Ask an expert graphic designer

Since 2001. So what’s that, fourteen years? Something like that.

I wanted to go into Psychiatry, and I had an internship with an eating disorders clinic at Saint Paul’s. When I graduated high school, I took the year off and went to Italy and had no structure for the first time. I’d always had a very rigorous academic focus at school. I just kind of did nothing. I was really useless…. The only thing I really liked doing was craft stuff—like, if it was Christmas, I would make Christmas decorations. I thought, “I think I really like doing this.”

When I came back to Canada, I spent a year at UBC, kind of confused about what to do. I took Film Studies… and then I dropped out, because I really didn’t know what I was doing. I had a friend who was an artist who was thinking about going to art school and she said, “Oh, you should do it!” I’d never even drawn anything… but I applied and got in.

I did a year of Foundations at Emily Carr, which is just very flaky: like, “Make a mask,” and stuff like that. The whole time I really wanted to get into the Graphic Design Program, which at the time was really hard to get into… But I was really determined, and really into type. I’d do projects with type (that were not that good). I went to submit my portfolio to them, and they let me in right away. It was because, in retrospect…they could see how interested I was in type. That’s actually pretty unusual: to take it on and do it.

Because my husband was involved in the arts, I got a few jobs doing small prints for art galleries, prints, things like that. I had a friend who was a bit older than me who took the summer off and said, “Do you want to do this catalogue for me?” So I did that, and that just kind of got me in the door.

Well, I guess I skipped this really important thing, which is that I was really obsessed with children’s books. I loved them, I collected them, I wanted to make them. So that was always a through line for me, and that is…now primarily what I do: children’s book design.

I think a lot of people go into design with kind of a vague idea of what they want to do. Like, “I like design,” and then…they get an opportunity.

The only problem with that is, it’s important to turn down opportunities that you don’t like. For example, I remember in school, there would be some people who would tailor all their projects to please their instructors. And to me, I thought that was kind of a mistake, because their portfolio, when they graduated, didn’t reflect what they really wanted to do.

I think it’s good to know what you really enjoy doing, because design is really stressful and time-consuming. I think it’s a really exhausting job, and there’s a really high rate of burnout and a lot of bitter people.

If you’re at a gathering of designers, there’s a lot of complaining, feeling underappreciated, feeling like your clients didn’t take on your best ideas. Because it’s a creative job where you don’t have the final say. No matter how high you get as a designer,... you’re constantly needing to educate people.

It’s a creative job where you don’t have the final say. No matter how high you get as a designer,... you’re constantly needing to educate people.

I feel like, if you’re going to do that much work, you should probably be doing it for something that you really care about. Or, do it for something that you don’t care about at all and just accept that you’re like a workhorse—do it the best that you can, and then go home and relax. One of those two options. The people who I think have trouble in design are the people who are in the middle, the people who are killing themselves for projects they don’t really care about.

I think people who thrive in graphic design are people who are fast at making decisions, so that they don’t spend a lot of time getting sucked into that kind of dawdling, and who have a certain amount of confidence, so that they’re able to accept criticism and make changes. A certain level of flexibility I think is really valuable. And being able to work with a group of people, being able to communicate clearly what you’re doing. If you’re doing beautiful work but you can’t explain what it’s doing or why it’s valuable, then your ideas tend to not be taken seriously. People who have a blend of abilities—you need to be visual, you need to be able to communicate clearly with words.

Yeah, I think it is necessary. There are a number of famous designers, like Paul Rand, who are known for being self-taught. But if you take a look at their practice, they’re insanely rigorous. They’re not only very hard-working within their discipline, but they’re also always seeking out some type of mentorship. I see a big difference in my students who go through a program like Emily Carr. I’m not especially dedicated to promoting Emily Carr, but I can see why people do that program. Where they are at the beginning, and where they are at the end, they understand the basics. People who don’t, even if their aesthetics are good, they make a lot of basic mistakes. I think it’d be difficult for them to get a good job.

I don’t actually do that much freelance work anymore. I just completed a two year project where I was making this app. So that was a full-time job—it was a weird full-time job, but it was a full-time job. It was art directing, coordinating different teams, doing photoshoots, and then doing professional design.

That was really weird. And to be so creatively in control. I’ve never had that happen before.

Okay. If you’re acting as a graphic designer and you’re within your own company, a typical day usually starts with, well, if you’re me, procrastinating for 40 minutes. What I would do is make a big checklist of all the things I need to get done, and then the usual: emailing and stuff like that.

Usually there’s one or two projects that you have to get designed—you’re sketching, getting prepared for a presentation. And then there may be some where you’re receiving changes, so you’re on your second or third draft, a copy editor’s given you notes or something. And then you might have a project at press, and that is the most complicated part, because you’ve got to troubleshoot for a wide variety of different things, you’ve got to have your ear out. So if the printer says something casually like, “Have you noticed that you just have a single hit of red ink?” you don’t wanna say, “Yeah, yeah, that’s fine,” you want to say, “Why? What’s wrong with having a single hit of red ink?” You have to follow through on a lot of elements.

Usually for a project like that I’ll have kind of an internal checklist: “Did I remember to provide them all the information that they needed? Have I chosen the right foil?” It’s kind of like you’re babysitting something. If it’s being printed overseas it’s more stressful than if it’s being printed locally. Locally, you’ll be called before a press check, so you can kind of check in person at each stage as it goes through. If you’re printing internationally, maybe you’ll be getting an email at 11 at night. That’s probably my least favourite part of the process.

