25 Bad Habits of Graphic Designers

Articles   November 19, 2007  by

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!

 

Cadence is You The Designer's senior blogger, and the most jack-of-all-trades of the staff. She's always trying out something different every day, some of which fuels her posts here on the blog. Let her know if you want us to post more about your favorite topic - she might know more than a thing or two about it!

Articles
8,629 views
99 Useful Resources for Graphic Designers
Resources
10,126 views
Graphic Design Terms
Inspiration
283 views
Who Designs Those Google Logos?
30 Responses
  1. reezluv   -   November 19, 2007 at 12:02 pm

    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..:)

  2. Elle Driver   -   November 19, 2007 at 1:19 pm

    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!

  3. Gino   -   November 19, 2007 at 1:24 pm

    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.

  4. Amanda Vlahakis   -   November 19, 2007 at 5:33 pm

    Oh no, guilty of way too many of those!

    Hangs head in shame and resolves to improve….

  5. Johnathan   -   November 19, 2007 at 6:44 pm

    This is great! I submitted it to Digg :)

  6. Gino   -   November 19, 2007 at 8:05 pm

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

  7. Jon   -   November 19, 2007 at 8:24 pm

    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.”

  8. [...] for Design Projects 6. Not Using Contracts to Cover Your Butt 7. Not Setting Deadlines for Projects Continue… (0 hits) Posted by Dmitry Utkin  |  November 20, 2007 design [...]

  9. bsilvia   -   November 20, 2007 at 12:03 pm

    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…

  10. [...] de 25 Bad Habits of Graphic Designers en You The [...]

  11. [...] Paseando por algunos blogs de diseño se pueden encontrar buenos consejos como los que se ha molestado en traducir Manchográfico en este post. Los originales son de You the designer. [...]

  12. nelson   -   November 21, 2007 at 4:06 am

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

    guilty as charged :(

  13. [...] Fuente: You the designer [...]

  14. [...] 25 Bad Habits [...]

  15. [...] de 25 Bad Habits of Graphic Designers en You The [...]

  16. [...] Dac? tot am avut 10 “porunci”, avem ?i 25 de obiceiuri proaste. [...]

  17. Jacob Cass   -   November 22, 2007 at 4:13 am

    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.

  18. Claw   -   November 22, 2007 at 6:18 am

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

  19. matelo   -   November 22, 2007 at 7:01 am

    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.

  20. Cindy   -   November 22, 2007 at 7:37 am

    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!

  21. Gino   -   November 22, 2007 at 11:56 am

    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!

  22. [...] LINK OF THE DAY: You The Designer, another great resource. See especially “25 Bad Habits of Graphic Designers”. SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Ghosts in the Gradients”, url: [...]

  23. HeavyGod   -   November 27, 2007 at 5:58 am

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

  24. [...] 25 malos hábitos de los diseñadores gráficos (autoría del propio blog traducido del original 25 Bad Habits of Graphic Designers) y con 20 malos hábitos de los clientes de un diseñador en blog vecidad gráfica (este [...]

  25. [...] Habits of Graphic Designers December 16, 2007, 1:51 pm Filed under: Uncategorized Thought this was kinda funny, pretty true too.  No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for [...]

  26. weberica   -   July 4, 2008 at 10:31 am

    Charging too Little for Design Projects**** eh.. in croatia doesn’t metter if you are great web designer. Important is only how much do you charge. If more than 1000 euro per site (or 50 euro per site design) then you will hardly find any client :((( and soon it will be worst

  27. [...] For the full list of tips, click here. [...]

  28. Ferenc Szabo   -   December 12, 2008 at 3:32 pm

    I don’t agree with #12 at all. I just checked out the Comic Sans font it looks perfectly fine and legible. Or is this one of those things that will only annoy other graphic designers, and not the actual target audience?

    As for not knowing who Paula Scher, Milton Glaser and Paul Rand are, how does that preclude one from being a good designer? It’s like saying “You can’t possibly be a good architect/musician/painter/film maker etc if you don’t know who [insert some names of people who excel at that particular craft] is”.

  29. mohamed   -   December 24, 2009 at 9:43 am

    Thanks for the advices but I want to ask what it means by

    18. Using Photoshop Filters After Your First 6 Months

    Thanks

  30. [...] you have any BAD HABITS? Check out this site for some funny, and cliche bad habits for designers. All of us are guilty of a few.. Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like this [...]