Articles - Written by Gino on Monday, November 19, 2007 11:04 - 25 Comments

25 Bad Habits of Graphic Designers

1. Taking Constructive Criticism Personally

2. Not Knowing Paula Scher, Milton Glaser, Paul Rand and Friends

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! Stop Drinking so much Red Bull!

Do you know any more bad habits? Let us know in the comments!

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25 Comments

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reezluv
Nov 19, 2007 12:02

hey…

I like your blog a lot.There’s a lot of useful tips.thanks:)

and these habits really make me feel funny a little bit.I’m also a designer in my country..:)

Elle Driver
Nov 19, 2007 13:19

I guess this would be an obvious one, but:

26. Copying/stealing another designer’s work and appropriating it as your own.

Keep up the fantastic work with this site!

Gino
Nov 19, 2007 13:24

Thanks for the kind comments!

Yes thats a good one Elle I see a lot of scams on forums and classifieds where people will offer fake contests and steal your submissions.

I will be writing a post about common scams designers should watch out for soon.

Amanda Vlahakis
Nov 19, 2007 17:33

Oh no, guilty of way too many of those!

Hangs head in shame and resolves to improve….

Johnathan
Nov 19, 2007 18:44

This is great! I submitted it to Digg

Gino
Nov 19, 2007 20:05

Yes I think we’ve all experienced some of these things one time or another =)

Jon
Nov 19, 2007 20:24

I really hope people don’t do most of those. Maybe the title of this post should be “Stop calling yourself a designer if you do these 25 things.”

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Nov 20, 2007 11:58

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bsilvia
Nov 20, 2007 12:03

1st and last are 100% true :), but hey:

12. Using the Comic Sans Font
13. Using too Many Different Fonts in One Design
19. Using Low Resolution Web Images for Print
20. Not Designing Logos in Vector Format

???Someone calling himself/herself a Graphic Designer with those mistakes??? Maybe a Web Designer, maybe…

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nelson
Nov 21, 2007 4:06

25. Not Getting Enough Sleep! Stop Drinking so much Red Bull!

guilty as charged

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Jacob Cass
Nov 22, 2007 4:13

Gday, Another I would add would be using the wrong quotations marks and not hanging punctuation marks.

I have added your post to my website http://www.justcreativedesign.com which i have just launched.

Cheers bud.

Claw
Nov 22, 2007 6:18

I must agree with Jon…”Maybe the title of this post should be “Stop calling yourself a designer if you do these 25 things.”

matelo
Nov 22, 2007 7:01

5. Charging too Little for Design Projects

So true!!!, is too hard to know what is little or too much. The oder day I send an offer in which I though it was a just price, I never had an answer back.

Cindy
Nov 22, 2007 7:37

hey! I am a student in Korea International School, and I’ve been searching for blogs that are….exactly like yours and I want to expand my blog like yours also.

I am a prospective student to go to a designer school in New York (Perhaps Parsons or SVA) and I thought it would be a great idea to start a designer’s blog.

If you have any tips or advices for me, please help me along! Thanks!

Gino
Nov 22, 2007 11:56

Hey Jacob thanks for the post, your new blog looks nice I will bookmark it and keep an eye on it!

Cindy feel free to email me directly at gino[at]youthedesigner.com if you have any specific questions about starting a blog, I will be happy to help as best I can.

Thanks for all the comments guys!

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HeavyGod
Nov 27, 2007 5:58

Really good and really interesting post. I expect (and other readers maybe :)) new useful posts from you!
Good luck and successes in blogging!

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