
In the 1950s and 60s, the conventional wisdom among marketers held that plastering a company’s logo in every place possible is the best way to lead potential customers its way. They tricked you, in a sense, into seeing an ad (Gotcha!).
The front page of NJ.Com today (pictured) suggests the designers of that site have, for some reason, retained this misguided notion. NJ.Com is the online home of the Star-Ledger, the Trenton Times, the Jersey Journal and several other of the Garden State’s most widely read papers. The logo forming the wallpaper that flanks the site’s content is that of an auto dealership owned by a former professional football player (hence the helmet).
To the visitor with some Internet savvy, the page’s design resembles something a 13-year-old might have created in 1998 in Geocities. To a casual observer, it’s simply chaotic and off-putting.


