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I worked in design for a little over 10 years. Having an art director "tear apart" your work is generally the best scenario. They can usually back up the critique with helpful insights. Regardless of tone.

The most dreaded situations, for me, were clients who would tear something apart, but offered no helpful reason why. "Jazz it up" was something repeated an alarming number of times in meetings. I can also remember someone saying that they wanted us to use more colors since they were paying for a full color ad. Because, you know, that's what cost all the money. The colors.

> Having an art director "tear apart" your work is generally the best scenario. They can usually back up the critique with helpful insights. Regardless of tone.

Definitely, and in my professional career I have never had my work thrown out in a way which made me feel bad. I have been ignored a few times only to be proved right a few weeks later though!

Yes, harsh but valid criticism is one thing, if the director/instructor is legitimately an expert and is truly trying to make you better.

If he is only feeding his own ego by being an asshole, it's better to get away.

It can be hard to tell the difference, especially if you are young.

Everyone thinks they're a designer because they can see things with their eyes. In reality they have no clue wha is going on. As a developer who is acutely aware of my shortcomings in design it hurts to sit in client meetings with designers. The whole process is totally back to front on about 95% of the projects I have worked on.

Ah, yes, “Jazz it up,” cousin of “Make it pop.”

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell

One of my managers in a former data science job reviewed a 15 slide deck and gave me feedback. On 4 slides he said "ok"; on the other 11, he said "so what?"

I've been a client for a variety of artistic professionals.

I'm not artistic, don't have that kind of creativity, and can't use words that would be helpful to you.

I can only tell you whether or not I like it and give a fumbling attempt to explain why.

This is why I (or my company) hired you: to do something that we can't.

It is incredibly hard to do the translation between designer language and client language. I've worked with some graphic designers who are absolutely amazing at taking my malformed mumblings and using them as effective critiques and requests. But not many people can do that and it leads to frustration on both sides.

This is why those who can do the translation can make incredible money and run their own firms. Just like how people in other industries (accounting, law, coding...) who can translate across domains make more money and run firms.

If you're not artistic, and you don't have that type of creativity, what makes you believe you're the best judge of what is good or not? Yes, you may have the money to pay them, but if you're hiring them why don't you just trust their judgement instead of your admittedly poor sense of creativity?

I'm asking this out of curiosity, not attacking you, since you said yourself you're not creative and rely on these people for their creative talents.

I am not sure that creativity and criticism are not somewhat orthogonal.

You can know whether the aesthetics of something does or does not work without being able to determine why.

For instance, I can't cook much more than eggs and bacon, but I can sure tell whether a dish at a restaurant is any good. And I can even narrow down a dish's quality into various broad classes: disgusting, bland, okay, good, really good, and great. Most other aesthetic creations are similar.

But that feedback isn't too helpful without specifics like "too salty", or "too runny".

> You can know whether the aesthetics of something does or does not work without being able to determine why.

You can no whether or not they work for you without knowing why. But the nature of subjectivity is you can't know whether they work in a more general sense without analyzing the elements of the thing in question against an accurate-enough picture of the distribution of tastes in the population.

You may know if you like a particular dish, but would you think your sense of taste is good enough to pick enough dishes to make a successful restaurant? Probably not, especially if you don't know how to cool.

Just because you like or dislike a particular creative piece doesn't mean that you have what it takes to dictate a piece of creative work that will be exposed to millions of people.

No, but you could probably pick a restaurant to cater your wedding, which is more like what OP was describing.

I have goals to achieve, information to convey, possibly emotions to instill. For product or marketing I as a client would know the target market and positioning. Does the design reflect that? Does it have references that are too close to images/products of a competitor (or failed old products of ours)? I can assess whether the delivered work hits the goals that I have - I may only realise after seeing one iteration that an expressed desire actually detracts from a goal either due to ineffective communication or my not understanding how things would come together.

Is the image very busy? I may know that I'm going to want to use it along with other assets or in presentations - how is it going to affect that? How do the colors and shapes used compare to other assets it will be used beside, how will it work in different mediums? Bright yellow isn't great for projectors or for legibility.

One example - a global accounting firm introduced a new framework. They had a diagram that had core elements, supporting concepts, and overarching concerns. It would work fine at full size on a laptop but was very poor for display on a low res projector to an audience of 100. This design was core to the effort and would be used in very many situations with projectors to large audiences.

I may say that I want to look like James Bond skiing - you design me a yellow ski suit very similar to the intro of The Spy Who Loved Me. I'm horrified because I want a look similar to the all black look of Daniel Craig in Spectre. My inability to communicate about design created a problem but I can judge on whether or not you've achieved my goal.

Translation across domains is VERY HARD.

If you can't jazz it up, at least make the logo bigger...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AxwaszFbDw

Or you know, more pizazz!

So feedback like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCud8H7z7vU

The post is talking about a situation where engineers get the first feedback on their work 3 months after they started, and it turns out the work is "all wrong". And then the work is discarded and replaced with a fake demo. This is entirely different than what you describe, which is a culture of tough but objective criticism.

Thank you for pointing this out. Not getting any feedback for 3 months and then getting ripped apart in front of external stakeholders sounds like a horrible place to work.

Been there, done that. My "panel member" for our telemetry and power design review was another electrical engineer who was senior to me. He was supposed to give me feedback leading up to the review, but he didn't. So when the design review happened, he shredded me in front of our customers so badly that the customers actually complained about him to my senior managers.

