Hi my PSC friends,

For the past month or so I just feel as if I do not have what it takes to be a graphic designer or an average Photoshop user. I can not come up with any good ideas, and if I do come up with something I believe is cool, everyone else thinks it sucks.

I do not want to turn this into a pity party, but for example I worked hard on an image for today's contest that I thought was something very unique that the people would like.

As of now, it has only two votes. What is it that people are looking for on this site. I know that execution is number one, but the ideas I have seen lately are so way different than the old time school Photoshop back when the site first started.

Hopefully some of you veterans out there might be able to give your thoughts on what the Graphic Design world is looking for in todays' market.

Thanks,
Jim

i have the same feelings, but i believe better times will come , because there are a few good new choppers joined this site
we may not speak about open contests but i asume witch one is yours FT something different??

yes, apparently apathy is abundant.

Is it ignorance or apathy? Hey, I don't know and I don't care.
--Jimmy Buffett

or....

how about we do something about it?

I'm drunk!

That's a start!

Sorry, I don't feel like I've helped Jim, and I was more answering someone from a different thread. If there's a local college you might consider taking a design class or anything that may fuel creative juices. Graphic design is a fickle career and everyone with a computer feels they're capable of "designing" something.

me fukin 2

lets ... celebrate !

I'm not a veteran but I think the money prize contests everybody think twice give a vote or not
I usually give the vote any picture if something catch me if the idea creative or funny
but money prize contests I just give the votes what is really good and deserves the win
this contest I just used 3 votes
I had some ideas this contest what I would have done a normal contest but they aren't enough good for a money prize contest so I didn't send any entry

I'm not drunk just I can't speak English...

First of all I am not veteran so you can just ignore my comment.
The only thing that makes me a designer is my work contract in which I'm "Graphic designer-operative". What ever "operative" means in this case...behind that is 9 years of work with all kinds of people who exactly know what they want and encourage my creativity along the way...NOT! We have old saying here (I believe you have similar) and roughly translated sounds like: 100 people - 100 characters. For past 3 years we work at day and night on commercial catalogs for one supermarket and one idiot bitch that call herself "leader of marketing". In job interview her first question was can you work in InCorel? (In design and Corel draw). And this is how it goes. First, you do something that you think it's right and tasteful and then she calls you and say it's o.k. but I want something different. After few hours of suggestions you are looking at some crap on the screen and just don't want to sign your name on it. And then she calls again and say-this is crap! Everyone thinks design is easy. Especially leaders of companies, directors, their wives, their mothers and their children...and some of their friends...and usually they are criminal minds with drawing skills of 8 year old child. The best "designer" is one who can swallow most of his pride and grant most wishes. And of course he has to be well dressed egoistic faceless salesman... The best designer I've seen so far looks like tramp. But his work is brilliant.
The other thing is what you think of your work and how creative you really are.My neighbor who bends and make stuff of iron all his life said to me once: When you do something good for 5 minutes it's just good. And when something is crap you can bang it with hummer all day long and it's still stays same crap. My winning chops are 97% 25min. chops done secretly between jobs at work.Some other chops I've spent hours doing it didn't score barely 10 votes.There is no rule.
My annoying colleague who just cant skip to "advise" me how to do my job and believes that he is great designer said that I cant do anything representative. He is good commercial designer but he cant do anything from scratch and without internet. Usually he "borrows" few ideas from other designers and combines them in to "his" idea. And people seem to like it. Perhaps that is the secret recipe. I just hate that kind of work, so I'll suck forever with my limited brain and its limited creativity.
Yep, one more thing. No one cant be creative on command. Everyone has dry periods.
You think you have nothing to show?What about 324 chops saying you're wrong?

