I heard a few snatches of NPR’s Talk of the Nation Science Friday program discussing the shortcomings of the USDA’s food pyramid.  It highlights not only is the graphic representation as ugly and primitive as you’d expect in a third-rate Powerpoint presentation, but it is extremely uncommunicative of many of the nutritional recommendations it’s designed to communicate.

Contrast this with what you get when you provide requirements and let the designers figure out a set of coherent and effective solutions.  The moral: hire top-flight designers and give them enough rope to allow them to amaze you with a single, coherent, consistent viewpoint.  Know how to recognize such coherency when you see it, rather than hen-pecking a designer into a hodge-podge that is widely ridiculed instead of admired.

There are those who see parallels in the development of Web standards :-).