5 Tell Tale Signs You Don’t Know How to Design
Just having some fun today in a random Sunday post to help expand our “Commentary” section. Today, I’m taking on the tough issues - the ones that really irk the hell out of me when I see them used by a lot of the so called “design” community, many times in forums. So, do you agree with me, or no, and what little (or big) things irk the hell out of you?
The Issues:
- Hosting design screenshots on Imageshack - It happens a lot more than you’d like to see. Browse any freelance forum, and you are most likely to see many people using Imageshack or other crappy free image host to showcase their designs. If it was a one time thing, than that’s acceptable, but to use free image hosts all the time - what’s wrong with you! Every time I run into someone linking to Imageshack, I automatically downgrade how good looking I’d consider the site to be (before I even see or - or it loads), just because the designer served it up to me through a slow, ad infested site.
- The sit back effect - Once again, this is a popular practice throughout forums and not so much in the professional design community, but it still becomes extremely annoying to me whenever I see someone doing it, no matter if they’ve been in the industry for five days of five years. When a client asks for you to contact them, you don’t reply and say “I’m interested, please email me :)”. That is a very common forum response to someone asking to have work done.
- That “Web 2.0″ phrase - “Web 2.0 Hosting Design for Sale!” Have you ever seen that? Most likely. It is incredible to see so many people believing that sticking a label to their designs is going to make them that much better. Guess what - it won’t!
- Advice Givers - One thing I really hate, is when people try to give you advice but have nothing to show for it. For example, some one tells you “Um yes, that design sucks, nice try”, but they don’t have their own portfolio or anything that can back up their claims. If they don’t know anything about what that our criticizing on, then why are they doing it?
- Photoshop - And the biggest, by far most embarrassing tell tale sign you are not a designer, is when you have no idea what a PSD is. You would think this would be impossible for any “designer”, but it is not. I literally have seen people ask “does it come with a psd”, and the person selling the template says, “no, what’s a psd?”
The Solutions:
- Hosting design screenshots - Stop being so damn cheap and buy some hosting! Giving your work its own place to be showcased lets clients know that you mean business, and you take your own work seriously. Hosting is extremely affordable these days, and even if you don’t want to go out and buy a domain and deal with all the “site owner” issues, there are plenty of portfolio hosts / services, such as Carbonmade, that will do it all for you!
- Solving the “Sit Back” - If you are truly concerned about a potential client, and actually want a shot at getting the job, open up an email and start writing! It’s up to you to secure the client, not for the client to get back to you about the potential job. Create some damn communication! A lazy designer isn’t a good one, much like a worker in just about every other field. Your job is to impress the potential client, and taking those extra step over all the other lazy designers will give you the edge.
- A cure for Web 2.0 - If you think “web 2.0″ has one specific meaning, than please go follow trends somewhere else. “Web 2.0″ means nothing, so do not go advertising yourself as a “web 2.0″ designer, or you work as done in a “web 2.0″ style. Otherwise in another year, your going to be pretty damn outdated, and it’ll be time for your clients to upgrade to Web version 3.
- Should I criticize or not? - The answer depends who you are. Know your own strengths before you attempt to bash someone else. If you just started, its not the best idea to go around criticizing the experienced. Hell, would you ever tell Zeldman that he didn’t know anything about web standards? I don’t think so. So don’t complain about things unless you can back up your claims with a strong portfolio and client list.
- Get to know your tools - Familiarize yourself with all the design related terms: psd, ai, layered, cmyk, rgb, photoshop, illustrator, etc. You are not ready to enter the industry or consider yourself a designer just because you may be able to download a free template and move shit around in photoshop and call it a design. You have to understand what the tools you are using are, and how they are used.
This is meant to be an off-beat post poking fun at some random issues.
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Great post and how true it is. Congratulations for narrowing it down to only 5, it is truly sad that the majority of the so-called design community really don’t know how to design. I know my faults as a designer and don’t pretend that I am faultless. Yet the difference is I am constantly trying to improve upon my skills and deficiencies.
You know you could do a whole series on this topic
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I got chills.
