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How Wanna-bes Burden The Profession
Posted: by Speider Schneider in Labels: early web design, graphic design, problems in design, professional practices, speider schneider, wanna be
Thanks to Facebook I get
odd news and instant anxiety rather quickly. I’m sweating over my keyboard in
an attempt to earn enough for my weekly meal and maybe one pill of my
medication when I notice the Facebook window glowing with the news that a
graphic designer friend has “spent the afternoon riding my fabulous palomino
horse, Milton Glaser” or how the flier for the third grade play will “surely
win a design award!”
Published 3.17.2011 - sixrevisions
I don’t mind so much
except they try to talk to me at design events as if their opinion on the
industry or my work and career counts. They are wonderful human beings except
for the ones that are maniacal, self-delusional freaks, but I’m thankful for
one thing…I’m not their spouse, hard at work in a full-time job, seeing a post
on Facebook that says, “went to the pool today and had too many Margaritas
while pondering my next design. Maybe I’ll do a best selling children’s book!”
There would be a big
surprise for the “designer” once I got home; stop drinking margaritas and get
to work!
“Billy sold himself as a
top automobile designer. The 2011 line bankrupted the industry.”
What Earns The Title
Of “Graphic Designer?”
Discussions seem to
always point to how busy a designer is, or rather, in a cruelty filled
cat-scratch with a ring of truth, how NOT busy they are and why. Everyone is a
“designer” these days. Many blame it on the home computer. With Microsoft Word,
anyone who can create a garage sale flier or announcement for a child’s
birthday party is a “designer.” Some argue they are – just not a “professional”
designer! What is the separation and what does it really matter? In my mind,
there are many factors. You are probably a designer if:
- You the weird kid who drew in your schoolbooks while other kids studied hard and told the teacher you weren’t working.
- You make a living, or at least a good part of it, from design (the economy being what it is!).
- Peers treat you like a professional.
- You’re somewhere on the first page of Google for something you designed.
- Relatives demand you do a logo for their new business and you wish lightning would strike you dead right there at the dinner table.
- You want to strangle people for offering you $50 to design a web site for them.
- You worry about a client paying so you can make the rent and eat.
- You bitch about have to pay the outrageous price of some design publications.
- You get angry and call the people in the design magazines “over-rated hacks.”
- You know the difference between RGB and CMYK and know they are not TV stations.
- You think crowdsourcing and design contests are eroding the industry.
- You swear your kids will NEVER go to art school!
- You are starting to see a point to this article.
“A professional designer
has little time to clean his/her work station
…or conform to state safety
standards for fire hazards or safe working conditions.”
You probably are just
playing at being a designer if:
- You were the kid telling on the kid drawing in his/her schoolbooks.
- When a relative asks you to do the logo for their business you get excited and tweet to your 12 followers about it.
- When you walk up to a group chatting at a design event, they roll their eyes, become very quiet and scatter quickly…while you are still in mid-sentence.
- You are on the first page of Google only for being arrested or burning down your house by smoking in bed.
- You get excited at $50 for designing a web site.
- Your spouse pays all the bills and you have no idea where the checkbook is kept, nor do you care.
- You subscribe to every design magazine to put on the coffee table but never actually read them.
- If you read the design magazines, you feel anxiety rising within you because you are jealous of the people in the publications.
- You ask your spouse to buy the latest version of Adobe CS, 24 hours before it’s released and they do it just to shut you up.
- You enroll your kids in every art class there is in town and go with them and yell about how their work is “sloppy” and “lazy” until they cry.
- You think this article is mean and I’m an idiot.
“The wanna-be always has a
neat and organized workstation… because it’s never used!”
What The Heck IS The
Point?
The point is our
profession and our ability to make a living. Almost daily we deal with
“design-by-committee” from those who feel we are too stupid to be able to do
our jobs properly or they, by some thought process are better due to the
corporate pecking order. Having other “designers” helping knock down our
profession in the eyes of clients certainly doesn’t help. Have you ever heard a
client offer a low fee and say, “our last designer did it for $50!”
The next question should
be, “then why don’t you call him/her to do this project?” The answer would be
he/she wasn’t any good.
Have you ever spoken
with a client who wanted a “test” first to make sure you could do the work?
That’s because the last “designer” screwed up. This is the fallout suffered by
working professionals.
At the last Phoenix
Design Week, a key speaker, Brian Singer, creative director and founder of
Altitude Associates, a San Francisco based creative agency and the creator of The
1000 Journals Project, a global
art experiment where journals are passed from hand to hand, made a statement
about a design community and the ability to elevate it to epic proportions:
"The way you get
ahead in design...is by lifting up those around you."
