How to Be a Graphic Designer without Losing Your Soul by Shaughnessy Adrian

Author:Shaughnessy, Adrian [Shaughnessy, Adrian]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Itzy, Kickass.so
ISBN: 9781616891169
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Published: 2012-03-20T04:00:00+00:00

Building a reputation

Designers depend almost entirely on their reputations for their livelihoods. Therefore it pays to have a good one. Yet despite the ease with which some people acquire one, a reputation isn’t easily gained; it has to be earned, and it has to be forged out of the raw materials of our personalities and our work. Today, such is the appetite for graphic design that many designers—and not just the famous ones—have the spotlight thrown upon them. Even new studios can attain minor celebrity status. Nothing wrong with this, you might think, except that young designers look on admiringly and think, “it must be good to be the object of so much adoration,” when in fact too much attention can be destructive.

Being the “next big thing” is rarely desirable. It will perhaps help propel the studio forward for a few months by opening the occasional door and attracting one or two new clients. It will certainly be fleetingly enjoyable to have your views sought by design journalists, and to have work featured in magazines and sexy new design books. But flip back through the design press from the past three or four years, and you’ll find designers tipped for success that no one has heard of since; you’ll find reviews of monographs from studios that don’t exist any more. The reason for this is simple: for every client who is excited by a designer’s fame, a dozen others are put off by it. There is even a theory that predicts that if you have too much fame it boils over and scalds your feet.

In a reader’s poll run by the British journal Creative Review, the eminent British designer Peter Saville failed to be voted “Best Graphic Designer Working Today,” a category he’d won on two previous occasions. This was unexpected: the designer had just enjoyed a year of staggering success. He’d held a much-admired one-man show at London’s Design Museum; he’d published a long-awaited monograph, and he’d enjoyed an unprecedented (for a designer) amount of coverage from the non-design press.6

Patrick Burgoyne, the editor of Creative Review, reflected on this: “Peter Saville in particular seems to have suffered from the exposure afforded by last year’s Design Museum exhibition and book: from winning best graphic designer two years in a row he now fails to make the top three. It’s no reflection on his work or his long-term place in the design firmament, I’m sure, but perhaps an example of the contrary nature of whatever passes for fame in the graphics micro-world.”7

“Micro-world” is right. Fame in graphic design circles is a bit like fame in dentistry; it doesn’t travel beyond the profession. No taxi driver ever heard of any graphic designer. Ever. And for those designers who fancy themselves as iconic figures, there is always the sharp-bladed cynicism of other designers (evidenced in the comments section of any design blog) to act as a sort of quality control filter: we can’t fake good work—we really have to do it. Attempts to fake or hype success are always spotted.

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