It all makes sense! Design is about being fresh, trendy, in the moment. And who better to represent them fresh trends than the trendy youth themselves. If I were to look for a designer, I’d be searching for someone who can spit out spanking new ideas at a blink of an eye and be energized and excited and effervescent all the time. You know… young.

But here’s a question that’s been bugging me for actually a while: What happens to all the designers when they grow up?

There are a couple obvious answers: A. become creative directors; and B. start a design agencies of their own. Except as far as I can tell there are still a lot (a lot!) more designers out there than creative directors or agency owners. Where do they all go? What’s the lifespan of a designer? And what’s going to happen to me?

It’s a little early for me to start seriously thinking about it – I still have a lot of creative juice in me and enough fire to keep me happily churning out design tricks 260 days a year – but a girl’s gotta have a plan! I’m really big on having a game plan, pretty much, for everything in my life. And right now I don’t. And it sort of terrifies me.

Ok-ok, it’s still way-way in the future, but seriously. Where do all the designers go?

They always come in beautiful lists… 35 inspiring minimalist designs, 40 unique website navigations, 50 most beautiful portfolios… So I scroll and drool over the exotic typefaces, the brilliant use of texture, the intricate details, the glorious white space. And like most people looking at those perfect specimens, I think to myself “Damn those gorgeous designs…” That’s when, inevitably, I start feeling absurdly envious and plain inadequate – my designs wouldn’t make those lists.

But wait a sec… could it be because my work is for actual clients? with actual requirements? and actual goals to hit? Examples from those lists, as exquisite as they are, more often than not are for personal sites, small businesses with simple offers, and occasionally spec work. Hey, that’s not fair!

But here’s a real inventory of elements from a real project and their very real homepage: logo, navigation, secondary navigation, feature, selling prop, call to action, spotlight, second spotlight, testimonial, product gallery, guarantee, and footer with a slew of elements of its own. Now, I think that homepage turned out pretty sweet – it’s got good hierarchy, flow, personality, and most importantly it should really have an impact on this company’s business. And isn’t that what this whole website design stuff is about?

No, I’m not going to boycott those list, in fact I’m probably going to go browse one right now. But, dear list makers, just once in a while show me a list of great websites with lots of ..um… “stuff” crammed in in a spectacular way. That’ll be something I can really relate to.

Well, we graphic designers are on to you, impatient lot! …Cue evil laugh here… Did you know that we’ve been devising ways to force you into absorbing information? But, feeling benevolent today, I’m going to fill you in on some of our tricks.

Trick 1: We keep it short and big. Yes, we harass our poor copywriters to write shorter and shorter copy, just for you. Then we spice it up with cool typography and, voila, a headline you can’t miss even if you tried!

Trick 2: We use lots of contrast. Apparently you’re looking for cues throughout the design for things you should pay attention to. That’s why you see lots of bright buttons everywhere, screaming “click me!”

Trick 3: We throw in something that doesn’t look like it belongs on the web. Handwritten fonts will do the trick every single time. It’s quite magical. Second in line are textural effects, like the oh-so-popular torn paper treatment. We’re still wondering when it might go out of style, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

Trick 4: We let arrows point the way. This one is quite silly and annoyingly effective. You see and arrow and you look where it’s pointing. So simple.

Trick 5: We let pictures do the talking. They say a picture says a thousand words. Well, sometimes we just need it to say 2 or 3 (like “Add to Cart”), and we know you like that little shopping cart icon with the plus sign, so we give you what you like.

But without you, the reader, the user, the audience – impatient as you might be – we designers are obsolete and out of a job. So we’ll continue to try to please you with cute icons and evokative typography, and continue looking for new tricks to keep you interested.

I guess what I’m really saying is thanks for keeping us on our toes.

Resolution 1: Write blog posts more often. My god, have I been terrible at this! I walk around writing blog posts in my head, but for some reason they never make it here. The reason is that the second I sit down in front of my computer, I start firing away at emails and fulfilling my design duties. Makes me a responsible designer, but not a very dutiful blog writer, eh? Action Plan: Put it in my calendar until it becomes a habit.

