Originally Posted by eforer

designing for some of the smaller RC companies presents a lot of interesting challenges that need to be considered when critiquing some of these sites. Although I am educated as a commercial illustrator, (which automatically makes me despise contemporary GD!) I have done some quickie pro bono design stuff for some RC businesses.

In my case, it was necessary to create a site that is easy for the company owner or team manager to edit and add info too. Assuming that these people may not have a design background and or good taste, you need to create a pretty innocuous template that is easy for the sites proprietor to edit and hard for them to screw up technically and visually. Chances are they are going to start plugging in the default html serifed type face whereever they can fit it. This eliminates a lot of oppertunity to do something edgy.

Furthermore, through years of low budget design, a surprisingly ugly lexicon of RC visuals has come to make up the "professional" looking rc logo, website etc. Would I ever outline a lousy looking roaylty free typeface, no but thats what the consumer has come to recognoize as appropriate for RC companies. The companies themselves are sensitive to this as well, you can't really present them with something that isn't borderline obnoxious because neither they nor the cusomer will recognoize it as being part of the racing world. Its unfortunate but true.