Graphic Designer Gripes
All right, I'm going to gripe a bit here.One of the problems that sometimes comes up in my line of work as a graphic designer is that clients underestimate what is involved with the work we do. The reason why? It's because in this day and age, anyone who wants to has the ability to so some desktop publishing stuff. So people confuse what they are familiar with as what it really means to do it on a professional level.
I mean, these days everyone has a scanner and can scan pictures. They've got digital cameras. They can also use little template programs to make greeting cards, or they can design little flyers in Microsoft Word. Or they can use some automated thing like AOL Website Builder (I don't know if that's what it's called) to make a little website. All well and good, and, by all means, people should take advantage of these.
But it is a totally different world than desktop publishing in a professional capacity. I ran into a problem this past week because one of our ill-informed clients oversimplified what had to be done on their job. "All you guys were going to do is scan the stuff and drop it in." Bulls**t. It was nearly a 100-hour job.
One time someone asked me if I use a particular piece of software at work that was this automated greeting card program from, like, Hallmark or something. I probably shouldn't have been, but I was offended. I had to come off sounding like a pompous ass: "No, um, actually I use only pro software, and they cost, like, 1000 bucks each." It seemed to reduce everything I'm trained to do to just something that housewives do for fun. I had one other lady tell me that a big hobby of hers was computer graphics and desktop publishing, but she had never heard of a TIFF file. That's like someone saying, I'm really into dentistry, but I never heard of molars before.
But, you see, therein lies the problem: non-dentists don't know anything about dentistry, and they don't assume they do. People like you and me don't drill cavities at home on an amateur level just for fun. So when it comes time to talk about that root canal, everyone knows the dentist has to set the plan.
But people do that home-stuff with graphics—which is great...and I mean that sincerely. After all, I did it, too, before I got real training and entered the field. But it makes my job hard when people assume they know what I do and they really don't. There is a lot involved with the industry; it's not just arts and crafts.
Maybe it's like that for other professions. Maybe I'm guilty of it sometimes. But I'll tell you this much. I do my best to try and remember not to do it. For example, consider this. In the last few years, I basically have gutted 80% of my house and rebuilt the place from nothing but the frame of the two-by-fours holding up the ceilings...and yet whenever I talk "shop" with a professional contractor or builder, I make it a point to say things like, "...that's just little ol' me, the weekend warrior of home improvement. You know better that I ever would..." I know that even though I impress my friends, the pro would find me to be nothing more than a amateur wannabe who isn't that skilled and doesn't know all that much. So I always make sure they know I'm not a wannabe. I'm admittedly not as good as they are. They're the pros. I am not.
Whew. OK...that felt good to vent. I'm sure we'll be back to our regularly scheduled blogging that touches on inane topics like "Hide and Go Seek" in no time. Thanks for listening.
posted by Steve @ 5:48 PM
4 Comments:
I can totally sympathize with your gripe! On the one hand, since I cover, to a certain degree, your profession for my magazine, I hear your complaint a lot, and try to find ways to help designers fight that stereotype. Heck, that "professional hobbyist" segment of the population has grown so huge, it has spawned its own name -- prosumer. While I think it is good people are learning about technology and how to use it, I completely agree that they need to recognize at the same time that what they are doing is not professional-level work and never will be.
On the other hand, I get those same annoyances about writing. In our little group, we are all more or less writers to a certain degree, so I am exempting all of you from this... But it drives me nuts when people who have no idea which end of the semi-colon is up try to tell me about writing, or hand me their stuff while telling me how easy it is. They believe they are just as good as I am at what I do for a living, and I just don't have the heart to tell them they aren't. But that doesn't stop me from being annoyed by it. In this day and age, custom publishing and digital technology have made it possible for pretty much everyone to be a writer and "publish" a novel, good or bad. And while I applaud people for wanting to get involved and for taking the written word seriously, I, like you, wish they would recognize that advanced amateur is not the same as professional by a long shot.
[[[ On the other hand, I get those same annoyances about writing. In our little group, we are all more or less writers to a certain degree, so I am exempting all of you from this... ]]]
I know exactly what you mean. I figured writers may feel this way, too. I won't be offended if you don't exempt me from this, but that's because I know enough to know to respect the craft. You're doing it every day for pubication, I am blogging. So you get the nod as the "real deal." I've become something less, compared to people doing it for a living.
