You are NOT a professional designer... because there is no such thing.

While messing around on Twitter, I came across a new follower who listed "professional designer" in their bio, yet again. Seeing self-proclaimed "professional" graphic designers and such is definitely not a rare occurance. People in creative industries who call themselves "professional" just always strikes a chord with me. Honestly, it upsets me. I can't blame them though; It has nothing to do with the person or designer themselves compared to the design industry and those who run it.

It's about damn time they do something about the way designers refer to themselves. It's time someone comes up with some sort of system that adequately and officially sets the crappy, the average, the great and the superior designers apart from eachother. Sure, with research and a little time, we can make a decent guess at who's better than someone else skillwise. But the point is, we shouldn't have to and neither should potential clients when seeking a new designer to hire for a job.

It seems like every other major industry has taken care of this dillema already, some of them thousands of years ago! So why hasn't the design world?? Professional American baseball players usually start working their way up in elementary school, then play in high school, college, then the minor leagues (which, by the way are further broken down into rookie ball, single a, aa, aaa) then the major league. When we go to college, we work our way up to the top and earn our degrees along the way. First we get our associates, then our bachelors, then maybe our masters or even our doctorate, depending on the field you're in of course. Whatever you end up studying, wherever you end up working, or whatever you end up just doing in your life, there's always something to work up to. Another degree, another position, another personal best.

What's so great about that isn't just having something to work towards. Obtaining a certain degree or just being able to give ourselves some kind of label based on what we've accomplished gives the rest of the world an easy way to acknowledge our achievements! The point is, it's not hard to devise systems that rank people within a certain field of work, especially when doing so has extremely obvious benefits. And when they do come up with a ranking system, no matter the field, the exact same attributes are taken into consideration: how much experience, training and education, and how much success. That's really it! The best MLB players are almost always the ones with the most experience, training and success. Same with the best doctors, the best teachers, the best managers and the best designers.

Until AIGA or someone comes up with a way to validate a designer's skill level, I think designers and clients will each face a major problem:

Designers and their clients won't always be getting what they pay for. I'm willing to bet that every designer has under-estimated the price of a project before and I'm also willing to bet that lots of designers (especially those with years of solid experience) have over-charged clients before because they knew they could just whip out an old template to get the job done. Crappy, but true! Either way, if designers had titles which they earned and could have on display, so much of this would stop happening. If I earned the title of "advanced logo designer" for instance, I would charge a certain rate that was in an advanced designer's range and the client would be assured that he or she would get what they paid for. Simple as that.

Sorry if I come off sounding bitchy about this at all but I seriously think that having some kind of way to fairly and consistently measure a designer's success would help everyone drastically; It would help designers get paid what they've worked hard to deserve more often than they do now. And as for clients, not only would they be more likely to get what they pay for as well, but it would be easier for them to see the difference between an average and a truly professional designer if they learn to understand what it takes to reach a certain level in design.

No amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation with detail. -Marion Levy

I'm always up for a challenge. This, however, is a challenge unlike any other I've come across as a designer. Not saying I'm not up for it, because I definitely am!! But I'm not sure where to start exactly. :) The task: Design a logo for a new company called A+ Survival Supply. "What's so challenging about that?" you ask. Well, YOU try putting the letters of the company together and see what you can come up with. Bet you it'll take at least 10 minutes of valuable time spent wasting away on Twitter, or whatever other site or project you could be spending your precious time on (or should be anyway) to come up with a logo that doesn't scream "ASS!!!" to all who see it. LOL. And no, only playing around with type and using the full company name does not count.


Anyway, here's my first concept:


Before you pick out the details, just know that this is a VERY rough draft and I have a lot of smoothin out to do, obviously. Especially in the S's. Ok, now you may comment. :D

Long Beach State Hall of Fame Poster Design- Final Draft

There is no such thing as a boring project. There are only boring executions. -Irene Etzkorn

Val!

Not sure if I told you this or not already, but remember how you wrote out all of those letters for me so that I could use them as a model/my inspiration to create my own font? Yeah, well, our project guidelines turned out to be pretty lame and I wasn't able to use them. Instead, I had to find a stupid picture of something with shapes that inspired me, and create a font that absolutely no one will ever want to use. There are people in class who are going off of pictures of high heels, chairs with odd shapes, office supplies like a freakin stapler, or paperclips, scissors....... whatever. Everyone's font looks like a cartoon instead of a clean, nicely designed typeface. Anyway. That's what happened, and I'm sorry I couldn't use it.

I just finished up my first draft (FINALLY) and still have some major edits to make, but I just thought I'd show you what I've been working on. We had to lay out our font with 4 letters per line, then include the picture our font was inspired by along with what we've named it. Hope you like it sister!!

Long Beach State Hall of Fame Design

This is my second (and last) pro bono project for Long Beach State Athletics. The final design will be printed on a 40" by 40" poster and will be showcased in the LBSU Pryamid for all spectators to see. The Olympic Medalists poster will be one of probably 4 special edition posters that I get to design; The other 3 will be something like "All-Americans" and "National Champions". The special edition posters will be mixed in with other posters that have pictures the other Hall of Famers of each year- each year gets its own poster. So, they'll all make up the new Long Beach State Hall of Fame wall!

I only used 2 athletes' pictures and copied them a bunch to get a feel for what it would look like, but once I get the concept approved, I'll edit/enhance/crop/trim the other 30 athletes' pictures and put them in the mix!

Hope you guys like it.