For the final 11 days of 2011, we’re going to take a look at some of the top mistakes made this year in our industry… including social media, marketing, branding, graphic design, web design and SEO.

#4-Bad T-shirts x2

These two companies tie for the no. 4 spot because essentially, they committed the same graphic design sin: they didn’t have anyone proofread the words in their graphics to make sure they were correct.

In no particular order:

This screenshot from wired.com shows the old t-shirts being sold on Old Navy’s website. A visit to the website now shows the corrected t-shirts

Old Navy came out with T-shirts a few months back that had a grammatical error on them. Instead of saying “Let’s Go!! <Insert team name here>” They said “Lets Go!! <team name>.” See it? There’s an apostrophe missing. Minor mistake, but grammatically incorrect just the same.

This t-shirt from Victoria’s Secret pays homage (?) to both of Michigan’s team. Photo courtesy of themajors.net

Then more recently, Victoria’s Secret made incorrect T-shirts that pitted two archrivals against each other even off the field.

The thing is, the T-shirts had the words “Spartans: Hail to the Victors” written on them. For those of you not up on Michigan football, The Spartans are the Michigan State University mascot and Hail to the Victors is the fight song for the University of Michigan.

The jury is still out on whether this was an honest mistake, a stupid joke … or a chance to stir up discussion. (We can’t help but think it was a mistake, otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered to pull the shirts).

The lesson learned here: Have someone proofread your graphics before they go out for print.