Terrible Condom Design Makes Safe Sex Campaign Look Like It Promotes Rape

ByElizabeth Licata

Graphic design is a hard job. A lot of people don’t understand just how difficult or important good graphic design is. But that’s how we wind up with terrible graphic design fuckups like this set of condoms that at first glance appears to encourage rape. The company is trying to reach more people and be quirky with unique condom design but this one was a fail and ended up saying the exact opposite message they intended.

A Reddit user posted a photo of this condom design and said they were passed around their college campus as part of a safe sex campaign.

These condoms are in no actual way intended to promote rape. They’re actually part of a line of “Consent Condoms” designed to start a conversation about how to ask for and confirm consent before sex. It’s a great idea, and these are handed out as part of safe sex campaigns on college campuses. The program is great, but the design of this particular condom is terrible, because it looks like they say, “Go further without consent.”

They’re actually supposed to say “Do not go further without consent,” but somebody put a picture of a doughnut where “do not” is supposed to be. It’s supposed to be a visual pun, but apparently a ton of people are just reading, “Go further without consent.”

It’s not clear how Consent Condoms got to a design this bad. Did they never show it to anyone who hadn’t already heard the joke? Is there something wrong with my brain that I just failed to read the picture of the doughnut as “Do not”?

Their other designs are much more effective. They say things like “Consent is never implied,” “silence isn’t consent,” and “unconscious sex isn’t consensual sex.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/BXeXy9llKbr/?taken-by=sayitwithacondom

It’s a great program, and most of them are awesome. But damn, that doughnut condom was poorly designed. Their other designs are actually really fun, and after being called out for this one that just really missed the mark, they came  out with a condom design that was far more clear.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BY2WGWNF_GB/?taken-by=sayitwithacondom

Consent Condoms is not the first company to fall victim to astonishingly bad design.

Check out this accidental Nazi tote bag.

It was supposed to say “glitter,” but the lowercase g and l somehow turned into “Hitler.”

This person is either very proud to be Christian or very conflicted about their love of tuna.

And of course we can’t forget one of the worst newspaper headlines in history:

https://twitter.com/DL32871/status/901107908179615744

There’s an important lesson to take from this design fail: Condoms are great, consent is essential, and if you’re ever going to produce a consumer good, make sure to show it to people before you send it off to the factory.

Have any fun design fails to share? Let us know in the comments.

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(Image: Twitter / @gabrielenguard )

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