Being good at being bad is incredibly hard. And I don’t mean in the 1980’s sense of ‘bad’ meaning ‘good’ or even something being so bad it’s good. We’re talking about the knife’s edge balance of anti-design; that new world aesthetic of a thousand nuances where intent is everything and without context it’s all just a hot mess.

2025 has been the year of bad meaning good, for us. With 3 big McDonald’s campaigns across the US, UK and Australia that all tap into different veins of “design gone wrong” we’ve become experts in drop shadows, too many typefaces, clashing colour schemes, clip art and outlines everywhere. Our journey has taken us via trashy 90’s telesales and 00’s spam. Checked in on the Wild West of ‘win-fluencer’ messaging, and finally beached at full speed into the design dystopia of corporate presentations seen through the eyes of an idiot.

But why is it hard to do? Or is this just the Powerpoint version of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ and actually we’re shit?

I think it’s because parody is the hardest form of comedy to nail, and anti-design – like parody – only works if you understand the source material intimately. You need to have cracked the code of taste in order to make an unpalatable visual dish, and the gag (or gag reflex) lands all the harder for it.

Embedding classic pure design principles into the cheap tropes of un-designed matter is how this nut is cracked, requiring grace, imagination and finesse. It’s like landing a jet fighter with your eyes closed; creation by instinct where every part of your training and experience is screaming at you ‘Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!’ But somehow it works, and there is a rhythm and flow in the ugliness which shouldn’t exist.

Then again my mum thinks everything I do looks the same anyway so what do I know.

• Agency

  Leo Burnett

• Director

  Stefano Ottaviano

• Colourist

  Danyal Kadir

• VFX, Design & Colour

  Electric Theatre Collective

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• Credits

  Agency CD: James Hodson
  Agency Creatives: Matt Adams & Will Butler
  Agency Producers: Peter Williams & Kinga Lily
  DOP: Jacob Niblett
  EP: Sam Katz
  Producer: Mike Facey
  Edit: Nomad
  Sound: SINE