Too Professional
August 4, 2004
At work I’ve been in charge of redesigning frontends (and sometimes the occassional backend) for a variety of personal, professional and non-profit web sites. The consensus from those I’ve shown my redesigns to is one of two things; it either looks great and marks an improvement or looks too professional, too textbook.
My experience in this profession, and in any profession if you think about it, is that you will never please everyone. Most people have different theories and tastes when it comes to design and it’s evident when you show them your work.
I began my career in art painting landscapes, sculpting clay and doodling cartoons. My work received the same breadth of opinions and to be honest most of the negative comments affected me personally and professionally. I remember reading about how Kevin Smith (director of Mall Rats and Chasing Amy, amongst others) received a negative comment on the a View Askew forum about his movie Dogma. He mentioned that he literally wanted to go to that guy’s house and ask him why he felt the need to bad mouth his movie — maybe even going as far as pushing him around. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure Jerry Bruckheimer could care less if he receives negative reviews so long as he breaks a box office record.
There is a point in our professional lives wherein some of the comments you’ll receive will be taken personally, but in those times you might want to take a step back and look at the full picture. You’re not going to please everyone and the ratio from those who like your design to those who don’t might be unbalanced.
What you have to remember is that you, as the artist, will always receive negative feedback but you will also receive positive feedback. No matter the ratio, positive feedback is most important in building your ego and round any edges wherein negative feedback might improve your skills, if you take it in excess of a grain of salt.
4 comments
Very true. You never will please everyone, or you might die trying. What I find annoying in dealing with the editorial process is people who know much less than you about what you are doing (your methodologies, principles, software packages, etc) that tell you how to do things. My problem is that few people that I work with really know what it is that I do and what all goes into my projects; therefore they think my work is much easier than it really is, thus making their comments and opinions, to me, even more useless. Did any of that make sense?
However, I’ve always believed that it is better to receive negative feedback than no feedback at all. No feedback means no one cares.
by Chad on August 4, 2004 at 10:04 am. #
Chad, that makes complete sense.
I refer to that as the “Cut and Paste” mentality — moreover, those who think it’s “easy” figure you literally cut and paste your work, much like you would with a Word document.
Then I have people that jam their “20 years of design experience” down my throat if they have an issue with the design. Honestly, when I’m 45 years old, I’m certainly not going to play that card. Who cares if you have 20 years design experience? To me, that doesn’t account for your abilities. What I’d rather hear is that you’ve had 20 years of learning and honing your craft.
by kartooner on August 4, 2004 at 10:36 am. #
A saying that has helped me conserve my sanity and put things in its proper perspective is “opinions are like a****oles — everybody has one”. Which is nothing but the absolute truth: opinionated talking is the easiest thing to do, thousands of people do it on the Web everyday; standing by them is the hardest part.
by beto on August 4, 2004 at 12:18 pm. #
Beto: You know what? I like that saying. Reminds me of Andy Dick’s new reality show, The Assistant. On a recent episode he says, “There is only room for one ass in this hole.”
by kartooner on August 5, 2004 at 11:27 am. #