Resolution 2: Be in the know. This is a bit of ongoing challenge for me – keeping up with the latest and hottest in design, while keeping my clients happy by cranking out work at above-average speed. This is where that 25th hours could really come in handy for me! However, since it’s unlikely to take effect in our society any time soon, I just gotta be better and find time. Action Plan: Spend at least 30 minutes each morning scouring the net.

Resolution 3: Appear caffeinated when possible. I’ve recently learned that during client meetings I don’t always appear as excited and/or positive as I think I do. Ouch! This totally-misinterpreted observation really bummed me out. It’s absolutely, irrevocably gotta change. I had no idea I was coming off like that and very much appreciate someone pointing it out (thanks, you-know-who-you-are!). Action Plan: Be aware and practice quick-fire responses.

Resolution 4: Find an agency that fits. After many years of successful freelancing, I’m putting my Pantone books to rest and looking for a full-time job. In truth this is a resolution I come back to every 2 to 3 years, but haven’t quite fulfilled. Why not? I’m just too picky! I believe I’m good at what I do and I don’t want to settle for a semi-sucky job. It probably sounds terribly vain of me, but that’s the reason I’ve went back to freelance after a short stint at a design shop 2 years ago. I want to be challenged, I want to learn, and I want to do cool stuff. Picky, picky, picky. Action Plan: Expand my horizons and be open to change.

I could write a few more, but let’s be reasonable here. These are worthy resolutions to make and I’m going to do my absolute best to uphold them.

I’ll keep you posted!

What is one to do when a client says, “Purple just rubs me the wrong way.” WHAT? WHERE? WHY? And why is said client making global marketing decisions based on some suppressed childhood memory?

Here’s the ugly truth #1: design is entirely subjective, sometimes for no good reason at all. It’s incredibly annoying for us designers, but we’re having to deal with it every day, at every project, and every client meeting. What’s hip or wacky or elegant or sleek or techy means sometimes opposite things to different people. We’re just creatures of our experience, which color (purple?) our view of everything, all the time.

Here’s the ugly truth #2: majority of people don’t understand or don’t care about design. This one hurts. It hurts bad! No, I don’t mean to say that they don’t appreciate it when they see it – they mostly do – but, generally speaking, reading a poorly designed brochure or shopping a neon-green-colored website, doesn’t necessarily hurt their eyes or intellects. They’re simply out for information, and they’re getting it. Hard to argue with that.

Here’s the ugly truth #3: it’s never going to change. We can only hope that our clients see it our way more often than not. And hey, extra rounds equal extra cash!… Is that silver lining or what?

And lastly, no matter how much we want to think of our profession as art – it’s not. One dictionary defines graphic design as “visual communication that combines images, words, and ideas to convey information to an audience.” Keywords: communication, information, audience. Unlike art, which is meant to evoke feeling, design has a very important job to do: get information to people. In what form it gets there is not always important, and whether it’s purple or green doesn’t necessarily make it better or worse.

Now that’s this is out of my system, I’m off to revise some work.

Maybe a cookie will cheer me up… A big one.

And then there are times when it all goes terribly wrong. Sometimes you make a mistake of showing the wrong sketch to the client just because you needed – say – an even number to present, and they latch on to the one you hate. And sometimes a great idea gets watered down into something quite pedestrian.

But here’s something I’ve been thinking about lately… how often is it OK to change an identity? And does anyone think of a company different just because they change their logo? I mean, we ladies change our hair every time the wind blows, but underneath all the mousse and mascara, we’re still us – same personality, same beliefs. Does that apply to corporations? Well, actually  if 20 executives were in charge of my hair, it would probably never change for lack of consensus. Tangent…

Cisco changed their logo a few years back and there was a big debate whether it was good or bad. There were talks about the new logo altering people’s perception of the mighty brand, of reaching younger audiences, and focusing on customer-focused new strategy. But back to my big question, did it make ANY difference? Decide for yourself.

