Those of you who have nothing better to fill your minds with than crap from this blog will remember that last year I evaluated the twenty-five quarter designs then released under the U.S. Mint 50 State Quarters Program, ranked them according to aesthetic value, and then reviewed all the designs in a post divided into two parts: good quarters (Maine's was the best), and mediocre/awful quarters (Louisiana's was the worst).

Well, the Mint released five new quarters this year, and I for one can't wait to complain how crappy most of them are! But first, let's review Kilgore Trout's Four Laws of Good State Quarter Design:

FIRST LAW: Pick one image and stick with it. Lots of states can't decide on one thing to put on their quarter, so they take the Chamber of Commerce Postcard approach and try to cram as much stuff into the design as possible. Louisiana's quarter, for example, celebrates the Louisiana Purchase, the pelican, and jazz music, while the Arkansas design includes a diamond, rice stalks, and a mallard flying over a lake.

The first problem with this approach is that it creates cluttered, confusing designs. Good quarters employ economy, simplicity, and coherence in their design -- Maine chose a lighthouse scene, while New Jersey's quarter shows Washington crossing the Delaware.

The second problem with breaking the First Law is that it's wishy-washy. Illinois' carefully inoffensive quarter has a farm scene, a Chicago skyline, and Abraham Lincoln. Just pick one, you bunch of mincing pussies! Show young Abe splitting rails, or a barn and some cows, or Wrigley Field, or whatever you want -- just make a damn decision.

The third problem with breaking the First Law involves space -- or lack of it. A quarter design has to fit into less than eight-tenths of a square inch (less when you consider the space gobbled up by required elements like the state's name, year admitted to the Union, the year of the quarter's release, and the motto "E Pluribus Unum"). When you introduce multiple elements into the design, you have to shrink each one and eliminate detail, making the elements less attractive and harder to recognize. Compare Mississippi's quarter, with its beautifully detailed magnolia flower, to South Carolina's quarter, with its barely visible yellow jessamine flower competing for space with a palmetto tree, a Carolina wren, and the state's outline.

SECOND LAW: Do not show a bunch of crap from your state that nobody cares about. Do you care that Arkansas has the oldest diamond mine in North America? Do you care that the Georgia state tree is the live oak? Do you care that Neil Armstrong and John Glenn were born in Ohio? Do you care who Caesar Rodney was? No, you don't, and neither does anybody else. So let's quit cluttering state quarter designs with this crap.

THIRD LAW: Do not include your state's outline. Attention Illinois, Ohio, South Carolina, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York: I know what your states look like. In fact, I know what all fifty states look like, because I completed fourth grade and don't abuse paint thinner. Putting a state outline on your state's quarter is like putting opening instructions on a box of cereal or a "CORN USED IN THIS PRODUCT" warning on a box of Corn Flakes: the only people who need that information are too dumb to use it. Besides, the state outline forces the shrinking of design elements, allowing for less detail -- imagine how cool Indiana's quarter would have been if it had just been a closeup of an open-wheeled race car.

FOURTH LAW: Avoid retarded slogans. "21st State/Century"... "Birthplace of Aviation Pioneers"... "Musical Heritage"... "Crossroads of the Revolution"... "Crossroads of America"... "Gateway to Freedom." Ever heard the saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words"? A good design doesn't require a dopey slogan.

Keeping those principles in mind, let's look at the five quarters released in 2004, ranked from worst to best:

FIFTH: Florida's First Law-busting quarter incorporates a 16th-century Spanish galleon, a Space Shuttle, a "strip of land with Sabal palm trees," and a Fourth Law violation in the form of the slogan "Gateway to Discovery." This bland quarter uses too much blank space to separate its design elements, which are only loosely related -- indeed, they appear to have been chosen at random. Why not show either the galleon or the Space Shuttle, allowing for greater size and detail? Why include the "strip of land with Sabal palm trees" at all?

FOURTH: Michigan's design includes an outline of the state (Third Law violation), outlines of the Great Lakes, and the words "Great Lakes State" (a slogan too dull to qualify as "retarded" and break the Fourth Law). That's it. That's all that 10 million Michiganders could come up with -- state outline, lakes outlines, three-word slogan. I hereby nominate the residents of the state of Michigan as the Least Creative People in America.

THIRD: Hold up there, Michigan -- you have some competition! Texas' quarter includes an outline of the state (Third Law violation), a big star, a border that looks like a rope, and the inscription "The Lone Star State." That's it. That's all the 21 million residents of our nation's second most populous state -- a state famed for its enormous, ostentatious, and annoying pride in its culture and history -- could come up with: state outline, rope border, four-word slogan, and... a big star. Not the Alamo, not Sam Houston, not a cowboy, not an oil derrick, but... a big star. I guess the Texas-Oklahoma football game must have been on during the selection committee meeting.

A side note: the Mint's writeup on the Texas quarter design notes that "Texas is the only state to have had six different flags fly over its land -- Spain, France, Mexico, Republic of Texas, Confederate States of America and the United States of America." This seems like an odd thing to brag about. It's as if the slutty girl in your office stood up and announced, "I'm the only woman in this office to have had 117 dicks in me."

SECOND: Wisconsin takes second place not because its design is any good, but because it's not as bad as the rest and includes a cow. I mean, you've got to have some guts to stick a cow on your state quarter. I'm picturing the governor saying, "I want a design with a cow on it, and anyone who doesn't like it can meet me in the parking lot."

Anyway, in addition to the cow, Wisconsin put an round of cheese and an ear of corn on its quarter, along with a banner with the state motto ("Sideways"). Because these elements are all related in an agricultural theme, the design technically avoids a First Law violation, but I would have preferred a single coherent scene like Kentucky's. A scene with, say, a farmer milking a cow would have worked much better.

FIRST: Iowa done good. Iowa done real good. The state of my upbringing is only the second state (New Jersey is the other) to use an existing work of art on its quarter -- in this case, Iowa adapted the painting Arbor Day. Created by Iowa native Grant Wood (who also painted the better-known American Gothic), Arbor Day shows a teacher and her students planting a tree outside a country one-room schoolhouse. The silly slogan "Foundation in Education" breaks the Fourth Law, but overall this design is very classy. I don't understand why more states don't adapt works of art for their quarters. Why go to all the effort of making your own design when some master artist has done the work already?

Coming up in 2005, I'll be busting on quarter designs picked by California, Minnesota, Oregon, Kansas, and West Virginia. If you're too impatient to wait and you have to see the winning designs now now now now now, go to Quarter Designs and check 'em out. If your state's quarter hasn't been released, Quarter Designs has proposed designs for most states (surprisingly, it seems as though Colorado will be going with some kind of "mountains" motif, although some wiseacre submitted a design showing a traffic jam on I-25 and the slogan "Denver: The Sprawl To End All").

+posted by Lawrence @ 10/21/2004 11:57:00 PM