20 Things You Should Never Say to a Designer

Do you ever have one of those days when it seems that no one else gets you? It can happen to designers, especially those working as freelancers or in-house for non-design firms, pretty often. It’s not that your co-workers are trying to be difficult, they really just go about solving problems in a very different way that you do. Personally, most designers can handle it pretty well until someone says one of these things … (And as a bonus for people working with designers, here’s what he or she thinks when you say these things. Please excuse some of the snarkiness.)

• 1. Make it pop! (I’ll pop you with my pica pole if you say that one more time.)
• 2. Something does not look right. (Fine … what is it? You won’t hurt my feelings.)
• 3. Can you just Photoshop it? (Photo editing will not make a bad photo look good, but I can make it as silly as you like.)
• 4. Can you do this real quick? (Do you want it to be any good?)
• 5. Just stretch it to fill the space. (You do understand basic branding, right? And that logo won’t actually be your logo anymore.)
• 6. It looks good on my screen. (It will not look good when we put it on a billboard … unless you really like pixels.)
• 7. Can we fill up all that white space? (Only if you don’t want focus.)
• 8. Can you make it like this thing I saw on Facebook? (Well, that would be design plagiarism.)
• 9. The images are in this Word document. (Seriously? I’m just going to bang my head on the desk now.)
• 10. It needs more fonts. (Noooooooo!)
• 11. Can you put something in all this wasted space? (Space is part of the design, without it no one is going to look at this thing.)
• 12. I got this logo for $5. (That’s why it looks so bad.)
• 13. You need, um, special software to do that? Can I have it? (Sure, but it’s not cheap and you’ll probably never actually use it.)
• 14. I’ll know it when I see it. (So what you are saying is you want five design options for the price of one?)
• 15. Make it way more creative. (What exactly is “creative?” Some idea of what you want would be nice.)
• 16. I started the design for you. (Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll have to start from scratch anyway.)
• 17. Make it bigger. (I understand proportions. Just because you paid for that logo does not mean it should be used as a dominant element. Making it bigger is not the answer.)
• 18. We’ve been working on this project for six months; can you have the website ready tomorrow? (Why are you just now coming to me? Design takes time.)
• 19. Make it unique. (I had been planning to steal something off the internet, but thanks for clarifying.)
• 20. Just make it pretty. (I’ll put a bow on it, how about that?)

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