Eye Forward

Highly specialized pleasure vehicles with every convenience of home!? Cargo rockets!? Nuclear tunnel melters!? Cantilevered mountain highways?! ...Man, the days when driving and highways were - literally - paving a path to our Utopian future.

Today, of course, highways are mainly the bane of urban and suburban living. Most people I know will avoid freeway driving during rush hour if they can avoid it.

Looking back at this artifact, the vision and imagination that inspired the highway landscapes of the future remain impressive. In some ways it is sad to see how much less ambitious society is today, though I suppose it is also that we are less gullible, too. We can't help it; look at the trouble we have just repairing the Bay Bridge: 20 years after Loma Prieta, an $8 billion price tag, and we still can't get it right. Oh well, maybe one day... in the future!

Hmm, let's see: 11 icons, most sporting a unique visual style. Random alignment of text and graphics. Some 3-d, some flat, some drop-shadowed. At least three different fonts. Text bleeding past the edge of the encasing box.

I can't say I've ever seen a worse attempt at data display. Truly awful.