The 20 Rules Of Being A Graphic Designer

It’s a tough life being a designer. Often your greatest work will go completely unnoticed to the untrained eye. You care about layouts, visual hierarchy, typeface, colour symmetry and resolutions but nobody other than other designers understand your struggle. With that in mind, I present to you “The 20 Rules Of Being A Graphic Designer”. Pass this on to the designer in your life and let them know you care...

1.

Brand Guidelines are designed purely to prevent you from doing anything remotely creative.

2.

You know what looks best but in most situations someone else who has no creative qualifications whatsoever gets to make the final decision on how it will look.

3.

It is almost a full time job letting down colleagues who have committed to deadlines that are impossible.

4.

You notice fonts when you're out in town, your friends don't share your excitement when you tell them.

5.

You made all their amends, they want it back how you had it first time.

6.

Nobody but you understands the difference between a vector and a bitmap.

7.

You are owned exclusively by Adobe and are not allowed to consider alternatives.

8.

You can tell how good a designer is by how they label and organise their layers.

9.

The client has changed the brief, this doesn't mean your deadline has changed.

10.

Facebook button and Twitter button………on EVERYTHING. Remember this rule applies to everything, no exceptions.

11.

What size it is to be printed? "Medium Sized".

12.

You use that many keyboard shortcuts, your left hand is almost as productive as your right.

13.

Nothing leaves the office without optimisation.

14.

You know off the top of your head the dimensions for a leaderboard, tower and MPU.

15.

"I have had an idea and I wanted to get your opinion on it" simply means "I have had shit idea and I want you to design it for me for free".

16.

Internet Explorer is like that grandparent that hates you and refuses to die. It has always been there, it has outdated offensive points of view, refuses to get with the times and yet you must care for it and pretend you love it like all the rest.

17.

Do not use Lobster, it was only cool for like a week and it's just not cool now, just don't do it.

18.

"The client loves it but they want it changing completely" is a phrase you are familiar with.

19.

You become the focus of every friend who is planning on starting their own business. They want you to do the logo but they don't want to pay. "It's ok as it will be great for your portfolio when it's a huge success…."

20.

When in doubt, Google Image Search.