On numerless occasions I have encountered 'designer's masterpieces' that required hours of interventions before they could be put in production.
Regardless of media (internet, press, multi), these 'masterpieces' represented the designer's disability to handle his own media, and actually to - DESIGN.
Design, the production-ready synthesis of aesthetics, functionability and sellability, in all of it's branches, is tightly connected to certain relevant production requirements. Even conceptual works need to be produceable.
So you can't successfully design a car if people bang their headtops into the rooftops.... [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]
It just won't go to production. But you can't employ the external cooperatives to fix the problem, because it was your job to fix it when it was still on your sketching table.
The best ones have nothing to fix even on their sketching tables, because they thought of it from the beginning.
If you design a poster, it's meant to be seen, therefore you shall either have to optimize it for on-screen seeing in some of numerous formats (! intended and formatted for the specific 'seeing mode') or printed, again optimized to be printed.
If something is intended to be perceived, a perception-media creator has to create a proper perception media. That's where true, rich creativity lies hidden.
I don't know which of the great authorities, whatever they may be, said that of all production requirements designer's only need to know for ex. FreeHand, and make text-full 80-page brochures in FreeHand or Corel (as these programs are professional vector tools there are pro layout and text-flow tools), have 19 spot colors in a 4C CMYK-printjob with such overprints that extend to overprinting white, exported PDFs from Quark (anyone who ever worked with digital imposition and/or PDF pre-production control and correction, know the need to create PDFs via Distiller not app built-in export functions) without fonts embedded or with 4-5 ICCs per doc, websites created solemnly in Flash that just don't function with monochrome image areas that can as well be cell backgrounds, .... or some even worse problems.
Besides, how can you spread your creative wings in some media if you know so little about it and wish to know no more?
A designer's vocation isn't fancy or high-class, it doesn't require high-cost universities (although it can be improved thus). It requires a great talent, an addiction, and a lifetime of extensive learning, improving, experimenting and HARD WORK.
It, as wonderful as it is, is a vocation of sleepless weeks, not days, booting your pc at 3.00 AM because you just need to do something that just flashed in your head, endless pursuits for a perfect product, backaches and headaches. But it is also a vocation of creating and directing, a vocation of producing products.
Some of us want to design, and the rest of us want to be Designers. We all know the difference.
This message was posted to a few forums, print and web-intended, I would like to see your input.
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