Not sure how it happened at 18F, but in my experience working with "serious" designers, this is not surprising. They will spend weeks interviewing "stakeholders

Not sure how it happened at 18F, but in my experience working with "serious" designers, this is not surprising. They will spend weeks interviewing "stakeholders" and customers, iterating on "visual languages" and "brand identity", etc., etc., going through endless tweaks and revisions and feedback sessions before finally settling on something that looks like a totally untrained graphic designer crapped it out in five minutes. (Obviously this doesn't apply to all designers; there are many who are much more pragmatic.) The recent redesign of the University of California logo is a good example of this phenomenon: http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-69-the-brief-and-tumultuous-life-of-the-new-uc/ http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-69-the-brief-a....