Niche Market - Preflight Outsourcing

If you take a look in your purse or pockets, there will be a mix of new technology with the old.  As much as people keep saying that printing is a dying industry, your cell phone is probably sitting right next to printed items in your pocket.  From receipts, packaging and tags, to even the credit cards in your wallet, printing is involved in it all, and yet so many of the designers I come in contact with on a regular basis have very little understanding of the printing process.  

Having had 13 years of experience both running the presses and creating designs for others to run on the presses, I have a great respect for those who take what I design and make it look incredibly good in print.  I also have a great respect for those designers who take the time to learn the printing and finishing process before heading straight into print design. 

The division between design and the actual physical labor involved with finishing a print design is growing. At one time the pressmen and plate makers were considered the artists of the printing industry, now the artists (called graphic designers today) rarely even come in contact with the people who make their designs come to life on paper.  This division causes a bottleneck between the design process and the presses.  Designers know too little about the printing process, creating files that take hours to prepare for the presses.  A print ready file should only take minutes to send to the press.

It is at this bottleneck that the pre-press department usually sits.   The pre-press department takes files that are submitted for print, and preflights them (ensures that they are print ready files) and then prepares the necessary items needed for printing on the presses (layout and plating).   Already one of those processes is being phased out due to the increasingly more sophisticated plating equipment being offered on the market.  The plating process is beginning to be combined with the press printing process. 

A press runs by using plates, almost like negatives in film printing, for a print job.  Typically the pre-press departments for printing companies are held responsible for the layout and creation of those plates.  Companies like Heidelberg have been creating increasingly more user-friendly software and hardware for the creation of those plates, enabling the actual pressmen to layout and create their own plates from the files that are submitted to them.

Since this takes one task away from the pre-press department, and design is increasingly being outsourced to design houses, that leaves only one task left for the pre-press department to handle, preflight.  Preflight is the process for  reviewing and ensuring files are print ready before they are plated.  Once the task of plating becomes the pressmens responsibility, preflighting doesn’t seem like a job that needs to be kept in-house.  

I propose a web based pre-press company be created in order to offer printing companies the opportunity to outsource the preflighting of documents rather than pay the overhead of employing someone directly for the job.  Preflighting a document takes minutes, and it would be hard to justify the cost of employing someone directly to handle such a simple and easy task that has been automated by multiple software companies.

Not only could this be a useful tool for printing companies, it could be a tool for designers. Designers can receive feedback on a job before sending it on to the printer, possibly avoiding the mistakes that can happen if a file is not a print ready file. 

This new company would eliminate the bottleneck of files by creating an outlet for designers to send their files for input before sending to the printing company.  This would ensure that files only take minutes to prepare for the presses leaving the printing company to be able to spend more time on making the designs come to life on paper.  

The printing industry is changing, we need to make sure we change with it.

Wikipedia Entry - Kelsey Printing Company

The Kelsey Press Company was started in Meridian Connecticut by William A. Kelsey in 1872. The first press was designed by William A. Kelsey himself with the help of Gamaliel Snow, and was first advertised in Youth’s Companion for December 19, 1872.

Advertisement from December of 1872 in Youth's Companion.

Kelsey made the mistake of advertising a product that he had yet to manufacture and the original press design turned out to be a design that didn’t work.

Although his first press design failed to be a workable press, he created a new design for a 3”x5” press, named the Exclesior, which subsequently sold for $5 per unit. Because of the small size of the press and its low cost, it became a popular product for use in homes and offices rather than in large printing operations and has been cited as a factor in the rise of amateur journalism. Kelsey advertised the unit as a product for young boys and entrepreneurs which became his signature advertising ploy.

Kelsey Company Advertisement 1938

The first Excelsior Presses were produced by E.M Lockwood on contract in his own lawnmower sharpening shop and then in the factory Kelsey for production in 1876. His first press was inked by hand but was made self-inking in 1875. The company quickly grew due to the demand for personal presses, and because the Kelsey Press Company also supplied its customers with other printing supplies such as cards, ink, and type.

