I know you wrote this yourself and likely sincerely, but the vague phrases are still giving off some AI-vibes.
What is 'quiet confidence' supposed to mean in this context? You mention coffee packaging from the 70s. I don't recall there actually being a whole lot of coffee packaging back in the 70s beyond Folgers.
No, it was not "written himself". It was written almost entirely by AI. I do this from time to time to reassure Redditors like you whose "bullshit alarms" are going off and you're trying to give the benefit of the doubt because you are kind-hearted, but in reality, you are 100% correct about your suspicons.
So, Sorry in advance, this is gonna be long.
So I’d respect, “I couldn’t phrase this well, so I used AI to clean it up.” Instead, he wants credit for all of it and wants you to think he's some super insightful writer.
So lets get stupid and take it line by line.
“There’s a specific kind of typographic laziness that has taken over grocery store shelves, and it’s been bothering me more than it probably should.”
“Specific,” followed by absolutely nothing specific, then adorable “more than it probably should” bit. Ooh, typography bothers me too much, guys, I’m such a quirky little designer. Translation: I had no fucking idea how to start this post, so the LLM added some filler bullshit and a fake personality trait.
One sentence in and we've already used way too many words to just say “I don’t like some packaging.”
“Everything is either squeezed into a geometric sans with tight tracking to signal premium, or blown out in some chunky retro revival that’s trying too hard to feel artisanal.”
“Everything is either X or Y,” because apparently every product in every grocery store uses one of two fonts. Wow, congrats on knowing “geometric sans” and “tight tracking,” very Super Duper Design Person tm of you. Without all the needless theatric bullshit language, all this says is “modern packaging uses modern fonts, retro packaging uses retro fonts.” Holy shit bro, what a groundbreaking discovery.
“The middle ground where type actually does [...] work”
Oh wow, here he is, the last designer alive who understands typography. Everyone else is making complete garbage, but this guy still remembers that words should communicate things. Thank fuck somebody finally said it!
One more sentence, still not saying anything of value at all.
“like guiding your eye through a hierarchy or communicating flavor and origin without screaming it”
Yes, dude, we know what typography does. This is basic shit being explained...to people who are reading a literal typography subreddit LOL.
And why is it screaming now? Because the LLM decided the sentence needed some theatrical bullshit at the end. Type can’t just communicate information, I guess, that would be too fucking normal.
“has basically evaporated from most midtier products”
“Basically,” “most,” and “midtier,” all three make the claim vague as fuck. Also, evaporated. Bro, calm the fuck down, you saw some labels you didn’t like. How did it evaporate? What the fuck do you mean, evaporated? Where’s the example?
“What got me thinking about this was redesigning some packaging for a small coffee roaster client.”
Oh good, generic personal anecdote has arrived. No product, no design problem, no client request, no decision, no... literally anything that happened. Nope. Just “I have clients, BTW.” He mentions the project so we’ll assume he knows what he’s talking about, then gives us fuckall about it.
“Going through the reference stage was almost demoralizing because so much of what’s on shelves right now is just noise.”
Almost demoralizing. JFC bro, you looked at coffee packaging, are you going to be okay? And “just noise” means fuck all. Where’s the actual meat? He supposedly reviewed enough packaging to suffer emotional damage from it, yet somehow refuses to give us even one example of bad packaging?
This kind of dramatic reaction is exactly how LLMs fill in bullshit where there’s fuckall substance. Because surprise, the person who wrote the prompt didn’t have any.
“The good stuff from the 70s and 80s had a kind of quiet confidence in its type choices that feels genuinely hard to find now.”
Oooo, quiet confidence. LLMs fucking love the word “quiet.” Quiet confidence. Quiet authority. Quiet sophistication. Put “quiet” before some vague concept and suddenly the sentence seems tasteful and refined. Name one of those package from the 70s or 80s, dude, literally one. No? Oh okay then, 30-40 years of design reduced to “the good stuff.” Ooh, so insightful.
“Constraints made the work better somehow”
What constraints, what work, what got better? Ah, who gives a shit, put it on its own line, remove the period, add “somehow,” and now it looks oh so profound and casual. Did we miss the entire explanation about what these constraints are, or are we all just supposed to know that?
