Kenyans baffled by Trade Ministry’s WordArt graphic work

The poster of the 3-day event bears an extremely flimsy design effort, and is basically a throwback to 2007 when little college kids, fresh out of high school, would try their hand at art and design, mostly with horrendous results.

While employing early WordArt skills, the poster is announcing the November 20 -23 event at the University of Nairobi convened by the Ministry of Investments, Trade and Industrialization.

Everything about it is simply ridiculous - the multi colors, the stretched titles, the childish fonts, the skewed texts and the general gradient fills.

While sharing the artwork on X (formerly Twitter), Chris Mathenge, an appalled user, simply asked, 'Waah, Who did this?"

In fact, some Kenyans found it hard to believe that the document was actually real and not the work of a creative troll.

"You know I've just confirmed this is actually true. I thought it's photoshop. I can't believe it's actually real! I didn't have this kind of poster in my 2023 bingo card!" X user Elvis Mwangi said.

Another user @DonQuixote asked, "I thought you were trolling, this is for real?" to which Chris answered, "It's on the website!" and shared a link which proved the document's authenticity.

On her part, @KarenNzomo wondered "Who is using Microsoft paint brush in 2023? I can't wait to see how much the 'creative' was paid for this shoddy job. I'm sure they asked for $1000!"

Renowned filmmaker and Dr.Njoki Ngumi simply said, "It's the shadow and the ombre for me!"

User @michaelgemera opined, "Accurate representation of how the govt works! In fact, go.ke should keep this aesthetic cos it's so bad it's actually good. cos it represents govt workers perfectly!"

The UoN event has a packed list of prominent speakers and participants who include Chair of the Council of Governors Anne Waiguru and the Trade Cabinet Secretary herself Rebecca Miano.