The company became incorporated in 1905 and through its success managed to beat out or purchase many of its competitors. One competitor in particular was the owner of the first building that the Kelsey Press Company leased for its offices, James Cook. When Cook realized the success that William Kelsey was having in the business of producing personal table top presses, he tried his hand at the same business, but Kelsey managed to beat him out and eventually bought J. Cook and Company. Below is an excerpt from William A. Kelsey regarding his competition that clearly shows the contempt he had for Cook.

“It having come to our notice that J. Cook (and Co), envious of the business success of our establishment, and aping its mode of business, has endeavored to steal some of our customers by offering certain articles, purporting to be put up like ours, at a price less than ours. Lest some be misled we give notice that We Will Fill Orders For Anything This Party Offers, Or Ever May Offer Or Advertise, At Five Per Cent Less Than His Prices... We make this offer because of the despicable character of the competition we propose to Kill. Healthy competition we welcome, but the other kind we mean to Fight till a different course is adopted than aping our plans Entirely.” (Connecticut Advertiser, May 1877)

The Kelsey Press Company produced many models of presses during its 120 years. Some of the models are the Junior (2x3”), the 3x5 Excelsior and 3x5 Excelsior Model “N”, 5x8 Excelsior and 5x8 "Victor" models, The 6x10 Excelsior, 9x13 Excelsior, and the 7x11 "Star" press.

The company continued manufacturing presses of all sizes until it succumbed to the waning demand for personal presses and had to close its doors in 1993.

The Excelsior press had its hand in building printing companies for 120 years, and is now a sought after antique for collectors around the world. There are many stories of how the Excelsior press was the first press owned by the starters of many printing companies still in existence today.

Many collectors still buy, sell and use the Excelsior presses today.

Listing of Officers at the time of incorporation - Kelsey Press Company, 1905
Name	Title	Photo
William A. Kelsey	President
F.C. Edgerton	Vice-President
F.L. Huntington	Treasurer & Superintendent

Citations:

Gillespie, Charles Bancroft. An Historic Record And Pictorial Description of the Town of Meriden, Connecticut: And Men Who Have Made It... A Century of Meriden "The Silver City.". Meriden, Conn.: Journal Publishing Co., 1906. Pages 61-63.

Harris, Elizabeth M. Personal Impressions: The Small Printing Press in Nineteenth-century America. David R. Godine Publisher, 2004.

Web Sources:

excelsiorpress.org/kelsey.html

http://users.bestweb.net/~bpress/res/art/kelsey1.html

http://www.thefossils.org/horvat/aj/lowcostpress.htm


The photos used in this posting are considered public domain with the exception of the first image listed.  The image was used in the book Personal Impressions by Elizabeth Harris.  If I were to attempt to make this a Wikipedia.org entry I would seek out permission from the publishers of the books in question in order to use the images.

Argument Rewrite #1

Most of my clients give a little gasp when I tell them what my hourly rate is.  What they don’t realize is that I charge less than most designers in this area.  Many of the design agencies charge double what we charge for the same services.

The problem with the field of graphic design is that it is underestimated as a profession.  I am not sure where this general attitude came from, but if I ever pinpoint the reason and time, I will do my best to build myself a time machine to alter history forever.

Being told daily that your work is not worth the same as everyone else’s has had a major impact on the egos of designers everywhere.  A divide among designers has cropped up, some have an ego that has grown too large in order to keep the harsh criticisms from causing damage, and the others have almost non-existent egos that allow the customer to walk all over them because they believe that their work is not worth the same as everyone else’s. 

I am here to give designers hope.   Here are a few solid reasons why hiring a graphic designer is worth every penny.

Customers end up paying the same amount for a pre-press designer to fix files they created, as they would have on a designer to create the files from scratch.

As good as you may be with Publisher, Word, MAC Pages or any other program that you think you can design in, all of these programs do not produce print ready documents.  

