INTIMIDATION.
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- vague
what's in the design spectrum.
you have super minimalist, pretentious designers who only ever use Helvetica, splash one or two circley lines on a glossy stock of paper, and repeat it over and over again for every client with pages of babbling theory behind it.
you have motion designers at places like Psyop, ThreeLeggedLegs, etc. all producing ridiculously complicated works with massive polish and skill.
you have young illustrator kids who take the same styles and copy them, to some good effect, in every depthcore/whatever site around... taking lots of stock photography and drawing lots of cute illustrations all over them.. and 3D abstract figures all over..
you have guys like Joshua Davis who simply code thnigs and produce lots of works for lots of high name clients and get paid to tour the entire world endlessly..
you have the animators and artists working at Pixar, or any leading 3DFX house in hollywood, who ironically are completely "out" of the online design scene and are mostly unknown except in the real world, in their environments..
...you have the webdesign crowd that is obsessed with web standards, to the point of throwing validation badges on every single page they make, even a stupid local church Ministry website, all with the exact same web2.0 style trends (horizontal strips, worn faded edges, etc).
the list can go on.
if you happen to fall into any of the "lesser" categories in this huge designy spectrum, dont you ever feel intimidated.. or crapped on... or like a piece of shit compared to the bigger, much cooler, much more talented acts out there. dont you look at your work, full of spirographs and lines of helvetica, and say "wow.. this is really mundane". or dont you look at your illustrations and say "wow... people are doing this already, only theyre doing it animated.. and better".. or dont the motiongraphics guys look at their work and say "yea.. its cool and all, but we're still not even good enough to work on full feature films"..
on. and on. and on.
yeah.
- madirish0
no.
- funny. you should.vague
- why?madirish
- because everyone looks down on everyone else who's not as good as them.vague
- 100% disagree. this is clearly a mental disposition you have either developed, or inherited. i honestly do not feel that in any way.madirish
- I look down on everyone, but I have yet to meet anyone who is not better than me, and I mean this as a person, haha.flavorful
- CALLES0
clift notes anyone
you see
i'm doing an uber design in the background and cant read all of this
- Jaline0
this needs to be blogitized.
- jamble0
I pretty much only use Arial when I build sites and I endlessly travel around Yorkshire building sites for companies you'll never have heard of.
I fucking rule.
- saunakspace0
i love good work. it inspires my style.
- 4hero0
I used to feel a bit intimidated a few years ago, but no longer.
- CALLES0
personally i think designer are a bunch of premadonnas cocky and a lot of them think that they are better than to guy next to me... so i get on here and joke around with their cynical view of pixel life
- lvl_130
nope. not really.
- mikotondria20
No, in the same way that when I see nicer cars than mine driving around I don't think less of mine, or by extension - myself.
I don't see taller or better looking, or better paid people than myself and think - oh, I want to be like them, why am I stuck being crappy little me ?
It's because I am no longer an adolescent, and I have become less obsessed with trying to asses world and my peers to the end of trying to find my place in it.
Many people do much better work than I could ever hope to do, but they're not me, they don't have my life and don't have that privileged position of seeing everything I have, or be able to use the hard work that I've put into getting into the position where I can use my talent and skills to do what I want to.
I guess Im lucky in that almost everything I see done by other people I know I can do better, whether or not I actually get round to doing it.
So no, in summary - it's something you'll grow out of...just enjoy those moments of 'discovery' of your own work, realise all artistic creativity is just a way of reflecting and expressing what's in us all, and focus on that very thing and the work will flow as you develop your craft (learning to make your tools part of yourself).
Fuck the lot of them.
Joshua Davies seems like a really nice bloke, but it doesnt interest me to select 5 of 10000 organic tree shapes from an algorithm, but I heartily admire his ability to take this concept from his head to a gallery and a then to a bank balance, but that is business acumen, salesmanship and timing.
- ian0
Why so down baby?
I know you hate the helvetica random circles thingy, but its not all that bad. Sure I look at work thats beautiful and get a bit jealous but you can't let that shit get in on you or you'll never do anything.As Rand said, do the best you can and try to be happy with the pixel fucked mess you end up with after the client has asked you to 'jazz it up'.
But I'm working with a guy who basically does the GF Smith catalogue design every time we pitch for something, it is gettin on me tits cause Im sweatin out new work while he's coming up with new reasons why 'its right for the client'. Can't let it get to me though otherwise I wouldn't sleep at night.
- kodap0
U suck at teh intornetz
- vague0
indeed. Joshua Davis is less impressive as an artist and far more impressive as a businessman if you ask me.
look at his freaking site schedule. traveling all over the damned world as he pleases, probably all paid for.
- not to take away from his skills, of which he surely has. but i appreciate his ability to garner lots of money and attention moreso.vague
- His work, whether to your taste or not, is (or certainly was when he did it) cutting edge and original.jamble
- Josh has unbridled/rivaled passion when it comes to what he does. I wish you 1/4th of what he has, and you'll be alrite, haha.flavorful
- What ever happens to all of the overflow text in these little notes? Do they exist somewhere that I just can't see?eb6
- Yea, you can view source them actually.flavorful
- hmm, not workingeb6
- yea thanks. i never said the man doesnt have insane skill. i said im more impressed with his ability to sell it to clients, becuase its a bit "out there" for "average corporate people".vague
- eb60
it's a job.
- smpl0
I have only this to say: with talent alone you don't get anywhere
and your text sounds depressing, cheer up and live
- madirish0
how long have you been at this all? or better yet- how long have you been actually "working" in general for? are you fresh out of school?
honestly, if you are cutting on JD like that, you may not have the best vantage point for all you are saying. or, maybe you do and just like to cut down.
- _niko0
It's probably a by-product of this mass information sharing.
when we were kids in school, all of us were probably the best drawers in class. We felt pretty good about ourselves until you bumped into the kid from a different class whose work was slightly better. It made you feel slightly inferior but perhaps it motivated you to do better.
Now multiply that by all the classrooms in all the schools in the world and you might see why you feel a little intimidated.
Use it instead as inspiration and benefit from their ideas and work.
It'll make your work better as well.
- seed0
Find your own niche and do work that makes you happy and pays the bills. You could spend your life mastering drawing for instance. Animating that is a different chosen discipline.