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AJ,
What’s funny is, I don’t consider myself a designer, yet I know all about PSD, AI, and all the other color rubbish. I had to explain to a co-worker the other day that buying AI and PS is justified and that they do indeed serve different functions.
I don’t do enough design work to justify a portfolio, so for now I just put them on my Flickr account if at all.
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i disagree that using free webhosting is bad, many people nowadays have @gmail.com accounts also. why invest in something useless ?? do we also should use microsoft office ??
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I’m afraid I have to disagree with your Point 4 - the lack of a design portfolio does not disqualify someone from giving feedback or criticism. How many film critics have made a movie, or art critics painted a masterpiece? The knee-jerk response of “so where’s your portfolio then?” says more about your own attitude to negative feedback than anything else.
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That’s good, I like to see people disagree. That’s what the commentary section is all about.
@raveman - Free email is entirely different than hosting your design screenshot or work on a free image storage site. If you want to look professional, Imageshack and/or similar is not the solution.
@Matthew - It’s not always just the fact that people without portfolios give criticism. First, as a designer / developer / whatever, you have to expect criticism from someone all the time, and it should always help you improve. Meanwhile, there are people who will say “sucks, don’t like it” but won’t supply any helpful insight into why or what they would want changed. If they did, it would be standard feedback, and you could decide whether or not you agree / disagree with them and make changes around it. But when someone just gives you a straight “I hate this type attitude” and doesn’t have anything to “back it up” with, I’m sure it would annoy just about anyone. I myself really don’t care, I just take it and move on, but I have seen people complain they are getting knocked by someone who has “no idea” what they are talking about.
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Great article! Looks like I’m in good shape.
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When you got to “sit back” I thought you were going to say something about sitting back in your chair and admiring your own work too many hours of the day. I might be a little guilty of that
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“This is meant to be an off-beat post poking fun at some random issues.”
Hmm. Are we all so sensitive that this is required?
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@Dan - Some people are, believe me.
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You’re right about these 5. Some occur more than others (like #4 haha) but they’re all equally annoying. The solutions hould help ;).
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I don’t think pointing to techy reasons is a way to tell someone isn’t a designer.
Better ways would be things like, a poor knowledge of typography, a lack of understanding of grid systems in graphic design and unusable websites and bad use of contrast in designs.
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I think it is rather amusing that you simultaneously criticize the use of a free image hosting service, and then suggest people use Carbonmade - which is also free (though admittedly they have an upgrade plan). Makes it sound like you just don’t like Imageshack
I honestly don’t think it matters, and I use free services myself. Having something for someone to look at is -always- better than having nothing at all.
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Free image hosts are bombarded with ads, they take forever to load, and etc. CM is free, but it looks and functions a hell lot better and looks much more professional.
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Very Nice article.
I need to start polishing up my Photoshop skills soon.
Keep Writing…
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Good read, I hate the sit back effect myself.. !
peace
-mE
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why are all those wanna-be designers so eager to use Photoshop? it’s one of the worst tools for website design I have ever seen and tried but still, most designers use it. why? why has this became such a cliche?
in my very humble opinion, the Adobe Fireworks does the job much better (by being extremely simple and consciously easy to use).
P.S. I am not saying Adobe Photoshop is a bad piece of software. it’s awesome for photo editing, retouching, etc. but webdesigning.. come on!
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My biggest pet peeve is when people do not proofread their content and there are misspellings, not only in web pages but in blog postings as well. AJ I am afraid you are guilty of this offense as well.
“Giving your work its own place to be showcased lets clients know that you mean busy”
I am sure you probably meant business but your word processor took it upon itself to change a possible misspelling and changed it to busy.
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thanks for the fifth point: psd-files … that´s one thing i really don´t get. you can save your complete template in only one! psd-file including all sites and template-previews ready for easy-one-click export using layer-compositions. loss-less editing … and so on. but no one uses this or even knows what to do. i really hope that there will sometime be a ‘elite’ (? or should that be the standard
group of people really dividing between design and code and working together with professionel psd-exchange…