But, of course, I know that because my background is in writing, so I know enough to know what's involved. Here's a good story: On Internet mailing lists I occasionally take some good natured ribbing about my propensity to write LONG and DETAILED posts. During one such instance, I commented to the good folks on the list that I do it because I like it and it comes easily to me, but that it also was easy because it was informal and laid back and all that stuff. And I went on to tell a story that started like this: "A few years back when I was doing a bit of writing for work and pubication—and, TRUST ME, it is work in every sense of the word..." Well, after I wrote that, this one pro copywriter on the list was like, "Hear, Hear!" He appreciated what I said. And he probably appreciated it even more that I acknowledged the "real work" that was involved in doing it in the same forum where some people were praising me for being "such a good writer" and I could have just taken the compliments without giving a nod to the fact that there is "casual writing" (which can range from good to not so good) and "pro writing" (which is in its own league).
What I went on to comment on was how I wrote a lot because—unlike with writing for a job—I don't HAVE to limit myself and work to be economical. That is, I don't have to work to say it all concisely; I can just blab whatever I feel like.
Another story I always tell is how I used to sometimes spend inordinate amounts of time—a half-hour or more, perhaps—just trying to refine and reword one lousy sentence. And, of re-writing & editing the piece in general. Refine, re-work, re-edit, re-word, ad nauseum.
What I like to do these days is combine my background/education with my current skills/profession. Writing and graphics often go hand and hand since much of what we do involves copy. I may not be a top-of-the-line copywriter, but I'm better than most graphic designers! :-)
Funny enough, since I stopped doing it for work, I feel more like a "writer" than ever before, but that is purely in an "artistic" sense, and "art" is a fluffy word (to me) that simply says you do it because you like it and you do what you want to express yourself the way you want. It's the opposite of "profession," where it HAS to be done to spec and to a certain standard, but it still has to aim to be interesting and creative and all that other good stuff.
Writing is definitely in the same league as the stuff I was talking about. we all write even if we just write shitty letters to our friends often with no punctuation capitilazation or other stuff like that Everyone writes at least a little. So, a lot of people probably think you are the same as they are, just that you do it more.
[[We all write even if we just write shitty letters to our friends often with no punctuation capitalization or other stuff like that Everyone writes at least a little.]]
E-mail is both a blessing and a curse for this very reason. I love being able to stay in touch with people so easily, and since the written word is easy for me, I actually prefer it to the telephone most of the time. (Well, that and I like being able to respond at my own leisure, instead of having to stop what I am doing and spend an hour on the phone because someone else had time to kill...)
On the other hand, there are some really atrocious writers out there sending out email blissfully unaware of the horrors they are unleashing on the world—spelling errors, no or incorrect capitalization, and, my personal pet peeve, horrible grammar. Apostrophes have a distinct purpose! They aren't on the keyboard as an afterthought to be thrown in or left out whenever someone feels like it!
Look, we all know the reason you both have so much time to write such lengthy posts is because it takes no effort at all to do your respective jobs... Toni can just bang out 3 feature articles in an hour after proofreading the rest of her magazine with time to spare, and we all know Steve just needs to push a button to make the graphics appear. So cut the "wa wa wa my job is so tough" routine.
(Of course, this joke would probably be alot more effective if it weren't for the fact that I do the exact same thing Steve does for a living...)
In all seriousness, this is a common gripe amoungst our people, but one that still goes unheeded. And it's not just restricted to people on the outside; my own coworkers give me crap about that. Perfect example:
I do the layout for Locksmith Ledger Magazine, exciting to be sure, but I still want it to look as presentable as possible. In the past I had gotten hardcopy photos from the editors to place into the book, but lately they've all been digital pics, which is great. However, alot of them come in blurry, badly lit, poorly displayed, or just plain bad. In an effort to improve the quality of the magazine, I sent a letter out to all the editors describing the problem, complete with examples of each of the above faux pas, and a solution on how to fix them. My Editor, God bless him, tends to take things as a personal attack on him, so instead of thanking me for my efforts, he replies, "Didn't you ask for digital pictures because they were better? Can't you fix digital pictures easier?" I calmly replied that no, I asked for digital pictures so that the company could save thousands of dollars on scanning charges and saves a ton of time, and though I can fix certain things like color and brightness on a photo, I cannot magically remove shadows, sharpen hideously blurry pictures or change bad backgrounds; and even if I could, don't you think it'd be a LITTLE easier to just add a light source, change the background or focus the damn thing then to have me spend a half hour on each of 30+ photos PER ARTICLE, of which we have several?
I got no response.
So, even though I fortunately don't deal with many people on the outside feeding me crap, I'm fighting the war internally with my own people. That's Cygnus for ya.
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