25 Bad Habits of Graphic Designers
Written by Gino on 11-19-2007 - 26 Responses
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!
reezluv | November 19th, 2007
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 | November 19th, 2007
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 | November 19th, 2007
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 | November 19th, 2007
Oh no, guilty of way too many of those!
Hangs head in shame and resolves to improve….
Johnathan | November 19th, 2007
This is great! I submitted it to Digg
Gino | November 19th, 2007
Yes I think we’ve all experienced some of these things one time or another =)
Jon | November 19th, 2007
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.”
25 Bad Habits of Graphic Designers | Design You Trust™ | November 20th, 2007
[...] 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 [...]
bsilvia | November 20th, 2007
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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[...] 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. [...]
nelson | November 21st, 2007
25. Not Getting Enough Sleep! Stop Drinking so much Red Bull!
guilty as charged
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Jacob Cass | November 22nd, 2007
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 | November 22nd, 2007
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 | November 22nd, 2007
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 | November 22nd, 2007
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 | November 22nd, 2007
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!
Vectorobot // experimental design blog » Ghosts in the Gradients | November 23rd, 2007
[...] 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: [...]
HeavyGod | November 27th, 2007
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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weberica | July 4th, 2008
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