These graphic designs — and their bad designers — should be removed from online all together.

Owning a Company Renowned for Being Terrible

If the only publicity you’re getting is on lists of “worst design firms”, you are probably misusing your online web design degree. Companies like Skilla Designs and Code Designs seem to have disappeared from the web, possibly after being embarrassed on a “worst of the web” list, but more likely from a lack of business. These two firms have logos that look like they were made by a 7th grader using Windows 95.

Skilla Designs was a one-man show; the guy could make handmade, Christian-inspired art and navigation buttons that didn’t match one another even a little bit. Code Designs was no different, with their blue-on-black website forcing the user to wait for the navigational buttons to fall from the top of the screen like orbs. There was also a terribly long flash intro with random acoustic guitar blasting over it. Luckily, none of the buttons worked.

Being a Crappy Person

If you suck and are extremely difficult to deal with, there’s really no point in having an online web design degree at all. Sure, you can sit behind your screen for most of the time, not having to deal with people or be bothered by anyone. However, when it does come time to keep in touch with the client, it’s extremely important to know how to carry yourself.

Acting bossy or arrogant will make you seem like a jerk, but being too submissive can allow others to take care of you. Having too much confidence can come off as rude, and being too sensitive to criticism makes you seem like a baby. With all these little rules, it can be hard to find a balanced attitude — especially when dealing with picky or difficult clients, of which there are many. The most important thing is to keep communication lines open and to respond quickly; after all, if you don’t have clients, you don’t have business, or money, or a career. That’s a wasted degree if there ever were one.

Making the World’s Worst Website

If you took your online design degree and made this website or something like it, you’ve officially wasted two to four years of your life and a whole bunch of money.

The economy may be in the gutters, jobs may be hard to find, but please, try to find something other than ironic art to consume your free time. The World’s Worst Website is probably not actually the world’s worst website, but it is quite informative and tries to tell the reader what not to do when creating a website. Hopefully you can start a blog of your creative, interest design work and stay away from tomfoolery like The World’s Worst Website.

Working for Evil

While this is more sad and less hilarious, working for an evil company is probably the biggest waste of your online design degree you could possibly come up with. Even Satanists like Monsanto and Phillip Morris need designers just like everyone else. Just think about all the different brands they own — each of those many brands needs many advertisements.

Spending your time working for a company that literally employs and kills children is a pretty evil way to misuse your online design degree. Despite the larger-than-life budgets of these companies, your time might be better spent making crappy ironic art after all.