What do I mean by print ready?  I mean that the black ink is set to 100% black ink only, that the colors are converted to CMYK, and that if a bleed is needed it will be built into the final file.   If you really are good with Publisher, Word, MAC Pages or any other program, then you will know that all of these items are possible to achieve in those programs, but not easily.  If you have no idea what it is I am talking about, then you shouldn’t be attempting to design things yourself anyways, hire a designer!

As a pre-press designer for a printing company, I have seen first hand what those types of files can produce and it is not pretty. 

Most of the time, I have to spend hours adding bleeds and converting colors just to get those files through our file processing system, and even then they almost always don’t print the way the customer intended.   

Every print shop will charge you an hourly rate if they have to spend a lot of time fixing a file before printing.   Most of the time the hourly rate they charge for fixing a file, is the same rate as they charge for graphic design. 

If you are going to pay a design fee, you may as well send it to a designer from the start!

Professional designers have either spent years figuring out what works and what doesn’t when it comes to layout, or they spend a lot of money on an education to learn those same lessons. Personally, I learned things the hard way.

The price you pay for a designer incorporates either the education they have received, or the amount of working experience they have.
 

Early in my career, I spent a lot of time sending files that were rejected by printing companies time and again, but after 13 years, I can now explain that the price we charge for my services is worth every penny.    

If you are skeptical about what price you are paying for a designer, ask.  Ask them where they learned their trade and ask them for samples of their work.  Their work should reflect the price you are being charged.

Even if the price seems high, a professionally designed ad or marketing piece is well worth the money.

Professionally designed items have more impact on target audiences.

I don’t think anyone would argue against the concept that a good design is more effective than a bad design.  Take a look at the sample below.   

Which design would you prefer?  Design A was a file sent to me by one of my customers (I have left off the company logo and information in order for my client to remain anonymous).  The file was designed in Microsoft Publisher.  Luckily my customer was smart enough to realize that what they could do in Publisher didn’t make the impression they wanted, so I created Design B for them.  

Design B isn’t much different from their original design, but you can see that even a slightly more professional design makes a difference in the overall impression of the piece.   Instead of looking sloppy, the company looks organized.  Instead of looking like a business that cuts corners whenever they can, the company looks like they are willing to spend a little money to make their customers happy. 

If a design turns even one customer away from using your services, then your design has failed.  Hiring a professional designer will ensure that the advertising or marketing piece will have the impact that you are looking for.  Not only will the final product look better, but your target audience will respond in kind as well.

 

Don’t underestimate the power of a good designer.

Image Resolution How-To

The Internet is a perilous place to look for photographs for use in print design. Because of the wide availability and ease of search for images on the web, there has been an influx of design work that attempts to incorporate images pulled from websites, and most of the images on the web are not optimum for printing.

Since the web is constantly being streamlined for faster download times, images used in web design have been down-sampled, making them quick to download and small enough to view well on screen, but not large enough for professional printing.

So how can you figure out whether or not images from the web are high-resolution images (good for printing) or a low-resolution images (good for screen viewing)?

In order to understand why not to use images from the web, you must first understand what resolution means. Below is an explanation of resolution as posted on About.com by Sue Chastain:

Resolution is a measurement of the output quality of an image, usually in terms of samples, pixels, dots, or lines per inch. The terminology varies according to the intended output device. PPI (pixels per inch) refers to screen resolution, DPI (dots per inch) refers to print resolution, SPI (samples per inch) refers to scanning resolution, and LPI (lines per inch) refers to halftone resolution.

Knowing the definition of resolution is a good start to figuring out how to determine if the image you have is good enough quality for printing, but you will need to take some further steps to determine exactly what the resolution (PPI/DPI) of that image is. Below is a step-by-step processes you can take to find out if the image you have downloaded from the Internet is high-enough resolution for printing.

