‘Confessions Of A Designer’, What Goes On In A Designer's Mind | Hacker News Reader

‘Confessions Of A Designer’, What Goes On In A Designer's Mind

designtaxi.com

27 pointsandycroll23 comments

Disappointing. I was hoping to get some insight into this designer's creative process. Instead it is just a series of hackneyed statements about how clients don't value design and Macs are better than PCs.

If you want a much more interesting take on designer-client communication, check out this project by Brighten the Corners:

http://brightenthecorners.com/page.php?jumpTo=56#i56

They took samples from 10 years worth of email received and split them into three posters: Positive, negative and neutral. They are all good, but the headline for the 'negative' poster is an absolute classic ...

Sorry, but this is the farthest thing from real design. Slapping a (poorly typeset) font onto a poster with some commonly commiserated points is not design. They might as well have ditched the "posters" and just shared the quotes/anecdotes.

Can't you designers just give Comic Sans a break? It's a fine font and has some fine places for usage.

No we can't, no it's not, and no it doesn't. There are many other fun, comic-y faces that aren't terribly designed.

Could you point out what objective qualities of Comic Sans makes it "terribly designed" when compared to other "comicy" fonts? Look, I'm not a particular fan of Comic Sans but I think the bashing of it is borderline childish given how many unreadable fonts there are.

Could you give some examples please?

Examples of alternatives? Glad to. Blambot(1) makes a range of great ones, especially Giant Sized Spectacular, and I'm personally partial to Loose(2).

(1) http://www.blambot.com/fonts_design.shtml (2) http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/zeptonn/loose/

These fonts (1) certainly look good but they are very different from Comic Sans, almost too pro. I think none of them capture the childish, random, non-professional feel that Comic Sans visualizes. I can understand why people loath Comic Sans but as I said, it has it's uses where more professional types fail.

I recently saw Comic Sans used in one company's printed invoices. I though it ridiculous until I discussed the topic with the people there. They actually made a very tactical decision in using the font. It was all about the feel of it.

Come to think of it, perhaps I'll found a fan club for Comic Sans. :)

If you want a humorous take, the classic "Missing Missy"

http://www.27bslash6.com/missy.html

Pretty accurate, but the designer overlooked one small design detail: all of the posters use the same crumpled paper background image. That's sloppy and lazy.

Here's my designer poster: Details Matter

Quite - I was also disappointed in her grammar. Anyone who did paid work for me and came back with something containing "just because... doesn't mean" would not get a second contract.

Depends on whether you hired the person to be a designer or a copywriter. But for such a short bit of copy I get your point.

I dislike these quotes. I would expect a good designer to be a professional, and to understand how all the people working on a product are important. In 'Confessions of a Designer', I sense mostly elitism and the idea that if you're not a designer, you can't make good-lucking stuff. Admittedly, none of these things are said quite that literally, so maybe it's just me interpreting the quotes that way.

IMO she's wrong about Comic Sans. According to 'Just My Type', teachers value this font, because autistic children accept/comprehend it easier.

I like "if you think it's simple, do it yourself" works for devs too.

But sometimes things are simple and just time consuming, so you'd rather have someone else do them...

That's exactly, what i wanted to write.

I feel like the sentiment portrayed in these posters could apply to almost anyone in any profession that happens to be feeling a little undervalued. This is not unique to design. More importantly, there is very little in useful advice. Disappointing this made it to the front page.

There is no attempt to educate clients in this just a number of blanket statements. I'm sorry, but in most industries you try to educate clients about what you are doing and why it's valuable - this is just telling people they are idiots.

I clicked on the link before I saw that it's Taxi, which is crap.

This sort of shallow thinking is representative of the designer, if we define designers very loosely and pathetically.

Perhaps it's just me, but I find myself wanting to say "If you think it's so easy then do it yourself" to designers rather than it coming from them.

Uninspiring. http://clientsfromhell.net/ is (funnier|sadder|closer to the truth)

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