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Deadlines sometimes affect inspiration
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
It seems that my deadlines article has sparked an interesting discussion. One of them being an article entitled ”The Tao of Deadlines” by Andy Rutledge. To be honest I had to look up the meaning of Tao (Taoism) to understand its true meaning. Hey, I’m just a simple girl and don’t believe in making things sound smart or fancy job titles as those aren’t making you a better designer. The strength lies in what you create and not in what you call it :)
First I want to make clear that I have nothing against Andy Rutledge and I respect his work and opinion as fellow designer. So don't read anything other than that in the tone of this article. It's just that I think Andy sees things too black and white and I want to show that circumstances differ from project to project. There are different kinds of deadlines, like I sometimes set myself up for one. The pressure of such a deadline doesn't have the same effect as a client's deadline. A client's deadline that is unreasonable kills the creative aspect, because my focus is mainly on the deadline rather than solely on what I'm creating. The truth lies somewhere between extremes I think, too much isn't good and too little makes you procrastinate. I agree that the title of my first article was somewhat misleading and you might got the impression that I hate deadlines. That’s not the case at all. I think, just as Andy, that projects need deadlines. You need to set a time frame, even if it’s only just as a guidance. Deadlines need to be doable and reasonable that’s all and that is where talking about it comes into play.
Source: Veerle
First I want to make clear that I have nothing against Andy Rutledge and I respect his work and opinion as fellow designer. So don't read anything other than that in the tone of this article. It's just that I think Andy sees things too black and white and I want to show that circumstances differ from project to project. There are different kinds of deadlines, like I sometimes set myself up for one. The pressure of such a deadline doesn't have the same effect as a client's deadline. A client's deadline that is unreasonable kills the creative aspect, because my focus is mainly on the deadline rather than solely on what I'm creating. The truth lies somewhere between extremes I think, too much isn't good and too little makes you procrastinate. I agree that the title of my first article was somewhat misleading and you might got the impression that I hate deadlines. That’s not the case at all. I think, just as Andy, that projects need deadlines. You need to set a time frame, even if it’s only just as a guidance. Deadlines need to be doable and reasonable that’s all and that is where talking about it comes into play.
Source: Veerle
Comments[ 2 ]
Deadlines are meant to be broken. Most deadlines I have encountered are unrealistic and definitely kill inspiration. A web designer can only work under certain conditions as creativity only comes at certain times of the day (often with it being late at night). Andy is unrealistic in his demands of designers. I will not pray at his alter.
I work at a screen printer (for steady income) along with doing freelance work. I have my inspiration killed every day as I have to produce crap (you can’t call it art) by the hour sometimes. I am in a situation where quantity over quality reigns supreme. What the customer wants is what they get even if it looks completely wrong. All of the clients think you have a magic wand and tell the computer to do stuff for you. Sometimes jobs do come in that I am able to spend time on properly thinking out, but I have to work on it off and on while working on other jobs. I leave my job almost everyday feeling underappreciated and inable to satisfy my desire to design, design I studied to get my degree.
Andy Rutledge obviously has never worked in a situation like this. Clients can kill both inspirations and cause you to miss deadlines. Repetitive phone calls by the client causes their work to be delayed. Inability to get proper information to do the job can cause a job to not even be started until after its deadline, especially when the only way to contact the client is by playing phone tag. Clients can be both incredibly stupid and obnoxious, especially in a situation where they are ingorant of the process that has to be followed to get their job completed such as screen printing.
Sometimes the client himself/herself is a designer using us to print their work. You would believe that would be a relief, but in fact they can be worse than a typical client if they do not understand the process of screen printing as it has different capabilities, advantages, and disadvantages than typical printing on paper. The ability to print white, the different thicknesses of the inks, and how they behave on different fabrics have to be taken into account, causing the separations to be quite different from what’s expected.
I couldn’t agree with you more. Being a graphic artist is a job where you typically have to deal with people. Nothing is a straight line.
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