It was indeed a horrible place to work.

> It's a key skill to learn to be able to let go of the work you have done, stand back and analyse it dispassionately then go back and re-do things.

I wish this principle was adhered to across all industries where we (as individuals) get our 'work' reviewed. If you can't do your best and then be able to let go of it, it causes some serious pent-up anger and demotivation. I find myself slipping into 'brutalist feedback' mode (that I'm used to from creative work), before worrying about offending the recipient.

I'm not sure if this is coincidental, but anecdotally I found that my biggest shift in being able to let my creative work 'go' was after reading The Power of Now[0] and The Chimp Paradox[1], and practicing mindfulness. Fundamentally, I think it's an ego issue as to why it's so hard to take criticism. I'm certainly not saying ego-death is a prerequisite, but instead to learn how to short-circuit your anger away from feedback as a result of taking it too personally.

It is after all, not the work itself, but how it is received that you should be striving towards!

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Now [1] - https://chimpmanagement.com/the-chimp-paradox/

I know what you mean.

To instill creativity in my direct reports, I have to smack them in the face when they fail to demonstrate sufficient creativity.

I know it sounds harsh, but they're developing great callouses on their face which they would not have obtained had it not been for my unorthodox training.

A lot of people might think I should apologize, but ask them in my presence if they would rather work elsewhere!

/s

this is damaged behavior -- you are seriously projecting "that is the way it is" and then casually drop a line about high rates of suicide? wtf

I think the suicide line was specifically to highlight that despite that being "the way it is", it has very real unacceptable consequences.

100% this. I've been through a BFA conservatory program. Having your work torn apart, respectfully, in public happens every single day. When I moved to the corporate world I was shocked that no one knew how to give or receive feedback. I've seen and given a few talks on how this activity can by applied in a corporate setting.

This is so, so true! I went to Parsons School of Design in the late 70s and the final presentations were ungodly brutal. It was very normal for people to leave in tears. The good part about this (the bad part is obvious lol) is that many people who shouldn’t have been there and would not have made it in the commercial art business would go and do something else after these reviews. It was probably for the best.

During my short career as an in-house illustrator, it was perfectly acceptable for the art director to kick your ass and generally abuse you. You learned to develop a thick skin really quickly!

I’ll never forget my college drawing professor. It was a hard class to get into, and I was young and trying to keep up. He came over to my easel, stroked his chin, and said, “yea, looks good.”

Pauses, steps back and says, “I think it can use one little change, may I?”

He then takes a white paint brush and proceeds to erase my entire drawing with it.

“Ah, much better”, he says.

He was a total asshole but had a cult like following. Those of us remaining by the end of the semester loved him. To this day I credit that class with dramatically improving my drawing skills, but it definitely wasn’t for everyone.

Fostering excellence means weeding out the crap as that just brings everyone down and makes everyone else suck.

Even letting minor defects pass implicitly creates a culture where hey minor defects are okay.

Reminds me of the movie Whiplash (“Were you rushing or were you dragging?”).

Without the cymbal throwing, of course.

That sounds like Stockholm syndrome. Telling you your work was bad or even garbage is one thing. Doing a bait and switch in conversation and then destroying someone else's work/property is just abusive

I wonder what he would have said if you responded : "interesting, I think that's your best work" <with sly grin>

...harsh criticism can be hard to take, I often try (and fail) to inject some humor into the situation to take the edge off.

I don't recall the studies offhand, but I remember reading that this kind of macho attitude generally has worse results than actually constructive criticism. That wouldn't surprise me. Not many people respond well to this, and it can easily turn into abuse.

I would love that guy. Yeah, he seems brutal from your words here.

But, that can often be what it takes.

I have had similar experiences. Once a person breaks through, the relationship changes.

> having your work taken apart at a presentation

What, I'm currently through this process with my Masters' dissertation. It's not exactly disheartening, but it's uncomfortable.

Bonus, the math-heavy (I'm in computational physics) 70-page documentclass-article thing has a couple of asides that are so, so wrong (1.5 years ago I didn't really understand a lot of things) and it's embarassing to have them pointed out.

But eh, I'm glad I'm going through this process. ---

I'm an amateur student of philosophy and often want to blog about certain ideas I think I'm beginning to have. But I'm not sure enough to put my name on them! I wish I could hire a professional philosopher (many of which will be underemployed anyway) to look over my stuff and tell me when they're embarassingly wrong rather than just out of the box.

It's like the academic version of being scolded about running into the street. You surely will not make those mistakes again. I remember my dissertation the same way. They weren't abusive, but they were not going to sugar coat when I was simply wrong. Felt pretty intense to be grilled like that but boy did it teach me a lot.

You are wise not to. Even with the help its a long way from years of grad school:

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2012/02/the_my...

I know "amateur philosopher" is a trope, but I've read a lot and have tens of notebooks filled with gradually-with-time less-and-less cringeworthy stuff. I can also often point out to flaws of scholarship in scholarly material -- stuff jerry-rigged into an argument in open contradiction to what the original material says in context.

In engineering, we typically have (mostly) logical discussions on the merits of designs. There are sometimes strong opinions, but they are typically backed by non-subjective data. Subjectivity is frowned upon.

When I started getting into the arts, I was introduced to the culture of "workshopping" pieces, i.e. have my work criticized. It was disorienting at first, but the honest feedback was very useful plus it helped me develop a thick skin. It helped me get better fast.

State of design in tech today:https://youtu.be/F6Srzcm8EEg