Clueless Graphic Designers
Have you ever worked at a professional, corporate level with someone and thought to yourself, “Wow, this person is clueless… how did they even get this job!?” I’m sure this transfers over to many different fields, not just graphic design.
I think sometimes the educational systems are to blame, for a lot of these so called “designers” getting their Associates or Bachelors degrees. They’re getting pushed through, without really being testing on their technical abilities, in addition to the final product. Some of these designers don’t know a 72 dpi image from a 300 dpi image, and couldn’t even tell you what kerning is. Forget about properly exporting a high-res, print ready pdf or eps. I know personally, we were supposed to lay our final print projects out in Quark or InDesign, but non of us ever did. Why should we, that was more work? We could just stick to the comfort level of Photoshop or Illustrator I learned the hard way once I got out on my own. That’s when I went straight into Quark and InDesign to lay out the majority of our print pieces. I got my 4 year degree to try and just have a chance against the other thousands of designers here in Connecticut; but I realized that what they taught us was just the basics. To really jump ahead of the competition you have to be the type that can take the software and take your creativity further than those basics they teach you in school.
At one of my design jobs, I once hired a designer straight out of college, and her portfolio looked really promising. What we didn’t know is that she couldn’t even make a simple pen tool selection to isolate an object. How does that happen!? It’s like graduating from high school without ever learning how to read…LOL let’s just say she got the boot within a week.
Yes, there are a lot of shoddy designers out there, freelance or not,that couldn’t tell a sans from a serif, or be able to give you the most current version of the creative suite off the top of their head.Designers that don’t know how to properly prepare a proof and package files for print, even. I always got a kick out of it, because whenever I would deal with advertisers for the magazines I used to lay out, many of these big company corporate designers didn’t know squat, even though they were probably making a salary twice what mine was. Good for them,though! I wish them the best, and hope they can hold onto those jobs for many years to come. I just always got a huge kick out of how often I’d see things like that. It transfers over into the freelancing world just the same. There are freelancers that have all of their ducks in a row, then there are the ones that call themselves freelancers.
You can call yourself anything you want…I can call myself a pro photographer, but do I think of myself as one? Heck no. I’ve owned my DSLR for just over a year, and I know I need a lot more practice with it. But hey, if I want to argue that I make a living selling photos, as 50% of the stock images I sell are in fact photos, I guess I can. I feel more like an advanced amateur. I’ll probably always think of myself as more of a designer than a photographer, as those are my roots. The two industries definitely seem to go hand in hand.
Getting started selling stock is pretty tough right now. With all of the people losing jobs, and all of the new competition, the bar is getting raised a lot higher. I’m one of the crazies that knew I could do this full time and be able to support my family (no kids yet, just two dogs) but it takes a lot of time. I spend anywhere from 40-60 hours a week on it, tracking stats, uploading, following market trends,researching the next shoot, booking models. Every image needs a title,description, keywording, then you upload via ftp to your microstock sites, then you have to push them through on the back end, sometimes choosing categories and other options. I don’t particularly enjoy the boring part of it all…the editing and the designing are my favorite parts.
What I’m doing is definitely a different “animal” than traditional graphic design freelancing, but I have a feeling that someday I could be returning to my roots if the stock becomes too competitive. In this economy, I don’t care if your backup solution is totally un-related to a creative field…just have something in mind that you’d like to do,maybe lay some groundwork for it. I hope whatever happens to all of you, you’re still able to at least do something you enjoy. That’s when it doesn’t feel like work!
Tags: Graphic Design, graphic designers
