So today. I got this question thrown at me via Facebook Messenger: “How do your practices differ when creating a commissioned design project to creating art for yourself, i.e do you feel constrained by the perceived difference between design and art?”.
Really good question. For a while there I truly intended to give my clients my best. Sometimes I’d stay up till 3am working on client work, with my fave music up, in my PJ’s, only to have the secretary the next day in the client meeting say she doesn’t like yellow, and eventually having the client have me change things, which in turn makes my work ugly.
This hurts.
A few years of this crap; design by committee (when you present your work to clients and the client gathers opinions from their business partners, secretaries and mothers), uneducated clients (not everyone gets good design), clients who fail to trust me as a designer, it was enough for me to always design with compromise in mind. IE: I never give my clients everything I’ve got anymore. I only put my everything into my own work, which in this case you can call “art”.
So I very rarely do design work for others anymore these days. I suppose I’ve taken being my own boss to new heights?!
Yeah those 3am finishes are long gone. Just use fucking helvetica and pay the god damn bill. Then i’ll go do my own art.