I think the new logo is good, by the way. In fact, I’m sure some designer out there is insanely proud to show it off in their portfolio. And I say, good for you! I hope they were a good client.

But how does it feel to be “borrowed” from? I know… it sucks!

I was doing a sub-contract job, a logo design. As usual, I poured, I rummaged, I scoured, and came up with good bunch of designs. After a usual number of rounds, we ended up with a nice little logo and a happy client. The end. Not for me! A few months later I accidentally found out that my employer sold one of the graphics I presented in the first round to a different client. It caught me completely off guard. I was furious, I didn’t know what to do with myself, I was composing angry emails in my head, but most of all I was hurt. It really felt like I got robbed. Like my brain got picked and sold for parts. I was angry and paralyzed. It took a good couple days to cool down my rage, and some talking to other designers to find out that, apparently, the aforementioned employer had every right to do that.

Sad and true, disappointing and frustrating. The final sad thing is that since I was sub-contracting, I’m not getting real credit for either design.

Ok, now that I got this out of my system, I’m off to losing myself in pages of ComArts in search of inspiration.

Designers spend hours, sometimes days, agonizing over font decisions. We’ll change our minds, search through libraries, tweak every letter. All in effort of finding “the right one”… where an A has just the right angle or a T is crossed just so. We want the font to express the meaning of words it spells, make the viewer feel something. Except sometimes I wonder, are our choices speaking as loud as we intend? Or does it matter much at all?

I recently landed on this great article about iconic fonts: www.artdesignschools.com/careers/top-20-most-influential-fonts-in-graphic-design. Very informative! And it all begs the question… if designers have used – and continue using – these fonts for decades, who am I, or anyone else, to say they are boring, outdated and sucky overall?

I, as many others, try to stay away from standard and system fonts and cringe if I see them used in anything intended for more than a dozen eyes. But am I wrong? Should I be changing my ways? There’s an entire library of movie posters dedicated to Trajan font (search for it on flickr, if you dare). And recently there’s been an outrage over James Cameron’s use of Papyrus for subtitles of Avatar. I mean, really… Papyrus?

I cringe. I laugh. I question myself.

No way I can compete with that. Why? Well, it appears that in addition to having a fair amount of self-hate, I seem to think well of my self-worth. I value my time too damn much to compete.

The simple truth of the matter is that those $50/logo sites can’t compete with us, creative designers. What they are very good at is providing a gloriously wide range of overused done-before’s. If that suits you just fine – Go for it! Be happy, flaunt your awesome logo and tell everyone what a bargain it was. You’ll feel confident and ask your cousin’s son to build your website. My sincere best regards to your endevours.

You know that expression “You get what you paid for.” Well, it just turns out that it’s true. Sucks, I know. In my world it simply means that if you want something that no one else can claim for $49.99, you gotta invest. I’ll, on the other hand, invest my time, give you undivided attention, learn about your company, and work together with you to create something you can feel connected to and proud of.

Why go pre-fab when you can just be fab?

For the last 3 weeks I’ve been working on trade-show graphics for a local high-tech company. To start, the client steered us in a direction, so contrived, so wrong, that it’s almost humorous. I will not mention the 12 rounds of back and forth, I will not mention being turned into a Mac Monkey (that’s when a client stands over your shoulder and tells you what to do, pixel by pixel). But what had put me over the edge today, was the fact that through the aforementioned 12 rounds of revisions, the original idea, as contrived as it was, has been watered down and dumbed down SO far, I’m embarrassed to look at my computer screen.

They just want to be “very clear.” They just want to make sure “people get it.” But why treat an audience of engineers – people with at least 1 college degree – like children. Uh, it just makes me so angry.

The audience is smart! Don’t underestimate their intelligence. They don’t need the same dumbed-down, chewed-up message repeated 3 times on a 2-sided brochure. They see right through it. What’s worse is that if a company doesn’t trust the intelligence of their audience, the audience will never trust the intelligence of the company.

Man, I need a drink.