This might be specific to Graphic Designers...

This might be specific to Graphic Designers... I got a layout file from a co-worker that was a mess...There were extraneous empty boxes, some body text was typed in native to the document, other body text was rasterized, other text was imported from a PDF that was imported from some other app, alignment of graphic elements was all over the place, etc. A MESS. If I'd shown this to my Art Director when I worked in magazines I would have been fired on the spot.

Now, my co-worker is a very nice person, but still a newbie with InDesign. The file I got is irritating my 17-years-in-publishing OCD, so I tightened up what I could for my own usage. I've offered to fix her file in the past, but no one else around here seems to think that spending the time to fine-tune this catalog will affect sales - when one of my previous books for my division increased sales over the previous year. Should I just breathe, keep my own work up to my perfectionist standards, and leave their catalog alone?

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14 Comments

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  1. Anonymous

    Do you want this person fired?

  2. Stacey Dunleavy

    No. But I wish she was willing to accept some help - if nothing else, some of my techniques might make future updates to her catalogs easier.

  3. Anonymous

    Hey, if you are the art director or Senior designer, it's probably best to recommend some training in best practices for the Adobe programs you mentioned. I think that when directors or managers recommend a specific training to an employee, and actually tell them to sign up for workshop/class etc, the message is clear. But critique framed as "feedback" is useless without concrete steps. Since you should not be teaching these things at this point, I would propose specific trainings as a way to keep employee updated and keep learning.

    If you are not the director, you shouldn't criticize because you don't want to deal with their messy files.

    I don't know any designer that loves working on other designers' files. I detest working on someone elses' project Indesign/photoshop, it's not my file and there is no notes or instructions, you just have to click here and there to get the idea of what they did. This is just a preference.

    She can package, clear the canvas and remove errors etc, outline fonts, etc, it will still be their file, their way of working, their organization.

    Perhaps asking how you want her to share the files will be more straight to the point and what you need. If it means a lot to you, you can be creative and create an internal protocols guide where you lay out how designers in the company can name, save, and prepare files for sharing and filing...

    What I notice is that the more experience one designer has, the more attached to their way of doing things they become. Also arrogance and burnout increases, something that a novice lacks.

    Don't let it get to you. Perhaps you can be a role model and not compete. You are lucky to work with a fellow designer, I'm the only designer in my company and others don't understand the challenges we face because they don't understand the Graphic design field at all.

    My issues in the company I work, is that they only see design as a decorative instrument. "Make things cute" or "Make it look good" "Do your magic" Nobody reads the stuff I design, and it looks good, but I'm not involved in the decision making in my job. I have like 5 managers and people above me who tell me what to design, they think they know what the need is. And it usually amounts to making things look good so that we look like we are prepared. Pleasing other people with designs.

  4. Anonymous

    I don't know who is more insufferable to work with, colleagues who only care about the result product looking "cute" or colleagues who care more about how you organized the design files.

  5. Anonymous

    Designers for the most part have no power. They have to design what others expect and get approval on what to design. They don't make decisions on the organization level in terms as to why or what should be designed without "approval". Maybe if you are an Art Director or Leader in the company maybe you can push your ideas, but there's always someone at the top who wants to make a website or a logo just so that they can look good in their meeting, even if it doesn't accomplish anything of value. Sometimes these people want a logo in a couple of days, when a real logo takes time and research. But they don't know what the process is or the job is. They think you click buttons and make things look nice. I think it's another profession that needs to evolve into a leadership role, not a tool.

  6. Stacey Dunleavy

    Yeah, and that's why I'm job hunting to get back to a real studio... Even getting a deadline out of these guys is like pulling teeth..

  7. Stacey Dunleavy

    I'm practically the only "designer" here in this office. Like I said, my co-worker works for a separate division and her usage of Adobe products is pretty basic. And again, I may be type A about what I see in a file, but at the very least things should be aligned and consistent. If every item of text was in outlines, I wouldn't mind - but some is and some isn't. Some of the headers are Bold, others are the Normal font with a stroke added.

    Meanwhile, I'm dealing with a sales manager who says "it doesn't have to be perfect!" when I'm at least trying to make it not look like excrement.

  8. Stacey Dunleavy

    Oh, and as a postscript: I came into this job picking up from a designer who did every layout - in: Photoshop.

    I had to retype every single page (all text was rasterized), chart, extract every photo (when the file was a layered .PSD) into InDesign. Only then could I create stylesheets and a consistent look to our books.

  9. Anonymous

    I hear you. You care about quality work, that is admirable.

    Is it possible her files are corrupted or that you are using different systems? (Macs and PCs) I've had that happened to me.

    But perhaps your coworkers just is bad at designing. That happens too. How she keeps the job? that's another story for a separate post.

    My advise would be to tell her what you need whenever you have to deal with her files.

    For example:
    "Is it possible for you to send me the file with layers labeled and attached fonts instead of outlined? I think I can work better when I have it set up this way in my program...bla bla bla"

    What I mean is that you should ask your coworker for what you need so that the work is smooth and for her to go over her file or anything you should know about it before you have to deal with it. It's not fair to you to have to guess or struggle through it, if she created it.

    If that continues, there's redundancy here, where the work is being done twice. First by her, then revised by you. That seems like a lot of cooks for one project. no?

  10. Stacey Dunleavy

    I think, she - like me - inherited files that didn't have the best production techniques. I remember skimming through one that her predecessor (also an Adobe newbie) made and I saw the same mistakes, but was tied up with other projects to help her out.

  11. Anonymous

    You can offer to help train & clean up the messy files or just make the revisions yourself and not bring it up. But beyond that I'm not sure anyone is focused on it.

    You can't make people care about quality. All you can do is a stellar job and offer people your expertise. You can't change the culture or make them care.

  12. Anonymous

    Just reading this gave me anxiety and flashbacks to working with other people's design files. Don't even get me started on file organization! Whether it affects the final art or not, it's just lazy.

  13. Stacey Dunleavy

    In addition to redoing every layout that was originally built in Photoshp (!), my predecessor's files were a mess. I had to do a search for almost every product shot - there were three hard drives, with sub-sub-folders, some items were filed under the salesman's name, others under the brand group, layouts would be under Birthday Party photos, etc. It took me months to just reorganize the hard drive.

    Tell me if I'm crazy Type A if projects should be under the main product line (BrandX) and then a subfolder for the kind of project (BrandX catalog, BrandX flyers, BrandX posters, etc.)

  14. Anonymous

    With today's expectations of graphic designers, we just don't have time to mess around with this kind of sloppy work.

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