Criticism and your profession

[JL21]

I'm a graphic designer by trade. And as much as damn near any profession out there, everyone's a goddamned critic.

I don't walk up to lukethefirefighter and tell him how to put out fires. I don't tell zeus and lipp how to practice law. I don't tell accountants how to keep books. I don't tell engineers how to do whatever they do because I'm smart enough to realize that it's not my profession and it's beyond my depth. But for some [expletive] reason, everyone wants to tell me how they think my work should look.

I get paid to do what I do for a living. People actually give me money to make stuff look the best it can, to draw the eye where it's supposed to go (either on copy or images) and be as visually appealing as possible. That's the very definition of a professional- I get paid to do what I do, and I've been doing it for years. [expletive], I've been published for it multiple times, for crying out loud. If you don't get paid to do what I do, and you want to nitpick my [expletive] design that I'm doing for you (for free as a favor), you can pretty much go [expletive] yourself.

I blame all of the bull [expletive] desktop design software floating around that makes every [expletive] corporate schill and administrative assistant think they have an inkling about what looks good. It's maddening.

For the record, I realize my profession is far from the only one victimized by this crap. I'm sure doctors want to stab people when they start referencing WebMD, and professional chefs surely hate people who whine about their orders. Mostly I just needed to get all this [expletive] off of my chest.


(I should probably also clarify that this has absolutely nothing to do with the Cardinals History infographic thread)

[thrill]

I barely graze my toes in the water of design for my job, so I don't face what you face but here's what drives me crazy: people have no idea what's possible, what's not possible and what will take a lot of work and what won't.

The president of my company [expletive] jumped over the moon when I made a map of the US as a flat background in our company colors and raised the state of Nevada above it with a logo of the well known Public university he was meeting with overlaying Nevada and it took me 5 minutes. Dude thought it was a work of tedious art. Later, same guy doesn't know why it's taking so long for me to remove a bunch of dumb color graphics flattened right over the main subjects of a black and white photo from 1943 in jpeg form and gets impatient after like 30 minutes of painstaking work.

[JL21]

Yes. 1,000 times over, yes. It takes whatever time it takes. It's not something that's easy to quantify or measure out.

And especially when you're dealing with the 2nd scenario you described.

The content aware tool is both the best and worst thing that ever happened to design.

[IMADreamer]

I think the main reason I sold my business was people who had no clue telling me how to design memorials. They didn't understand that we had certain tolerances in order for things to actual work on a piece of granite so they would want ridiculously detailed designs but wouldn't pay extra for laser work. Ok I'm already off topic. For what it's worth I thought your Cards graphic was epic.

[haltz]

Everyone can go eat a dick and Yelp on my nutsack.

[MrCrowesGarden]

Since I work in the news industry, I am pretty sure it is my place to be universally hated and criticized. Some of it is good, most of it is not.

When I'm micromanaged to the point where I'm asked why my script read that "traffic was frozen in time on the interstate" of saying "traffic was like a parking lot," it's unproductive. I also don't get why it's so tough to understand that the news cycle is fluid. Some days it's busy, others it's not. And yes, on those non-busy days, sometimes a major story will get repeated during a two-and-a-half hour newscast that no one watches in its entirety anyways.

[StL Dan]

Officiating football and basketball is not my primary occupation, but, it has definitely become my passion. I can't even begin to explain the complexity of being a knowledgeable, unbiased, professional person on a competitive landscape where EVERYONE but you and your partner has some type of rooting interest.

People say the stupidest, most retarded [expletive] I've ever heard when I'm on the field or court. I can only smile knowing the moron b&m about my peformance would absolutely melt down under the same pressure, much less exhibit the same level of class and professionalism that I and my colleagues do.

[lukethedrifter]

Seriously, you wouldn't believe the verbal abuse that we take. Anyway, that's not quite the same as what jl is referring to. I did get to listen to my wife tell me about where our smoke detectors should go.

[thrill]

Seriously, you wouldn't believe the verbal abuse that we take. Anyway, that's not quite the same as what jl is referring to. I did get to listen to my wife tell me about where our smoke detectors should go.

Hahaa

[wart57]

Everybody thinks they know how to do my job better than I do. I have come to accept this.

But most of them would be totally lost in my job.