Below is a list of very common mistakes that so called ‘graphic designers’ make.
How many of these do you do regularly?
1. Take constructive criticism too personally
2. Not knowing any famous designers in particular Paula Scher, Milton Glaser, Paul Rand and not knowing WHY they were famous
3. Not Staying Up on Current Events and Design News
4. Not Owning the Graphic Artists Guild Handbook
5. Charging too Little for Design Projects
6. Not Using Contracts to Cover Your Butt
7. Not Setting Deadlines for Projects
8. Doing Spec Based Work (If you like it you can pay)
9. Not Asking for a Down Payment before Starting a Project
10. Using Poorly Designed Fonts from Free Font Sites
11. Using Display Fonts as Text Fonts
12. Using the Comic Sans Font
13. Using too Many Different Fonts in One Design
14. Forgetting White Space is your Friend
15. Not Sketching Before Designing
16. Not Using Rulers on Screen
17. Relying Totally on the Computer, Especially for Kerning
18. Using Photoshop Filters After Your First 6 Months
19. Using Low Resolution Web Images for Print
20. Not Designing Logos in Vector Format
21. Making Logos Unable to Reproduce Well Small
22. Forgetting to Learn Keyboard Shortcuts
23. Not Saving Frequently
24. Not Backing up Files on an External Hard Drive
25. Not Getting Enough Sleep!
26. Stealing or ‘borrowing’ Other Peoples Work
27. Using the dash quotation marks instead of true quotation marks.
If you are doing the following (below) I wouldn’t call yourself a ‘graphic designer’, well at least not a professional one and would recommend doing some more research into the subject area.
12. Using the Comic Sans Font (for the right purpose
13. Using too Many Different Fonts in One Design
19. Using Low Resolution Web Images for Print
20. Not Designing Logos in Vector Format
But remember rules can be broken.
This list was compiled by myself and Gino Orlandi over at You The Designer.
What other mistakes do graphic designers make?
*By Jacob Cass*
