How Not to Belittle Your Fellow Designer Friends
A guide for all of you non-designer folk.
I know what you’re thinking, “We really need a guide for this?” As a fourth-year Graphic Design student on the verge of beginning her career and coming from a family filled with doctors, engineers and lawyers who really don’t understand the concept of Graphic Design(or any design, for that matter), I’m here to tell you: we (as a general population) absolutely need a guide for this.
Why Do Artists/Designers Get Belittled?
The answer, I’ve come to realize is plain and simple: The media, and movies have portrayed artists/designers as lazy, depressed, unmotivated, nonintellectual individuals who sit around and do nothing but drink, do drugs, and draw. This is NOT an accurate depiction of any professional artist/designer, just as it isn’t an accurate depiction of any other respectable profession.
The thing that people seem to miss is that a serious artist or designer takes extra measures of becoming professional individuals in society. They do this by working day and night pumping out work, reading new articles on the practice, learning new techniques, and understanding the history that came before their work. Essentially, this works just like any other practice.
The thing that people don’t seem to understand is that art is a trade. We have to spend our entire lives learning, reevaluating, and critiquing ourselves in order obtain a level of mastery. Some people will never reach this level no matter how hard they try.
Yes, there are those kids in design school that only went into design because they “didn’t know what else to do” and their “parents made them go to college”. They were under the impression that art/design school is easy. I, for one, have met my fair share of these students. Every time I hear someone say something like this I can’t help but laugh. Say that after gaining four years worth of eye bags which are the badges of four projects a semester. Each of these projects thirty hours worth of work. Say that after 4 AM sleepless nights attempting to submit a project on time, then sitting through a 3 hour critique in which all of your hard work is torn apart in minutes. “This is much harder than I expected it to be, this was supposed to be my blow off.” And this is only for one class.
Ways to Avoid Belittling Your Designer Friends/Family Members(Or anyone, for that matter)
- When you don’t know what it is exactly that someone does, DO NOT just nod your head and move on to the next subject. Ask questions.
From my experience, most people don’t know what a graphic designer does. Either that or they assume it’s just creating t-shirts and fliers. I have this sort of a conversation 90% of the time when speaking to non-designers. In fact, happens to frequently that it really surprises me and grabs my attention when people understand the nuance of the profession.
More often than not though, it begins with the person I’m speaking to being intrigued by me. When I reply to the recognizant general question “What do you do/study?” they just stare at me. Just stare. For a good thirty seconds, before changing the subject entirely. It makes me want to flick them in the forehead for being rude and then just turn around and walk away. You just told me you don’t care about what I do, and basically my entire life.
Yes, it’s that serious. You just told me my profession is not even worth a follow up question. Ask me what it is that I do if you’re not sure. Surely if you knew, we’d have more to talk about.
2. Don’t Say, “Wow you’re really smart, why are you in to art?”
Do you want to get smacked? Because if you do, please proceed.
For the record, some of the smartest and most forward thinking individuals I have ever had the pleasure of encountering were artists. You can memorize things? Congratulations! We think for ourselves and challenge concepts and ideas on a daily basis.
3. Don’t Say, “You don’t need a degree for that.”
Just like any other profession, creatives need degrees. We need degrees to be recognized, we need degrees to understand general concepts like aesthetics, history, and technique. Yes, there are some individuals who get by without going to school for it. However, these are far and few in between, and usually are exceptionally gifted.
Don’t get me wrong, if school isn’t the route for you, that’s perfectly okay. But don’t belittle individuals who want to master their trade by going to school and learning from other people who have already mastered it. In the case of design, employers and companies will throw out your application when they see you don’t have a degree. We get degrees in order to be considered for jobs (once again, just like any other profession) and once they see we’ve gotten the degree, our portfolio (our work) is often what gets us the job.
4. Go out and meet people who have different professions — who have different lifestyles than you.
I’m going to leave you with this one. There are so many other views and ideas and professions other than your own. If you find yourself only amongst peers who do exactly what you do, and believe exactly what you believe, you are limiting yourself immensely. Go out to local events, network, make friends, and meet people who are from different walks of life and learn about them.
There is so much more to learn about this world and life than what we allow ourselves at times. If you find yourself not understanding something or someone, take the extra time to research or ask and learn. This is the most essential step to respecting anyone who is different than you. Keep an open mind, and go out and meet people who have views that are different than yours. You’ll be surprised by how much you’ll learn.
