Handling Criticism

This week, I kept working on the banner and we interns had separate mid-term progress meetings in addition to the weekly Friday team meeting. I also got an email from the designer of the other CLA banners critiquing my design. She pointed out some specific details that were inconsistent, like one of the typefaces, which I was glad to hear because I was just working from photos and was trying to figure out those things, but she also said that the silhouettes looked “dated” and should be removed if they aren’t adding to the design.

I discussed the silhouette issue with Lisa. I did not think they looked dated, and in this instance they added to the message of the slogan, “professional help for a professional future.” They are the “future,” the young professionals that the Career Development Office will be molding students into. Their faceless anonymity conveys the idea that they could be anyone; a student looking at the banner could think “that’s going to be me in a few years.” They are not just there for decoration! This concept was also a part of why the slogan is split, showing a picture of professional help under the words “professional help” and showing the future under the words “for a professional future.” Lisa agreed that they did not look dated, so now we’re moving forward with this design concept as the final one. I pointed out that tweaking the design so that it could only be deployed at full height would be safer from a technical standpoint and would also eliminate an awkward spot in the layout, so I got the go-ahead to scrap the two-possible-heights limitations.

Handling a harsh criticism from another designer was a challenge, but I overcame the difficulty by sticking to my guns. I had a good reason for what I did, so I defended my design choices, explaining the reasoning behind them and showing that the silhouettes were adding to the overall message. Learning to better deal with criticism will definitely come in handy in my future employment; designers face critique all the time. At the midterm meeting, Lisa and Kate asked if there was anything I wanted to do for a new project that I hadn’t got a chance to work with yet. They’re really trying to make sure that I get the experience I want out of this internship.