Blamblog - Brett Lamb's Blog

Friday, January 23, 2009

The Rules

The unspoken rules of graphic design. These are the key ones:

3. The less time you have the more useless your computer will become.

8. If the run is wrong, it's never the press operator's fault.

15. If three designs are shown to a client, your least favorite will be chosen or any combination of worst components of each.

16. If two designs are shown, a third will be requested. If provided, then one of the first two will be chosen.

18. Clients don't have their company logo in a usable print ready format so don't bother asking.

20. The best designs never survive contact with the client.

31. If you purchase new equipment to read your client's disk, it will be the last disk of that type you will ever receive.

32. Your client will often not like your design but not quite know why.

34. A client who knows exactly what he wants is worse than one that has no idea.

37. The customer is always right . And an idiot.

And a couple I take issue with:

11. Proof raeders are useless.

Proofing is what it is ... it's not pleasant and every proofreader I've worked with has always gone far beyond the call of duty.

27. Doctors, astronauts, and plumbers need training to do their jobs, but anyone with a computer is a graphic designer.

Here in Ontario, there's a professional designation for graphic designers: Registered Graphic Designer. All the RGDs I've encountered have been weak designers and for me, RGD has become a badge of mediocrity, embraced by people compensating for a lack of talent. A professional designation for graphic design attempts to parcel off the discipline for the annointed few ... but you can't train talent or passion and even though the practice of design has been elevated recently, in general practice it's not that special. I've worked with lots of people with absolutely no art or graphics training who've had more innate sensitivity for design than all of the RGDs I've encountered.

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