How to determine the image resolution of a photograph downloaded from the Internet:

iOS operating system (MAC)

1.     Find an image on-line that you want to download by searching images using a search engine such as Google or Bing.

2.     Right click on the image in your website browser and select >Save As.

3.     Save the file to your computer in a folder that you can easily find.  It might help to rename the photograph something you will remember.

4.     Navigate your way through your computer to the photo you saved in step 3.

5.     Right click on the image file and select >Open With.

6.     Select the program >Preview from the drop down menu that appears.

The file will automatically open into the program you selected.

7.     Once the file is open in Preview, select >Tools from the menu at the very top of your computer monitor. (See Image iOS.1) Image iOS.1

8.     Select >Adjust Size from the drop down menu. (See Image iOS.1)

A new dialogue box will open, displaying the image width and height.

If the measurements for the width and height don’t appear in inch measurement, then select the drop down box to the right of the width and height to change the rules to inches. (See Image iOS.2) Image iOS.2

Make sure that the “Scale Proportionally” and “Resample Image” boxes show a check mark before continuing on to the next step. If these two boxes do not have check marks, check the boxes to enable the “Scale Proportionally” and “Resample Image” options.

9.     Change the resolution of the image to 300 pixels/inch (for our purposes, PPI  and DPI are considered the same)

Because the box labeled “Scale Proportionally” is selected, the width and height of the image will change automatically based on the resolution that you choose.  Once you change the resolution to 300 PPI, the width and height measurement that you see are the largest size that the image will print without losing its quality.  If you print the image larger than the size indicated in this dialogue box, the image be fuzzy.

  

Windows Operating system

1.     Find an image on-line that you want to download

2.     Right click on the image in your website browser and select >Save As

3.     Save the file to your computer in a place that you can easily find it.  It might help to rename the photograph something you will remember.

4.     Navigate your way through your computer to the photo you saved in step 3.

5.     Right click on the image file and select >Open With

6.     Select the program >Paint

7.     Once the file is open in Paint, click the Paint tab located at the top of left of the window, highlighted in blue. (See Image WindowsOS.1) WindowsOS.1

8.     Select >Properties from the drop down menu. (See Image WindowsOS.2)

A new dialogue box will open displaying the image width and height and DPI (print resolution). WindowsOS.2 If the measurements for the width and height don’t appear in inch measurements, then click the option to change to inch measurement.(See Image WindowsOS.3) WindowsOS.3

Typically images pulled from the Internet will have a DPI of 72 or 96, which are the recommended size for easy downloading.  Since the image pictured is 120 DPI at a width of 3.4” and a height of 2.7”, the size of the image will be 2.5 times smaller at 300 DPI than the size of the image at 120 DPI.

9.     With some simple math we can determine the actual size of the image when changed to 300 DPI.

Divide 300 by the exiting images DPI.    (Formula: 300÷Image DPI) 300 ÷ 120=2.5

Then divide the width by answer to formula 1 above, in this instance the answer is 2.5:  3.4÷2.5=1.36

Divide the height by the answer to formula 1 above 2.4÷2.5=.96

After doing this small amount of math, I have determined that the image size of the example image at a print resolution of 300dpi will be 1.36” x .96”.  If you print the image larger than the size calculated, the image will be fuzzy.

  
If you do happen to find an image online that is high enough resolution to print, the image may be copyright protected.  There are better ways to find images to use for design.  Stock photography websites (istockphoto.com, shutterstock.com, corbisimages.com, etc.) allow you to purchase a license to download and use high resolution versions of many professionally photographed images.  These sites are great tools to help you avoid the pitfalls that can occur when you attempt to design using images pulled from a website.

Lesson Learned: Pulling images from the Internet for use in print design is a mistake.

I call her Eagle Eye.

Eagle Eye can sense a quarter of a point size font difference by taking one glance at a design.  She has become my favorite customer, but her eagle eye for slight design variations wasn’t always something I handled well.

