Taking Pride in Your Design
So I was thinking about the concept of “taking pride in your design” the other day while sitting at IHOP. I was staring up at a sign hanging from the ceiling that was advertising their latest and greatest (mostly sweet) combination of breakfast foods and the thought came to my mind - I wonder if the person that designed that sign is proud of it? I wonder if they see it hanging in their local IHOP and say “I designed that!”.
It got me thinking of the first few things I designed that were actually not school work, and people actually spent money to have them printed. Since my internship was for Salt Lake Magazine (Salt Lake City Magazine at the time), one of my first designs was for a postage paid reply card. You know what these are, those annoying bits of cardstock that are constantly falling out when you’re flipping through a magazine in an airport waiting for your flight. But something to be proud of? Not exactly. But as it was one of the first few things that were actually printed of mine, I glowed when it came out in the magazine, and put a copy in my portfolio.
Now that I’ve designed literally thousands of things, I think back and wonder - am I proud of everything I’ve designed? How about you? Do you glow at every design you see in the world that originated in your head?
I think I’m most proud of the things I’ve designed that are most true to my original concept, and weren’t clouded by excessive client micromanagement. Concepts that seemed to match the clients needs exactly, and resonated with the client as such.
As I’ve been doing some contract work for Omniture lately, I’ve had the opportunity to see first hand how one of my brands has been carried beyond my original creation. After working there nearly 5 years and creating their brand from scratch, it was hard to let it go and send it out into the world. But with talented people, and a CEO who cares about the brand, it’s maintained itself and even grown into an amazing presence. I’m proud of that.
What are you thoughts on this topic?
May 1st, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Wow, you answered a question that I have been wanting to ask you for a while but hadn’t had to courage to yet. You are a lucky one. Not all of us can sleep peacefully at night knowing that our “children” are in safe hands.
May 4th, 2007 at 10:13 am
True. I think this is why I often find myself being a stick in the mud about changing designs sometimes, because after going through several rounds of approval and changes by committee, the finished product loses it’s spark and isn’t my work anymore, not something to be proud of. It’s disheartening when you have your name attached to a finished work that’s lost your ideas and feeling because of excessive compromise and art-direction because a client wants to make a design as banal as possible in some vain effort to please everyone.
On the other hand, it’s great when client feedback results in the encouragement of my own talents and ideas, resulting in something that has more strength to it. Those I can be happy to display as mine.
May 6th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
“I think I’m most proud of the things I’ve designed that are most true to my original concept, and weren’t clouded by excessive client micromanagement.”
I agree, Brad. I’m usually happiest long-term with the things I’ve created (in my case, written — not designed — since I’m an editor) that I haven’t micromanaged MYSELF on… in other words, things that I thought about a lot but didn’t overthink. Things that feel true and closer to the emotion or thoughts or inspiration that spurred it to begin with.
May 7th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Oh, hell yeah. Anything that I had a hand in printing out of an actual press immediately went into my portfolio no matter how boring.
I have some kind of mental illness (15 years later) that makes me hate almost all of my work almost immediately after its been printed or launched.
I now patially associate my feelings towards the work to the process that brought it to life. For instance, the time when I was flown to Santa Barbara and put up in the swanky hotel on the beach to do this kinda lame glorified PPT for a Microsoft event…my thoughts about the work are more rosey than the actual work deserves.
But the best are those ideas that after you get them laid out on paper or in illustrator and it’s just so obvious that that’s the answer-I love that. When you just KNOW you nailed it. You don’t have to do 5 more comps just to see if anything better comes up. I