designed by Vela and, no doubt, the rest of TeamChaos and no doubt with the input of everyone in my department but me

There's the problem: "A camel is a horse designed by a committee." Or, as Alan Sherman put it, "these people on committees, they sit there all day, and they each put in a color and it comes out gray. Now gray is a nice color, but not if you've ever seen orange or yellow or red or green or blue....."

What you've pointed out, frankly, is that something designed with multiple inputs on style is bound to look like crap. Multiple inputs on function and content, fine, but style? Nope. 'Twas bound to happen.

Unless you beat up on particular design elements to which one person might be attached, anyone who reads your commentary can simply say to themselves "it's not my part which is the problem, but all these other things which make me look bad." And they probably won't take it too personally.

If you had known it was the Official Form, would you have answered any differently? Knowing you, I suspect you'd have said the same thing. Maybe couched in careful language, but if it sucked, you'd have said so *g*

My criticism was pretty much spread out over every, single element, Jonathan, so maybe I won't offend any one person too much.

To be honest, I think it's going too far to even say there was a DESIGN theme. It was...just a mess.

Okay, Dail, you're right. I would have said the same things.

But I might have been a tad more diplomatic. :) I might not have spent so much time lecturing on the elements of good design, for instance, had I known the template was "designed" by the Marketing department.