She is a throwback to another time.  She owns her own advertising agency and has worked in the industry for over forty years.  At over seventy years old and five foot three inches tall, she is the smallest and seemingly frailest person I have ever worked with.  But she has a southern toughness that rivals that of Scarlett O’Hara.  I would imagine that her toughness has grown from forging a long lasting career in a field dominated by men, in a region of the country that has had some old fashioned views of a woman’s place in the working world.

We get to work together for a short period of time every year.  That one period of time lasts for only a month, but it has become my favorite month of the year.

My first experience with Eagle Eye was during the first year of my current job. I was still cutting my teeth when I was told that a customer was coming in for a job we had been printing for over thirty years.   Her name was Sonja and I was to update the brochure for the county fair that she was promoting. 

Our first meeting was easy enough, she had everything well organized and she had sketched out the changes that she wanted.  I took the notes and did my best with the file and hideous photographs I received to work with.   Although the design was from thirty years ago, I had to admit, it didn’t look too bad when I was finished.  After all, current design trends were focusing on a retro style, and I thought I had done a spectacular job. 

My thought was incredibly wrong.   She spotted fonts that were a quarter of a point size different from the fonts surrounding them, she spotted drop shadows that didn’t match by only two percent difference, and told me that every image had to have the background lightened.  By the time I was through with our meeting, I had two full days worth of work ahead of me.   I was flabbergasted.

Being someone who only gets more determined in the face of adversity, I went back to work and put together another proof.  She spotted more fonts that didn’t match, the drop shadows were now too dark, she wanted the blue lightened but not too light, and every photo I had taken so much time to adjust was not light enough.

After a few proofs, I started to explain why some of the changes she requested couldn’t be done the way she wanted. Some of the changes she wanted were changes that I thought wouldn’t work for press printing, but she wouldn’t budge.  She stuck, like pluff mud, to all of the changes that I told her were impossible.   I eventually gave up on convincing her of my side and cursed as I went back to my desk to try the impossible tasks she refused to see as impossible.

We did this through seventeen proofs, until she eventually approved it for printing.  I was glad to be done working with her, and I hoped I wouldn’t be the one to work with her the next year.   My hopes were dashed and the next year, when the same time came around I was the one.

The process went the same, but that year there were new challenges, the yellow background that had been used for the last fifteen years wasn’t yellow enough for her.  She would ask: “is that a different yellow from last year?”  I would tell her “No, it is exactly the same color that has been printed for fifteen years” and she would say “It looks like a different yellow, well let’s just try to make it more yellow.”  I would add more yellow and she would say “See, doesn’t that just look so much better?”  I would clench my teeth in frustration.

One of the reasons I had such a hard time accepting our relationship was the fact that she would look at something that she had agreed upon the previous year and tear it apart as if someone else had approved it.   It didn’t make sense to me that she would trash talk a design that was her own, and then approve of it after making what seemed to me to be inconsequential changes. 

After three years of the same struggles, I decided to give up and just accept all of the changes she asked for without argument.  I soon learned that none of her requests were impossible.  What started out as giving up suddenly turned into opening up.  My eyes were opened to her point of view.  I realized that I had completely pushed away her forty years of experience for my meager eight years.   I am ashamed to admit it now, but my ego caused me to assume that everything everyone learned prior to computer based design was obsolete.   How arrogant of me. Every change Sonja was asking for really did make the piece look better. 

Once I put aside my ridiculous notions, it dawned on me that her critiques of the previous years design were the mark of a great designer.  If Sonja had been born at the same time as me, during the era of computer-based design, she would have blown the socks off of the design world.

I now look forward to working with her every year and will mourn the day I no longer have the chance to learn from such a strong and talented role model.  The lessons I learn from Sonja are lessons I will treasure for my entire career. 

Lesson Learned: Your ego is young. Respect those who have more experience. Learn as much from them as you can.

      

The Design Shrink Web Presence

Unfortunately I don't think that I will ever achieve this level of recognition using the
name "TheDesignShrink."  I should have run a quick search on it before choosing it since
others have already dominated the search for this name.  I hope that my grade is not hurt
by the fact that I will not in 12 weeks get this name as recognized as I think the professor
has intended for us to achieve.  Search engine optimization can take a very long time and I
don't think that 12 weeks will give me enough time to dominate the search, but that doesn't
mean I won't give it a try!

