Book Excerpt: Plain, Corny and Obvious

Second Law: Make it corny. I've known fundraisers who've spent their whole careers pointlessly fighting the Second Law, trying to create classy, modern, nice-looking appeals they'd feel good about showing around.

Corny design that works well in fundraising is old-fashioned, unsophisticated and ugly (personally, I hesitate to call design that makes the world a better place "ugly" — that seems more like a definition of "beautiful").