Wish I could inspire you, but only you can inspire yourself.
Chop to your desires, because the crowd is fickle.
If you like it, then it's good.
Follow Anfa's lead and get drunk. LOL

we're in the same boat there

I concur totally with BSmatic. Everyone has their own personal preference as to what they consider a great chop, and so what it boils down to is that you've just got try to do work that will please you. I also have to work on my entries in between my 'real' job. I enjoy doing this just for the fun of it, plus it helps to keep my photoshopping skills sharpened and my creative juices flowing. I didn't come into this with any high expectations, especially after seeing the caliber of so many other excellent artists. I can only hope that through repetition and competition, my PS skills will continue to improve.

agree very good attitude you handle, i should think and act more like you

this is what I said:


so I think your 8 votes isn't bad
and I think too your entry is really unique but somebody likes this stile somebody don't
my opinion this picture didn't show your choping skill you can do better entries the face isn't a special idea and this entry execution isn't enough good because the "tails" in the mouth looks amateur work
but I think you are absolutely pro

"to be" is the passive voice, haven't you read Shakespeare's advice on the passive voice?
The post I am making isn't what any designer wants to hear but it is something that needs to-be told and some pro-tips just to hammer the points across.

1: You're not special!
You are one in a sea of designers who may know a lot more than you do and a lot of them give advice.

Pro-tip 1: Take the advice to heart, make notes.


2: Accept you are unoriginal and could spend your life time being unoriginal.

Styles, tropes and idioms of design are common, I mean we have genres for fuck sake! Where do you think they came from, everybody did the same thing, copied the style from each other until it became popular.

Pro-tip 2: Copy but don't rip off. Derivation, reference and homage isn't some shameful in the design world, as being original is like trying to find a gold bar in your sock draw, it's when you are clearly ripping things off when people get upset and even then parody is a justification for that. here's the thing, if you invest enough time in a Photo-shop work, people will think you just copy pasted or took a photo so you aren't going to win.
You are not reinventing the wheel or making the newest craze by whipping it out of the ether.

3: NEW IDEAS AREN'T IMPORTANT!
What is important is having an idea and going with it, it hasn't got to-be a new idea, it could be a very old idea with a new spin... Some of the Most popular things are old ideas with a new coat of paint here and there and a polished finish.

4: Being dated isn't a sin.
It was the style of the time is the best defence for crappy hair cuts, clothing choices and websites... but here is the thing.
There were people who designed those things and made... guess what... A FUCK-LOAD OF MONEY OFF OF THEM!

5: YOUR IDEAS SUCK!
Idea killers are the kinds of people who sniff at everything before it is born. They are not the smart ones, they have no foresight, this why so many people in the western world decide not to have a kid, because they think the idea is bad they don't look ahead and see what it could become and ultimately these are the same people who end up old and with no future.

An idea can grow and become something amazing, I mean look at Star-Wars... all it was and still is, is; Samurai in space.
Just like aliens is; Jaws in space.

If you or I were in that meeting and scoffed that idea it then mat not have seen the light of day and look at the money the creators have made from it.

6: Why are you designing?
To get acclaim? Enjoy your failure.
People who want to get famous for fame's sake have NOTHING TO OFFER and therefore end up in the shadow and not in the limelight!
To get money? Enjoy not being good at what you do.
To get better at design? Enjoy never getting anywhere financially.
This is why you work in a team. You need to focus on each of these qualities. This is why films have a producer, director and marketer.
One is to make it make financially viable, one is being artistic with the product and the other making it famous.

It takes three people or one schizophrenic, which means you need to plan the steps as you go.

7: You will always make shit but there is no reason for it to look like shit to anybody other than you.
Yea, I see the errors in my work, other people see those errors as my stylization, it's a fact of production... To you it's a stain, to them it's a feature.

You think the producers of old fighting games intended for glitches and infinite loops which unbalance the game? The answer is... NO!
Often these became the features but also they GET OTHERS TO EDIT THINGS TO AVOID THIS.

8: You are not alone.
As I have said before, you might suck on your own because you aren't an all-rounder but you might act differently in a team. Teamwork might be everybody in a cluster-fucked room or it might be a pass the parcel project. Take the Simpsons, they hand the script round and then send it halfway across the world, so many people working on it that it can make you head hurt, these specialists focused to one or more aspects of the product, hell when you open Photoshop the first thing you see is a list of names and is a designed product.