The Day My Ego Was Out of Control

My ego has taken many forms over the years. Currently it is a design ego.  But it wasn’t always a design ego.  My first experience with my ego, and the tragedy it sometimes takes to rein it in, was my senior year of my undergraduate degree.  At the time I had no idea my career would lead me to the field of graphic design, and my ego had taken a different form as a production ego.  I was in Cortland, New York, and I was on top of my game as the President of the campus television station.  We were called in to film and broadcast the debates for the City of Cortland Mayoral race of 2000. 
I was organized and efficient, I was so sure that this was going to be the best production of my life.  My production ego was huge.  We were going to broadcast live over the campus (we didn’t have the capabilities to broadcast off campus) and then send the recording to the local station in town to broadcast the debates for the town to watch.

Everything was perfect.  I had lapel microphones on each candidate, we had carried the massive studio cameras from the station to the venue, and we put up lighting to ensure we had a great picture.  I tested and re-tested the live connection.  We created graphics to introduce the debates.  We were ready.

I only had two volunteers with me to run the production and they manned the cameras while I was directing.  My advisor was there proudly looking on as his prodigy of a student was making the campus station look really good.   With 5 minutes left in the debates, my ego was soaring.  I was the best and I always would be.  It was then that I happened to look down at the recording device and noticed that there was no tiny little red light.  My heart leaped into my throat.  My first thought was that the device had malfunctioned.  So I tested it.  I hit the record button, and that little unassuming red light came on so quickly that I thought it was taunting me.  I lost my breath.  I cursed.  Both camera operators glued their eyes on me asking what was happening.  I was so organized, so precise with all of my actions that day, how could I have possibly missed such a simple task?  No, my ego thought.  I couldn’t have forgotten to press the record button.  That would be impossible.   But as the debate ended my ego had run away to hide.  It was the only possible explanation.  I had forgotten to press the record button. 

Everyone tried to cajole me saying it was an easy mistake to make.  But, I was inconsolable. I was heartbroken.  My production of a lifetime was lost.  No-one had recorded it.  I hadn’t thought to run a secondary recorder from the studio.  The debate was a one-time only affair that would never be seen again. 

I slowly recovered from my mistake, swearing to never overlook the smallest details and always have a backup plan.  But, my mistake couldn’t be forgotten.  It turned out that the losing candidate would cite the fact that because of my recording miss-hap no-one in the town was able to view what he thought was a landslide win in the debate, he had lost the election.  He threatened to sue the school.  Luckily his threats were hollow, but the damage to my ego was almost irreparable.  My production ego went into hiding, and my design ego eventually found its way into my life. 

I still think about that time with mixed feelings.  On the one hand my ego was essential to spur me into attempting to put that production together.  If I hadn’t thought so much of myself, I wouldn’t have tried to produce the broadcast.  On the other hand my ego was so big it overshadowed the smallest details causing a misunderstanding that would haunt me for years to come.

The lesson I learned that day: an ego is essential to a creative minds attempt at greatness, but must be kept to a working level in order to be successful.

Anyone can be a graphic designer. Isn’t that why they created Microsoft Publisher?

I have had to rely on pricy graphic designers for too long.  Being part of my company's marketing department*, I started out with the same procedures as everyone who had previously filled my position.  I would come up with brilliant ideas that I knew would bring in the customers.  Then, I would list all of the vendors I needed to contact to figure out the cost of putting my brilliant ideas into operation.   The last vendor on my list of contacts was always my least favorite.  I dreaded contacting the graphic design agency. My ideas always seemed to lose their momentum when the designers stepped in.  They would gripe about the color that I chose, saying it was impossible to print (that is just ridiculous), or tell me that drawing in one dimension is not possible.  They always came up with some lame excuse as to why they couldn’t do what I wanted them to do.  Finally, when the recession hit, I was able to make my move. 

