The school year is finally winding down, and after tomorrow seniors will be out on their own! I’d like to think that we’ve prepared them enough through mock interviews, design boot camps, portfolio reviews, student shows, and critiques enough to face the ‘real world’, but it’s a scary thought indeed when I ask a senior to access something from her dock and she replies, “What’s that?”

What’s that? WHAT’S THAT?! Please excuse me for a moment while I cry at my desk.

I really did walk away for a while and not help her. It’s not really that I wouldn’t, I just couldn’t. She was very upset with me and frustrated that I continued asking her to fix problems in her piece.  The fact that students spend so long in a program only to refuse learning anything seems ridiculous. It wastes everyone’s time. This particular student also plans to attend a high end art school. But guess what? Not knowing the basics after a year doesn’t cut it in professional programs. Neither does not being able to take criticism. Not everyone is going to feel like your piece is fabulous. As a matter of fact, once people aren’t shy around each other with critiques any longer, everyone will have something negative to say about your work. Taking criticism is an art all on its own. You must learn to filter advice for what can be applied to you and your work and what is simply their preference for how they would do their OWN work. If the piece can justifiably be defended and the reasoning is logical, by all means, defend it! Then they can defend their own opinions. Suddenly an intelligent design debate begins and life as you know it because wonderful (because there really is nothing better than intelligent conversation).

Designing requires thick skin. Period. End of story. (Not end of blog.) So let me type a few things that are going to be very painful for you to read as a beginning designer. I feel like this is a good “marines” design intro: break you down to build you back up.

1. Until you spend at least a year or more constantly working in the programs learning the ins and outs, you are terrible in them.

2. Your designs usually will suck until you practice much more.

3. Gradients really aren’t okay, honest. Stop using them in everything you do.

4. Asking “what’s wrong with it?” as a defensive, angry question will not help you learn.

5. Critiques hurt sometimes. Cry a river, build a bridge, and get over it.

6. Stop leaving white pixels when cutting things out in photoshop to paste into other things! It looks like a lazy designer did it.

7. Rebuild grainy, pixelated logos in illustrator. It’s what it’s there for.

8. No, design isn’t easy.

9. No, you don’t know everything.

10. Yes, you CAN do this…but it’s not instant!

Apathy is the number one killer of design in my opinion. Right before someone is about to do something completely horrible to his or her design, I usually hear something along the lines of, “I don’t even care anymore. Just wanna get it done.” Bam. In that sentence, he or she has excused himself or herself from the responsibility of good design and decent working behavior. Care. Please. If you don’t, get out of design, because you won’t make it. You don’t get to always do what you want to do. The client usually picks the logo you hate the most. The ink looks more dull on paper. You drive through it all and suddenly you find that life does, infact, go on.

So bust it, start caring now. RIGHT. THIS. SECOND. Blow me away with your newly created charge for a design revolution. (I hope.)