“The thing I keep landing on is that packaging type has a different job than screen type or editorial type.”
Of course he keeps landing on things, LLMs can’t just state a fucking thought, every concept is a fucking airplane and needs to “land.” And what did he finally discover after all that landing? Packaging and editorial design have different requirements. Lmao, huge day for typography, somebody update the textbooks.
“It has to read at an angle, at a distance, under garbage fluorescent lighting, while someone is also half reading a nutrition label.”
Well, at least there’s finally one concrete point, 9 sentences into this godforsaken post. But what the fuck is this scenario? How is somebody reading the front and the nutrition panel at the same time, do they have four eyes? What exactly are you telling me about what makes this so difficult?
“That functional layer feels like it’s been deprioritized in favor of just looking good in a flat mockup.”
“The functional layer,” “deprioritized,” “in favor of,” FFS, just say who made the bad decision. “Has been deprioritized” removes whoever supposedly did it, and LLMs love that shit because passive voice sounds more theatrical. Just the usual post-game project-manager commentary that sounds sort of impressive but doesn’t say jack shit at all.
“Curious whether anyone here works in packaging regularly”
And there’s the engagement bait, of fucking course it ends with “curious.” There’s nothing this guy is fucking curious about. LLMs have been trained on so much fucking social-media and LinkedIn bullshit that they think every post needs to end by asking for engagement. He wants to sound smart and get replies. That’s it.
“whether the brief usually even addresses typographic legibility as a requirement, or if that just gets absorbed into visual direction.”
...you just worked on a packaging brief, you fucking tell us. Did yours address legibility or not? The client anecdote gave us nothing, and now, what...the comments are supposed to finish your post?
This whole thing is exhausting. It says one basic thing, then injects junk-food phrases everywhere because people who don’t know what the fuck good communication looks like think that junk food is filling.
And for fucks sake those missing periods aren’t fooling anybody. The first three paragraphs all omit the last period in the exact same place. This is the kind of stupid bullshit people instruct their LLMs to do, or they go back and remove the periods themselves because they think it makes the writing look more "organic" and "unpolished".
Except the irony is that human beings aren’t this consistently inconsistent. The exact same mistake, in the exact same place, three times. Congrats, you removed the periods. The post still says fuck all.
If you look at the rest of OP's posts, you'll find that every single self-post follows the same bullshit pattern. I'm sure it's intoxicating to do this. To dump your shit, your half-completed thoughts into an LLM and have it spit out what looks like polished prose. The problem is that people like OP will never fool people like you or me, because it turns out good writing isn't just hiding some punctuation or adding deliberate typos.
If you don't have anything to fucking say, no LLM is going to fix that.
I know you wrote this yourself and likely sincerely, but the vague phrases are still giving off some AI-vibes.
What is 'quiet confidence' supposed to mean in this context? You mention coffee packaging from the 70s. I don't recall there actually being a whole lot of coffee packaging back in the 70s beyond Folgers.
Decaf_GT 7 points · Aug 2026
No, it was not "written himself". It was written almost entirely by AI. I do this from time to time to reassure Redditors like you whose "bullshit alarms" are going off and you're trying to give the benefit of the doubt because you are kind-hearted, but in reality, you are 100% correct about your suspicons.
So, Sorry in advance, this is gonna be long.
So I’d respect, “I couldn’t phrase this well, so I used AI to clean it up.” Instead, he wants credit for all of it and wants you to think he's some super insightful writer.
So lets get stupid and take it line by line.
“Specific,” followed by absolutely nothing specific, then adorable “more than it probably should” bit. Ooh, typography bothers me too much, guys, I’m such a quirky little designer. Translation: I had no fucking idea how to start this post, so the LLM added some filler bullshit and a fake personality trait.
One sentence in and we've already used way too many words to just say “I don’t like some packaging.”
“Everything is either X or Y,” because apparently every product in every grocery store uses one of two fonts. Wow, congrats on knowing “geometric sans” and “tight tracking,” very Super Duper Design Person tm of you. Without all the needless theatric bullshit language, all this says is “modern packaging uses modern fonts, retro packaging uses retro fonts.” Holy shit bro, what a groundbreaking discovery.