Every day is going to be a little bit different. Sometimes more focusing on production, sometimes more focusing on design. You spend a lot of time on paperwork—billing, various governmental stuff—and doing job planning: “How much money do I have for this job? How many pages can I get for this amount of money? What kind of paper can I use?,” all that kind of balancing. That takes a surprising amount of time, and it goes through the client. You walk the client through the design options, what the financial ramifications of those choices are, and then help them make decisions about that. That takes up more time. The design is like 5% of the time; it’s not very much—you have to do it fast.

I would say it’s pretty solitary, because you have to be pretty immersed in your work. Most people I know who run design businesses are one person, essentially. And that doesn’t mean they’re not successful; taking on that first employee (I’ve done it once) takes a lot of effort. You have to communicate to them, and basically a lot of people can’t be bothered to do that. So I find usually people either start a studio that’s a handful of people, and that’s their thing, or they just prefer to be a solitary person. Maybe it attracts a solitary type of person.

Everyone’s really nice. My impression is there used to be more social aspects than now because there was more money. Paper companies would ask for you to come to breakfast and talks and stuff, and now that just doesn’t happen as much. But everybody that I talk to would always be incredibly nice, incredibly respectful. The printing press people would always be really friendly and helpful—I’ve never had a bad experience ever, actually, with anybody.

Everyone’s really nice. I’ve never had a bad experience ever, actually, with anybody.

Clients are usually more stressful, because they often are feeling stressed. Especially if it’s their first job or it’s personal in any way, they’re not sure what to ask for and they want to get the right thing. If you’ve ever asked anyone to do something creative for you, like design clothing or jewelry or something, it is stressful, because you’re like, “I know I want something good, but I don’t know how to tell you.” So that part is maybe a little bit less casual.

That said, you could go through a whole day and not really talk to that many people.

I’m not a social person. I’m pretty introverted; I’m happier one-on-one, or in small groups. But my friend Judith, who I did the app project with, she’s very social, and probably brings that into her practice more. First of all, I know she loves doing presentations, which I don’t really like doing that much. And sometimes, say, she would go hiking with a client or something. So I think you just bring your personality to your work.

Honestly I’ve heard everybody say the same thing: it’s production. Because you get everything planned out, everything’s great, and then there’s always something that goes wrong. There’s always something that goes wrong. And it’s not within your control and you don’t know what it is that’s going to go wrong. Because the client’s paying a lot of money for printing—thousands and thousands of dollars—and there’s often some specific deadline, like a launch. So you’re trying to hit this mark of getting it delivered on time, but you also can’t skip over quality issues if there’s a quality issue that comes up. And, like I said, there are so many different things that could go wrong. It gives you kind of a nervousness; it makes you feel stressed. There are many designers who have either quit or temporarily walked away from just not wanting to deal with that specific aspect anymore. Because it’s very demoralizing. It’s like, “Ah, I tried really hard, but there was a hick-up on one page, or one of the images was soft, or they ran out of the paper that we’d specified.” There’s a million different things. And managing your client’s expectations if something goes wrong, just letting them know that this is the thing that went wrong.

There are so many different things that could go wrong. It gives you kind of a nervousness; it makes you feel stressed. There are many designers who have either quit or temporarily walked away from just not wanting to deal with that specific aspect anymore.

But I would say that, if anybody’s going into it, it’s definitely a good thing to know that that’s an issue. That for pretty much every project you’ve ever seen, there’s one thing in that project that the designer is like, “Arrrgh!” about—even sometimes for a very beautifully designed project. It’s just the worst feeling. I used to cry every single time I got things back from press. I would get them back, and then I would cry (though not in front of the client).

For pretty much every project you’ve ever seen, there’s one thing in that project that the designer is like, “Arrrgh!” about. It’s just the worst feeling. I used to cry every single time I got things back from press.

What I had to learn was to actually just not speak to anybody for about 24 hours. If you’re naturally perfectionistic, you kind of want to admit your mistakes. The problem with that is that your client might actually not be upset at all. They might not even notice, or it might be fine, and then you’ve told them that there’s something wrong.

The example of that would be, for me, I did a book with a light blue cover and a laminate coat. Laminate has a bit of a yellow cast to it and actually acts like a magnifying glass. So it darkened the look of the cover…and yellowed it, so that it was basically an aqua-coloured cover. And I just remember freaking out, because it was a really important project to me. I was almost hysterically upset….I went off about it, and then it became this big thing. But in the meantime, after 24 hours had gone by, I started to like the colour better. So when we went to do the reprint, the client was ready to go to war with the printer. But I was like, “No, no. Let’s stick with it. I think it looks better.” (It actually won lots of awards; it’s a very successful book.) If I’d just kept quiet about it, I would have given myself time to see it calmly and clearly.

Having said that, not all incidents are fine like that. Sometimes there is just an actual mistake and you have to just live with it. A lot of designers never admit that they’ve made mistakes, which I think is really irritating… I mean, come on, you guys! Of course you have! There’s no way that you could get every single thing lined up and never have something go wrong.

They’d have to be! Every time you go into production, there’s a mistake. You can’t control every single thing. When I’m thinking right now about the number of things that have gone wrong, it’s crazy! Things you’ve never heard of. [Laughs.] Like a truck tipping over, and all your paper gets ruined. You never know.

For me, I get bored really easy. So my favourite thing for me is not always working on the same project. I get really immersed in one project, know a lot about it, try to reflect that visually, and then I’m done with it. That’s what I like. Other people, maybe they work for the same company for a long time. I can see the appeal of it, but I just think that after five years of the same thing, you’d get bored of it.