The idea and act of failing has become a buzzword with the economic downturn, but graphic designers fail every single day, and have been failing successfully through most of the 20th century into our current one.
Headlines appear daily in the news media about one failure or another: the economy, banking, auto industries, education, and morale. But in the article below, you won’t find help for hanging tough in a down economy or keeping your spirit up when clients decide to leave. Instead, this is about how designers fail to meet their personal expectations, job dreams, and long-term goals from their very beginning as students.
During college at the University of Arizona in 1992, I learned with other design freshman that revisions were part of the discipline; if you cried at critique you were a wimp, and the computer was just a finishing tool. Later, as a transfer student at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln in 1994, faculty tried to scare us out of the program: Either the person sitting next to you or you yourself will graduate from this program; only 1 in 3 of you will leave the program and find work as designers. But something has happened since I was a college student in 1992: students just don’t believe these things. They feel design is easy and success is easily earned; they get themselves in trouble when they define success too specifically, revolving it around fame, fortune, or a combination thereof.
Always Right, Always Best, All the Time
At its root, failure is the opposite of success, but few young designers encounter failure. Worse, they are over-confident because of how adept they are (or think they are) with computer media: parents or former art teachers have patted them on the back for years, praising their performance with Adobe, iWork, or iMovie. These adults lavish the youngster with wowie-zowie amazement creating what I call the Blue Ribbon Craving: an overabundance of shallow praise too often and too early creating a desire for more praise more often.
Illustration by Mark Andresen markandresenillustration.com
Unfortunately and incorrectly, this praise somehow translates into I am good at art or I am good at design, manufacturing the false notion that they are always correct, and so long as they click it up on the computer, it’s good. And they expect the same in school, where the youngster takes the congratulations they have amassed over the years and heads to the classroom with pie-in-the-sky dreams, and a sense of entitlement: I have earned my parents and high school art teachers’ praises; I know the computer; I am ready for college and I will conquer it with a succession of A+ grades. The truth: it’s not like that. When these students do less than grade-A work, tears will flow; when they do grade-C work, they hit a depression so deep that some cannot recover. (Let’s not even talk about grade-F work, which stirs a panic attack beyond anything George Costanza ever experienced.) Rather than learn from the critiques and repeated suggestions to change one thing or another, they leave for another major: All of these changes? My work is bad? Forget it, I’ll go elsewhere. Some will argue that these drop outs play into the natural state of attrition, sorting out the can-do students from the cannot. Does it have to be this way? Why can’t all design students learn to cope with stressful critiques and do-it-over suggestions? Because some of them have been fawned over during years of grammar and high school, and it’s not easy to teach them new tricks.
But that’s what college is for, and students can learn to manage these failures—if the instructor prepares them for the long journey. Unfortunately, few instructors teach students about coping with failure, it’s only the thick-skinned ones that can survive on their own. For the rest, there’s no recovery, no chance for making it. From grammar school through college, I always expected a challenge and knew that rewards were hard-earned. Having endured the disciplined grade school classrooms hosted by Sisters Eileen, Ignatius, Joseph, and Maureen I was prepared for the worst any teacher could throw at me (literally) when entering high school and then college. Not every student endures similar Catholic school rigors, but it helped me appreciate that success required problem solving, overcoming obstacles, and working at something until it’s right (and then working on it some more until you were disgusted or somewhat satisfied, or just plain old out of time).
Time Compression
When it comes to time, students feel that hard work and somewhat long hours are enough to get grade-A work; nationally, educators are battling this no matter the course of study. But here are the facts: working very diligently for 8, 10, or 20 hours may still result in barely average work; and in some cases, putting in twice that amount of labor for 30 or 40 hours may only get a D or F. Dedicating long hours will not always yield success, but because of a desire for immediacy, expecting results ASAP is the norm. Information travels at the speed of light. Makeovers don’t require long hours at the gym and a disciplined diet—just go under the knife. Houses get built in under an hour (thanks to time compression). Watch abc’s Extreme Makeover Home Edition (hosted by Ty Pennington and his crack squad design team) to witness the home design, construction, wiring, plumbing, decoration, and habitation in under 1 hour (don’t forget the demolition and the flights to Disney World; minus the commercials, it’s about 30-40 minutes to do it all).
Illustration by Mark Andresen markandresenillustration.com
Designing and building a home is not like graphic design in scope, and therein lies the problem. If audiences see large scale designs happening between 8 and 9 p.m. Central Standard Time on Sundays, they expect (demand!) smaller scale design problems to happen much much faster. I call it the Time Compression Paradox: if a large scale project should happen in one hour; a project 1/10 its size should happen in 1/10 the time. The most prevalent place this happens with design students is software.
The student exclaims, I just cannot make Photoshop do what I want to!
The instructor replies, This is only the fifth week of class,
to which the student retorts, I know, I should’ve mastered it by now!
The truth: it takes years to master Photoshop; in fact, you will never master Photoshop. You may merely understand how to use Photoshop Creative Suite 2 for the work you need to accomplish: touch ups, color correction, etc. Creative Suite 3, 4, and 5 will require more experimentation and learning. With software, and most design tool use, it’s about the marathon, not the sprint—and it’s the same for getting a job.
Get Me Work, and Then Fame
Because the university has become a vocational training ground, students believe it’s the instructor’s duty to get the student a job. At one senior’s graduating exhibition, a parent approached me and asked, So, now you just have to get my daughter a job. This was not a poke in the tummy joke, nor light-hearted teasing. No, this parent really expected me to connect the student with work instantaneously. Make a call on my cell phone and presto! Having been approached about this before, I had a prepared answer, All of the teachers your daughter had, including me, gave her the tools, knowledge, and motivation to leave school and get work on her own. The parent’s face went from an optimistic-help-her smile to a downward are-you-kidding-me frown. Give a student a job, she works for a day; teach a student to work, she works for life. Oddly, the student realized this, but the parent could not seem to grasp the concept.
Illustration by Mark Andresen markandresenillustration.com
Even more unfortunate, and now more than ever, design has become synonymous with fame. Go to school; learn design; get a degree; get a job; and get famous. This is the American Idol Paradox: as more and more people take pride in looking at themselves or getting looked at by others, less and less of us will actually become famous—fame may even disappear. Paradox aside, design isn’t about fame—it’s about unfame. Client servicing is one of the most unfamous things you can do because it’s their name and their dollar. The entire creative process requires you to be unsuccessful: failed concepts, long hours, repeated attempts, constant revisions, massaging the details, and patience carving your career.
To those students entering school and primed for the workforce, just appreciate the fact that design is all about failure. Every designer I’ve ever met has failed, and failed miserably, and they continue to make a successful career out of failing.
This essay is based on Jason Tselentis’ lecture How Designers Fail, initially given to the AIGA Birmingham chapter.
Mark Andresen is an illustrator formerly from New Orleans, Louisiana, now living in Atlanta, Georgia. Over 1.5 weeks, he submitted fifteen illustration concepts for this article, of which three are featured above.
Well said, Mark. Keep up the drumbeat, as I and others will as well.
On Mar.17.2009 at 01:38 PM