Oh wow, here he is, the last designer alive who understands typography. Everyone else is making complete garbage, but this guy still remembers that words should communicate things. Thank fuck somebody finally said it!
One more sentence, still not saying anything of value at all.
Yes, dude, we know what typography does. This is basic shit being explained...to people who are reading a literal typography subreddit LOL.
And why is it screaming now? Because the LLM decided the sentence needed some theatrical bullshit at the end. Type can’t just communicate information, I guess, that would be too fucking normal.
“Basically,” “most,” and “midtier,” all three make the claim vague as fuck. Also, evaporated. Bro, calm the fuck down, you saw some labels you didn’t like. How did it evaporate? What the fuck do you mean, evaporated? Where’s the example?
Oh good, generic personal anecdote has arrived. No product, no design problem, no client request, no decision, no... literally anything that happened. Nope. Just “I have clients, BTW.” He mentions the project so we’ll assume he knows what he’s talking about, then gives us fuckall about it.
Almost demoralizing. JFC bro, you looked at coffee packaging, are you going to be okay? And “just noise” means fuck all. Where’s the actual meat? He supposedly reviewed enough packaging to suffer emotional damage from it, yet somehow refuses to give us even one example of bad packaging?
This kind of dramatic reaction is exactly how LLMs fill in bullshit where there’s fuckall substance. Because surprise, the person who wrote the prompt didn’t have any.
Oooo, quiet confidence. LLMs fucking love the word “quiet.” Quiet confidence. Quiet authority. Quiet sophistication. Put “quiet” before some vague concept and suddenly the sentence seems tasteful and refined. Name one of those package from the 70s or 80s, dude, literally one. No? Oh okay then, 30-40 years of design reduced to “the good stuff.” Ooh, so insightful.
What constraints, what work, what got better? Ah, who gives a shit, put it on its own line, remove the period, add “somehow,” and now it looks oh so profound and casual. Did we miss the entire explanation about what these constraints are, or are we all just supposed to know that?
Of course he keeps landing on things, LLMs can’t just state a fucking thought, every concept is a fucking airplane and needs to “land.” And what did he finally discover after all that landing? Packaging and editorial design have different requirements. Lmao, huge day for typography, somebody update the textbooks.
Well, at least there’s finally one concrete point, 9 sentences into this godforsaken post. But what the fuck is this scenario? How is somebody reading the front and the nutrition panel at the same time, do they have four eyes? What exactly are you telling me about what makes this so difficult?
“The functional layer,” “deprioritized,” “in favor of,” FFS, just say who made the bad decision. “Has been deprioritized” removes whoever supposedly did it, and LLMs love that shit because passive voice sounds more theatrical. Just the usual post-game project-manager commentary that sounds sort of impressive but doesn’t say jack shit at all.
And there’s the engagement bait, of fucking course it ends with “curious.” There’s nothing this guy is fucking curious about. LLMs have been trained on so much fucking social-media and LinkedIn bullshit that they think every post needs to end by asking for engagement. He wants to sound smart and get replies. That’s it.
...you just worked on a packaging brief, you fucking tell us. Did yours address legibility or not? The client anecdote gave us nothing, and now, what...the comments are supposed to finish your post?
This whole thing is exhausting. It says one basic thing, then injects junk-food phrases everywhere because people who don’t know what the fuck good communication looks like think that junk food is filling.
And for fucks sake those missing periods aren’t fooling anybody. The first three paragraphs all omit the last period in the exact same place. This is the kind of stupid bullshit people instruct their LLMs to do, or they go back and remove the periods themselves because they think it makes the writing look more "organic" and "unpolished".
Except the irony is that human beings aren’t this consistently inconsistent. The exact same mistake, in the exact same place, three times. Congrats, you removed the periods. The post still says fuck all.
If you look at the rest of OP's posts, you'll find that every single self-post follows the same bullshit pattern. I'm sure it's intoxicating to do this. To dump your shit, your half-completed thoughts into an LLM and have it spit out what looks like polished prose. The problem is that people like OP will never fool people like you or me, because it turns out good writing isn't just hiding some punctuation or adding deliberate typos.
If you don't have anything to fucking say, no LLM is going to fix that.
roundabout-design 1 points · Aug 2026
I applaud this effort! Thanks!