The stripes for returns and dots for special orders thing is so simple it's almost dumb that nobody thought of it sooner. Color alone fails a huge chunk of guys, and not just the ones with deuteranopia either. Wash out a red label under bad lighting and it looks the same as purple. Add a shape or a pattern and now you've got two ways to read the same tag. Your boss complaining about stripes looking busy is classic, form over function until the clock proves him wrong. Half the time on picks says it all.

My buddy Jake did the same thing last year and would not shut up about it for weeks. He kept saying the row-span math was driving him crazy too, like he would change one card's text and the whole grid would shift on him. He finally named his lines and said it felt like taking off a heavy backpack, everything just sat where he put it. I mean I still use areas for super simple two column stuff because it reads nice, but for anything with cards that change size he is 100 percent right. Maybe it's just me but the areas thing only works when your content never moves, and how often does that happen.