Have you ever wondered how those rock-stars designers find the time to be as productive as they are? Multi-blogging, twittering all day, conferences, collective projects… They are everywhere, all the time.
When you come back home, after a long day at work, don’t you feel the need to tranform into a gigantic potato couch? Do you still feel the creative vibe in you? Can you still watch a computer screen? Can you dedicate your entire life to your creativity?
Some do some letterpress, others some wallpapers. They talk about design while updating their personnal blogs. They decorate their home, and upload 125 pics to flick’r. They even find the time to read or watch movies.
Those guys are sure multitasking gods. But I highly suspect them to be more than one. Or to be able to skip sleeping time. Maybe a special drug, or some kind of genetic manipulation? Who knows…
Those same designer rockstars have a great portfolio, with those incredibly beautiful work that clients have accepted. No blue layout. No awful adds. No stupid gigantic logos. Hypnosis? Weapon threatening? How do they achieve to be not only talented, but also convincing? On the same scale, they seem to always have interesting projects. Strange thing that your clients are not that nice with you, huh? Do you have to do all the stupid stuff?
On top of that, they know all you have to know about the job. You fight to learn proper kerning, they know it by heart. You over-use Helvetica when they know a plethora of beautiful types. You barely know who is Paul Rand or Stefan Sagmeister, when they sometimes met them personnaly.
Plus, they often got style. Written, design, photographic or fashionable style. They are complete artists when you struggle to take a correct pic, or to wear something smarter than your usual grey sweater. Worst than that, they’re often funny, approchable, and quite nice.
My opinion? They are not real. Someone is lying to us, average designers. Just to make us feel guilty.
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Yeah the same kind of guy also exists in web dev. How the hell do they find time to learn the last cheesy technology? to achieve this damn project “just for fun” or “just to see what’s like to deal with this brand new api”?
And they obviously twit (twitte, tweet, twitter, never know) about the plethora of conferences, barcamp and so on they attend, and manage to get bored “oh well that was nice, but learnt nothing new”.
Damn, all I do is sweating on my hypothetic next blog design and barely find time to watch “My name is Earl”, when I don’t fall asleep before the end.
NPC’s they are, or something like this, I agree.
I tend to think about them like something life made to make us more productives. Come on, they can’t be humans !
Hehe, this gave me a giggle! I think it’s obvious superstar designers have a few clones of themselves, happily working away for them, while the real one leads the “designer” lifestyle.
That’s what I think anyways. Think about it. It could be possible.
Okay, so far we have:
- Genetically modified humans
- Non playing characters
- Life-sent (or kerning-gods sent) non-human creatures
- Clones
…
So we all agree that they don’t really exist. I’ll sleep better tonight.
Thank you guys.
Just like my bad marks in school, I blame it all on Mathematics!
First we must come up with a proper scientific definition of the “average designer”. So here goes:
average designer
n.
The designer obtained by dividing the sum of the super-set of all designers by the number of designers in existence at any given moment.
If you rated all designers on a scale of 10, these rock-star designers you speak of would be 9s or 10s. They have to be with all those super powers at their disposal. Unfortunately, the world is filled with bad designers. They’re the majority. You know, the people who like to set headlines in Times New Roman Bold stretched horizontally to fit the space, and who will swear by Comic Sans as the best body type invented since Baskerville! These people are 1s and 0s on our designer scale.
You know the problem with averages, don’t you? Because there are so many of them, and since the average designer is a perfectly scientific mathematical calculation from the whole, these bad designers are making average designers 2s and 3s rather than the 5s, 6s or 7s we could be!
It’s an outrage! Death to bad designers!
Unfortunately, since us average designers are mathematically so untalented, we can’t possibly design a devious enough plan for the mass destruction of bad designers. It just wouldn’t work well. We’d think it was brilliant when we first did it, and even when we were presenting it to the Supreme Council of Average Design, but then we’d remember too late that we forgot something obvious and ridiculous that ruins everything. After that we’d all just sit around and complain about clients on the interweb and nothing would ever get done!
Now, as horific as this is going to sound, the only way to raise our average selves to higher levels might be through teaching all those bad designers what a grid is, and kerning, of course. Who knows, sometime in the future we might even be able to make them understand rhythm and composition. I’m almost afraid to say this, but sometime in the perfect future maybe bad designers can even be made to understand usability and interface design *gasp*!
To that day we look forward, when the bad shall rise to new levels of OK-ness, and the average designer shall at last take their rightful place in the pantheon of wnnabe rock-stars!
(^_-)
Samir
I love this. But I have met Paul Rand. Does that make me a bad person. AND my maiden name was Koehn, pronounced “KERN” is American. Still I ask you: am I one of them. – signed average designer
@Samir. i maintain my judgement: you’re pretty creepy. I mean, spending so much time to write such a long post about…teaching bad designers?! OMG. Are you serious??? You scary guy.
@BJ You are indeed pretty suspicious. Born with a name like Kern? Meeting Paul Ran? Loving your job as much as you do? I suspect you to be sent by them to confuse us. Or worst, you may be one of them, trying to tell us that you’re average. Damn this disguise, we saw you there!
This post brightened my day, as I’ve been struggling to figure out how the hell they do it. It feels good to know that other people feel they might not be real, as it’s really hard to be good at what you do when it seems as there are design demi-gods walking around twittering/blogging/and doing all the work!
I’ve been around for a while and know the feeling you have expressed, but!…. If YOU think your average why should anyone else think higher of you?
You are unique! You are one of a kind designer. Love it, work it, improve it, whatever – just be what you are…. a designer!
This resonates with me. You have a new subscriber.
Haha.
@samir Nice one. Your logic is flawless. Assuming that the bell curve is dynamic, i.e. the set of bad,average and super designers is in flux, then there is still hope and virtue in pushing one’s boundaries because we might get to the other side of the bell curve one day.
I shall write a letter to the Supreme Council of Average Design explaining my plans. What’s their postcode?
Thanks to everyone for commenting!
@Kyle: you are not alone!
@Kristine: I’m working it out. But be reassured, my ego is not damaged, and I sometimes think of myself as a design demi-goddess (or I pretend to…)
@Mike: Glad to hear that! Thank you!
@Peter: Samir IS flawless. He has a rationnal explaination for almost everything in life, from design to gogo dancers.