Sound advice! It also
works the other way around; those around you lower design for you.
There are several
professions that have such dilettantes attached. Actors, writers, even dancers
suffer from those who have no talent but push their way into the inner circles
of those who do. Would American Idol be so fun if it didn’t start with the lame
people who think they have singing talent?
While on the board of a
top-level professional organization that had two membership levels;
professionals, proven with portfolios and the signature of six members and
associates, who were involved in the arts in some supportive way, there was a
question of unjuried shows. It seems some associate members wanted to show
their work as well. While almost all professional members flat out refused the
idea of sullying the organization’s reputation, one board member imparted, they
should be allowed to join in because the entire membership ”might miss seeing
some beautiful art.”
Needless to say, there
was no beautiful art to miss, except for future shows boycotted by professional
members. What was left in the shows hurt the organization’s reputation. See how
it works?
“Which of the two
belongs to the professional designer and which belongs to the wanna-be? It’s a
trick question… they both own the portfolio and equipment on the left but the
professional designer doesn’t own the nice car as you can see by the keys on
the laptop.”
I Don’t Want To Be
Mean About It.
Too often, sitting in a
client’s “approval committee,” I see an art director beaten into submission by
the “designers” in the crowd. When all the opinions are rendered, I turn to the
art director and say, “you’re the art director, why don’t you condense all of
these comments into the direction you want?”
I am always thanked for
trying to bring them back some dignity. The fact is, they didn’t need to lose
it. There has to be enough confrontation to keep our future profitable. If it
means scaring away the wanna-bees or correcting non-creatives who relegate
designers to the bottom of the food chain, if we don’t speak up, soon there
will be nothing to say and we become nothing more than a pair of hands, moving
things around the screen, smudged with greasy fingers as they point where the
logo should be and what type of glitter type they want across the top.
Eventually, a designer will speak up when they are confronted with a failed
campaign or branding and they can say, “that’s what YOU told me to do in
committee!”
Find the guts to protect
your profession. Even baby-steps can help make a more pleasant work.
We have to police
ourselves in such matters. There is no union or organization to assure
professionalism or those who wish to label themselves as “designers.” You can
either speak up and teach and elevate these people to a professional level or
shame them into leaving and hope they will find something new to occupy their
playtime. Mentor art students so they join us in the profession as peers and
not as detriments to the industry. Train young designers on your staff how to
grow and succeed in the field. Open your mouth and tell those who sit on
committees that their ideas, if they have no merit, are not in the best
interest of the end user/consumer or final product. Take back the dignity of
having the special gift of being able to use creativity to solve visual
problems.
“Design-by-committee
almost doomed the commercially successful ‘Snuggie.’ It was only the fact that
some marketing person, having gone completely insane, wore a bathrobe backwards
into the office one day and sparked a brainstorm into the committee.”
Some handy comebacks to
suggestions from a committee:
- “Those are some interesting ideas. Let me condense them into a cohesive design solution.” (Then don’t make any changes but tell people you did).
- “The elements are balanced to draw in the eye and push it in a circular motion to keep the viewer where we want them to be. Making one element more important that the others will stop the eye and destroy the final message.” (This will totally confuse the committee and no one will be able to argue the point).
- “Why is it you feel I’m incompetent and can’t do the job for which I trained for many years? I was hired on the strength of my past work and only want the strongest solutions for this company’s successs.” (Anyone who answers this may be treading on corporate abuse policies. If any answer is put forth, like, “we just want the best design possible,” file a complaint with Human Resources).
- “It’s my job to give you the best visual solution. I can’t be held responsible if this solution is changed by other departments. Certainly you would feel the same way if I were to change the marketing or sales solutions.” (This won’t work but they’ll admire your guts as you are escorted out of the building by security).
When it comes to
individuals who want to play with the professionals, shun them until they go
away and find another group who will let them play. Eventually, his/her spouse
will tire of paying for software upgrades and magazine subscriptions.
A gentle way to convince
creative dilettantes to stop ruining the industry:
- Use gibberish in front of them and hope all the other designers join in, like, “I was using the glockenshlorp function on Photoshop and it worked great.” (The dilettante will either be embarrassed and walk away or tout the virtues of the glockenshlorp).
- Say, “I’m sorry, but you need to do at least one design within ten years to be part of this discussion.”
- Just point and laugh at the person until they cry and run away.
- No matter what question they ask you about the business, roll your eyes and mumble aloud, “why do they let them out of the ‘special schools’ to bother normal people?”
Published 3.17.2011 - sixrevisions
You are now officially my hero.