Design resources

+5 for a Useless Critique

Criticism, or critique, is a well accepted practice in design*: designers cycle (or iterate) through making-thinking-remaking, until they become reasonably satisfied with the emergent result, or they run out of time and energy (hopefully the former). At key intervals within this process, designers seek feedback on their work, usually from colleagues, classmates, superiors and, sometimes,…
Read more

No, by design.

When you hire a competent, qualified, and experienced designer, you hire them to say “no” to you when it is needed. If you are refusing to accept the designer’s capacity to say “no” as a critical part of their skill set, you are simply interested in hiring a mouse monkey — someone slightly more skilled in Illustrator…
Read more

11 Tips for Better Slides: Combining Text and Image

First, let’s review 2 core principles: You are your presentation. Slides are for your audience, but they aren’t your presentation. Good presentations are about personality (yours), great content (that’s you having something interesting to say), given in the right place and time, and to the right people. Less is more. That goes for how much…
Read more

Design Spec Work is Polite Theft

I’ve been a graphic designer for almost 20 years and, for the last 15, I’ve been a design teacher. While doing my first design degree, part of my classroom experience was to work—in competition with my classmates—on client projects. It was typical for all of us to pitch a completed project, with one selected by…
Read more