My bosses loved the work that the designers were doing, but the recession gave me a reason to break from sending them anymore work.  We needed to cut costs and I found the perfect answer: Microsoft Publisher.  I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I know how to use the program pretty well.  I told my bosses how amazing I am at creating graphics in Microsoft Publisher, and I outlined the cost savings of cutting out the designers.  They were skeptical at first, but after I finished explaining the cost savings, they went for it. 

I have taken over the graphic design needs for my company using Microsoft Publisher.  Gone are the constraints of using graphic designers.  Never again will I hear “the images you sent to work from were pulled from the internet, they are too low resolution to print well,” or “we will not copy someone else’s work,” or “the color you chose on screen is not a good representation of what will actually print.”  I never have to hear any of that again.  I am now free to design what I want, using fonts that are copyrighted, colors that won’t print well, and I am free from the constant whining about how what I want designed is copyright infringement.  I don’t care if the program I use to create my brilliant ideas produces “not print ready” files.  I can print what I design in Publisher on my own printer, so that should mean that it is a print ready file. I will use whatever fonts I want, I will create a brochure that doesn’t fold well and expect that the printer will fix it.  I will find the one printing company in town that accepts Microsoft Publisher files and I will demand my money back when it doesn’t print the way it looks on my monitor.  I will force them to read my mind on whether or not I expect a full bleed and whether or not I chose royal blue or purple for my designs.  I will create artwork based on what I think will work, whether or not it makes others cringe.  I like the look of unbalanced designs with five or more different fonts, photos that are fuzzy, 6pt illegible fonts, and drop shadows that look like the image is being lit with a 5000 Watt light bulb.  I am a marketing genius that design my own graphics using Microsoft Publisher and I am glad that I no longer have to pay those worthless graphic designers.

*The writer of the above piece was fired immediately after publishing this article.

About The Design Shrink

Graphic design requires a certain amount of design ego that has taken me 13 years to gain and learn to maintain.  Ego begins with confidence and the confidence required in a good designer must withstand harsh criticism, but a good designer must keep in check the ego can grow like a weed from accolades. 
  
Being a self-taught designer required me to think of my work as never being up to the standards of those designers who were formally educated.  After a few years of making mistakes, some that earned me a good tongue lashing from my customers, I finally had confidence enough in my own work to lash back at some of the harsher critiques of my work.   It is not easy putting your heart and soul into a design that is then torn to bits by someone else, most likely someone who has never used a design program and doesn’t know the difficulty in the task.   Having confidence in your own work will keep your ego from being bruised too badly by the torn bits of a great design.  I only recently gained that confidence, and now feel like I can withstand any critique of my work without crying myself to sleep that night. 

My confidence came with one simple logo re-design.  Twenty five versions of the logo later and my customer lost her sense of kindness.  She started the conversation with “You must not have been doing this very long…” and I knew then that I was in for a long brutal talk.  She lashed out at me for a while before ending her criticism with what has now become my favorite customer critique of all time.  She said “You keep drawing in two dimensions and I only want one.” 

I stopped speaking and thought for a minute about what exactly she was saying.  I knew what she meant, but realized that based upon the sentence she had just spoken she had absolutely no basis for being so rude with her critique.  I was astounded at the implications.  I had always taken these rude critiques as being fully justifiable since I had no confidence in my work but with one simple misdirected sentence, my confidence had just broken out of the box I was keeping it in.  I realized that it wasn’t worth my time to keep maintaining that working relationship and I politely ended the conversation.  I haven’t taken another job from her since.  Once my confidence was out of the box, it began to grow.  I had to do some weeding since then because my confidence grew too bold at one point, but that is a story for another time. 

There is very fine line a designer must walk, on one side is the confidence to defend your work to those who seek to destroy it, and on the other side is the extreme ego that seeks to destroy your working relationships.  I hope that my stories of walking that line will help designers everywhere balance their design confidence.