despair (the funny kind)

Motivational posters. We've all seen them; in offices, in schools, and anywhere else where people might need to be motivated. Some of them feature soaring eagles, other show lions standing proudly on the savannah, and yet others capture the end of a grueling but rewarding marathon. They are uniformly designed, uniformly deployed, and uniformly despised.

That's where Despair comes in. Rather than agonize over these posters, they figured out a way to fight back and make money at the same time: demotivators. These are posters that are designed to look just like the standard motivational posters, but the messages are cynical, ironic, and downright discouraging. And they've been pretty successful: it's getting to where some folks have only ever seen the demotivational variety, and when confronted with the "real" ones, don't understand why the posters aren't funny.

Just a few days ago I discovered that they've started a Do It Yourself project, where you can create your own demotivational posters and have them printed on Despair's high-quality printers. Of course I had to try it, and I was pretty pleased with the results. I hope you'll enjoy them as well.