The Five Stages of Designer Grief

Your design is your creation — you care for it, grow to love it, and then send it off into the world. But sometimes, they just won’t make it. You end up having to cope with a loss that pulls you through the stages of designer grief. That sense of “We nailed it! There’s no way they’re going to find a single thing wrong with this design!” begins to crumble the moment someone says “I don’t get it”, “this isn’t exactly what we were picturing in our minds”, or the classic “senior leadership talked and we’re going to take the project in a different direction, but we’re telling you now, instead of a month ago”. Sometimes you get the feedback first hand, usually over the phone. (God forbid the bad news is in person; never let them see you cry.) You can hear the sighs and the uneasy shifting in chairs from your teammates around you. Thank you, mute button. Other times you’re waiting for the news, counting down the minutes until the meeting your team is in is over. When they finally come over to your desk to break the bad news, you already know what they’re going to say just from the looks on their faces.

What comes next?

Denial

Welcome to stage one! Denial! At first you may think, “Yeah, right! There’s no way they want to change this. They don’t know what they’re talking about.” They must have seen the creative genius before them in our flawless presentation. We walked them through it pixel-by-pixel, button-by-button. Even the most difficult of clients could have seen the beauty of these comps, they were so incredible. How is this even possible? This should be on the fast track to being built right now. Where are the awards? Maybe this isn’t even happening? It’s one of my design fever dreams again, I’m sure I’ll wake up soon…

Anger

No, this is reality, you’re totally awake right now, and this is your life. And who is this on the horizon? It’s anger, stage two. You remember this old character from your days in design school. So now, with your mind clouded, you blame the clients for not seeing it from the user’s perspective, because shouldn’t that trump everything else? Don’t they see it? Whose fault is this? You’re looking to blame anyone but yourself, and you can’t help but be mad at everything. Now, you don’t want to lose any clients, so the anger has to stay in check, but they need to work with you a little because, well, you’re the expert! I find a walk outside helps, or, equally as helpful, venting to a fellow designer.

Bargaining

I’d give anything for this to be over. Classic stage three bargaining. Maybe it wasn’t the design, maybe we didn’t present the work in its best light — without the right pitch, great work falls flat. Maybe we can talk to them. Or maybe someone above them! Minor revisions! That’s all we’ll need! Maybe we’ll just move a few things around. It probably doesn’t need that much rework. The account team is compiling the notes from the meeting. Let’s just look at the feedback and break it down and we’ll come back with the rationale for what we did. But then you take a look at the feedback and at first the design looks like 90% us and 10% them. Then it starts to look like 50/50. And it only goes downhill from there as you picture the feedback implemented. You see your design lose its former glory.

Do you think we can negotiate this feedback? No?

Oh, and it’s due when? Is that negotiable? No? OK.

Depression

I’m starting to feel depressed, but that makes sense, because we’re at stage four! So, where did I go wrong? I should have never listened to the encouraging words Ms. Smith bestowed upon me in the second grade! “Follow your dreams, Matt, you CAN be an artist!” You’ve doomed me, Ms. Smith. My backup career as a Triceratops might’ve panned out better.

You start to question yourself as a designer once the blame on everyone else has run its course. You suck, this much is clear. What kind of a major is Graphic Design anyways? I think I’ve even seen it on lists titled “The Worst College Majors”. I just checked, I have seen it on those lists!

What am I doing with my life?

Acceptance

Here we are, at the fifth and final stage…until the next client call, then we start all over again. In the end, the client gets what the client wants. It’s just one of those things. It’s not like we’re not going to do the work. We always deliver and never miss a deadline. We might have even been right about some stuff, but if they didn’t get it, maybe it wasn’t as amazing as you thought. And some of it wasn’t the worst feedback in the world. It’s got to get done, so let’s just band together and do it. I’ll be fine because in the end — it’s better since it’s a collaborative effort. It’s not like nobody wants it to be awesome. It’s just that people think different things from one another. Different strokes for different folks. At the end of a project, you realize, like every project before this one, that design at this level is not life and death. There are a million ways it could have been designed, but there was only one way it could end up.

Good luck out there, my fellow designers. Don’t let the tough days bring you down and don’t regret the path you chose, because this path chose you.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a kick-off meeting I need to get to.

The views expressed in this post are that of the author and may not reflect the views of the agency or company.