Care and Feeding of Your Graphic Artist/Designer™©®: A Guide for Civilians

Warning: this column enforces some stereotypes and dispels others. This is adapted from a document I have actually sent to my freelance clients when they hire me for graphics design.

Congratulations on your recent acquisition of a Graphic Artist/Designer™©®! To maximize your experience with your new designer, there are several guidelines that you should keep in mind when communicating with your new Graphic Artist/Designer™©®.

A. Designers use Macs

We understand that the presence of an Apple logo in your corporate offices can lead to extreme feelings of anxiety and inadequacy among IT professionals, but the Mac platform has long been a standard choice of the design world. It's superior Graphical User Interface and performance has always appealed to designers. Apple's total lack of beige coloring over the last several years has also encouraged creatives in many disciplines to adopt the Macintosh platform. Tell your IT department to get over themselves, and learn to live with the presence of Fruit in your network.

B. Designers are artists to a degree, so expect some abnormal behavior.

To the normal business world, certain behavioral and social patterns are considered acceptable. These patterns include, but are not limited to:

silent and constant keyboard use while staring at the monitor for hours on end
adherence to normal business hours.
keeping a clean and organized workspace
conformity to normal business dress - tie, shirt with buttons, dress shoes, etc
use of standard office lingo
perceived nervous ticks

The following material will acquaint you with the behavioral patterns of the standard Graphic Artist/Designer™©®. Remember, there is a large degree of variation within the Graphic Artist/Designer™©® genotype.

B1-3 Cubicle/Workspace Behavioral Patterns

Design is a creative field, driven by moments of inspiration. Designers find inspiration from many sources, including music, viewing examples of good design and internal thought processes. To the untrained eye, these attempts to find inspiration can be misinterpreted as Mismanagement of Company Temporal Assets, or in common office lingo -" wasting time/screwing around."

The time that designers spend surfing the web is not a function of boredom, but of research. If you were to examine the surfing habits of the average designer, you will find no pattern to the sites visited outside of the realm of aesthetics. The average designer will bounce from a flower shop to a pharmaceutical company to a defense contractor to a design studio to a clothes manufacturer to a bakery — with no obvious trail of related content. However, do not consider the content of the sites visited, but the use of design principles: color, typography, navigation and layout. Your Graphic Artist/Designer™©® is actually performing research for his/her pending work. Similarly, the time spent looking through periodicals and listening to music is time spent mulling over the best way to communicate content from the company to the intended audience. Only if deadlines are not met and the design outcome is substandard should you punish/fire your Graphic Artist/Designer™©®.

Because creativity and inspiration do not occur regularly during normal business hours, you should allow your Graphic Artist/Designer™©® to keep nonstandard hours at the office. If you require a 40 hour work week, expect that the Graphic Artist/Designer™©® will spend some time late at work, and thus will want to come in a little later the following morning.

Finally, designers like to surround themselves with examples of good design and visually interesting objects. This is known as the nesting instinct. Their cubicles and offices will be a major divergence from the company norm of a few pictures of loved ones and an poster of a mountain with a motivational tagline. Expect multicolored slinkies, wall to wall posters, action figures or stuffed animals, appropriated (also known as liberated or stolen) signage and other various bits of junk. This spectacular array of items serves to create an environment that functions more as a home than as a workspace. By creating a friendly environment, the creative impulse is fostered, and the Muse (sold separately) can guide the designer in their creative endeavors.

B4-6 Office/Workplace Social Patterns

Your Graphic Artist/Designer™©® will likely be most comfortable in black attire - often boots, jeans and turtleneck or other shirt. This instinctual attraction to dark neutral clothing is a function of both the fear of monitor reflections and a desperate need to conform to Art & Design social patterns of nonconformity. To explain the last statement, all designers and artists fear conformity to social norms, but also feel the human need for conformity and social acceptance. Therefore, the socially acceptable display of nonconformity within the design community is to don the "uniform" of black or dark neutral clothing, as opposed to the "suit" (a word considered an insult within the design community). Any efforts to force a designer to wear a tie or skirt will often result in: the male finding the most hideous tie available, often adorned with images of comic book characters; and the female picking a hem line outrageously inappropriate for the designated occasion.

Standard office lingo can be learned by designers. However, all Graphic Artists/Designers™©® come equipped with a extensive library of technical and aesthetic jargon. For example, do not censure your Graphic Artist/Designer™©® for making PMS jokes in the workplace. The Pantone Color Matching System, or PMS for short, contains many less than attractive colors that designers are likely to joke about. Be prepared to be inundated with aesthetic terminology that will be unfamiliar to most of your coworkers. When your designer proclaims that the latest version of the Web site "has no rhythm," they are NOT suggesting that music be added.

Finally, you might notice that your designer flinches, recoils and engages in dramatic eye movements in odd or unexplainable patterns. This is not a symptom of Tourette's syndrome, Parkinson's Disease, or any other neurological disorder. This is simply a reaction to a perceived offense to their aesthetic sensibilities. For example, when a civilian critiques a new logo design, claiming it is "not fancy enough - add some decorative doohickeys," the resulting eye rolling and recoil is a instinctual reaction to an attack. You see, designers have territorial instincts like any other professional. If you were to stand in a doctor's operating theater and exclaim "move the spleen over a bit, I don't like it there," you would be removed from the premises. Immediately! However, most civilians do not appreciate the value of design, and often "back seat drive" — or attempt to influence a design to fit their own aesthetic sensibilities or lack thereof. Therefore the flinching, twitching, eye rolling and jaw dropping is a reaction to an offense that most civilians do not realize they are committing. Allow your designer time to properly train the civilians to recognize the value of design, or you will find yourself the victim of a "runaway."

Summary

Caring for your Graphic Artist/Designer™©® is an ongoing process, which will require a small recurring monetary investment (regular upgrades of Apple computers and software) and allowances for your Graphic Artist/Designer's™©® behavioral differences. The payoff for this investment will be realized in higher sales and clearer communication with your employees and customers.

Email Joel Davies

See Joel's "iMaculate Conception" page here at Applelust