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Jos Torre Follow

Design lover & Problem solver. Working as Sr. Visual Designer at TomTom. You can email me at ia
Jul 31 6 min read

Hey Designer, why so fragile?

Heres the answer and how to overcome it.

Lately, Ive been seeing a lot of fuss online about criticism in the design
community, especially on twitter. Some designers seem to respond very
badly to criticism and twitter is becoming a bit of a battle field.
I wanted to share my thoughts but 140 characters are not enough for this
topic in particular, so I thought, a post on medium will do the trick. Just a
quick disclaimer before starting: What comes next is based on my personal
experience and things that I found useful for myself, so take as you will.
With that said

. . .

The Why
Praise overdose
If you visit the comment section of behance.com and you manage to
see through all the self-promotion, youll find that the comments are
unusually polite and positive. Every project seems to have really posi-
tive feedback, the only thing that really distinguishes projects is the
amount of praise they get.

The reason for all this positiveness is quite evident, its the Ill scratch
your back and youll scratch mine approach. People comment with the
expectation of reciprocation and sometimes they arent even subtle
about it.

Here's a made up example (which is sadly quite accurate):

Awesome work!
Check my latest project here: www.iamdesparateasf.ck/noticemesenpai

Youll find this type of comment very easily. The self-promotion is really
blatant and, for me, it just undermines whatever you said before, even
if it was authentic and honest feedback.

Anyway, that's not what this post is about, so let's look beyond that. If
you do, youll see that theres still a lot of praise and positivity and very
rarely youll see a negative comment or a critique, which, let's be hon-
est, is quite uncommon, especially for the internet. In my opinion, this
lack of negativity really blows up our ego, as designers, to stratospheric
proportions.

Attachment dilemma
Many designers tend to be very defensive when it comes to their work,
I guess its just in our nature. A big majority comes from an artistic
background, which makes us see the things that we make as an exten-
sion of ourselves, theyre our little babies. This puts us in a defensive
position every time someone says something that challenges what we
made. Essentially, if you say something bad about my work, its like
youre saying that about me.

The explosive combination

When these two things combine, you end up with designers who are
drunk on praise and are unable to detach themselves from their cre-
ations. This combination is really explosive and the reason why many
Designers cant take a critique without responding with a counter-
attack.

Here's another made up example (again, more accurate than you might
want it to be):

How dare you critique my work? I went to ALL your portfolio and your
type sucks. I mean, do you even kerning, bro?

Or even better, if the critic is not a designer.

Youre not a designer, your opinion doesnt matter. #DropTheMic

I find this type of response/counter-attack a bit disappointing, espe-

cially when it comes from really good designers.

How do we overcome this?

Roll with the punches

First, you need to change your mindset. Youre not your work and your
work is not you. Believe it or not, good designers sometimes make
crappy work. Dont think that just because someone critiques your work
that it makes you automatically a bad designer.

Moreover, a lot of designers think that if they take advise from others,
theyre weakening their position as an expert, this couldnt be further
from the truth. Youll only get better if you learn to take advantage of
the feedback that is given to you, especially if the feedback is coming
from your client or users.

It doesnt matter whos critiquing. Who told you that only a superior
designer can critique your work? Are you going check portfolios and
credentials before taking into account any feedback?
Guess what? Youre designing for the world, not for a group of expert
designers, therefore, you should take any constructive feedback as an
opportunity to improve your work and to grow.

However, this doesnt mean that you need to take everything literally
and keep iterating your design eternally, just because someone keeps
commenting on it. Take feedback with a grain of salt, especially be-
cause sometimes people cant quite articulate what isn't working, so
theyll point out other things that are related.
Youre the expert, your job is to listen and figure out if theres really an
issue, and if there is one, then try to solve it.
In short, dont be a snowflake and get hurt by every little thing that
someone doesn't like about your work. Take that feedback as a way to
identify things that you can improve.

Last but not least, please, dont go through another designers portfolio
just to find a mistake in their work to use it agains them. Think about
it, is that really worth it? Doing something like that is just petty, sad
and a waste of your time. Youre better o taking that time improving
your design or learning something that will help you get better. Just
move on with your life, especially when it comes to destructive com-
ments or trolls. The best is to ignore them, theres nothing to gain by
engaging them.

Dont do to others what you dont want done to you.

On the other hand, when it comes to commenting on the work of oth-
ers, especially on beginners, try to be constructive and helpful, or else,
dont bother to comment.

If people open themselves for feedback, they probably want something

that can help them improve, comments like:

"This sucks."

Or
"Just don't."

Are as valuable as the person who wrote them.

Theres absolutely no value in putting other designers down. If you re-
ally love and value design, you should help to raise the level. That
wont happen when you pick easy targets and try to destroy them with
mean comments. This kind of action just shows insecurity. Putting peo-
ple down is easy but building them up is the real challenge. Challenge
yourself and try to be valuable.

Wrapping it up
You need to put your thick skin jacket on and learn to roll with the
punches. Detach yourself from your work and use the feedback as a
way to improve.

Don't discard valuable feedback just because it's not coming from
"above" and be to others what you would like others to be to you, con-
structive and helpful.

Also, when commenting on someone else's work, please, also consider

not sticking the link to your portfolio underneath. Everyone can see
right through that.

. . .

I started to write on medium to reflect on my own work but also to share

my insights and experiences, I hope you find it useful or interesting. If so,
please consider sharing or click/tap the little heart icon.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out in the comments or on
twitter @zecarlostorre, I would love to know what are your thoughts on
criticism.

Thanks for reading!