The CMYK of a Designer

I don’t remember the day when design and art entered my life and coloured it forever but I do remember the day someone told me I was now qualified to go out there to contribute to designing to world. It was the day I graduated, I walked up the stage the graduation day with all the swagger of a member of a proud art elite to receive “The Scroll of the Heavenly Invisibles Scriptures”. I remember the chairman giving me the you-have-learned-well-my-s

on look while everyone else in the hall applauded obligatory.

I have no idea why but graduation ceremonies to imble one with a false sense of greatness. I was no exception, caressing the Invisible Scriptures. I got to thinking, “I am it!!!”. I am one of the chosen ones to contribute what I’ve learned to bring design to greater heights.

After all, I’d been taught everything there is to know to create and enhance a good design: the play of space; getting across an idea and a concept solely by the composition of elements in a given space with a minimum of words; the visual balance of composition; the balance of colours; how colours are able to talk and how to make to talk; and creating a high visual impact that doesn’t interface with readability. All of which we visual manipulation.

Alas for all my grandiose objectives: the first three months of post-graduation life was lived in jobless post-euphoria. I decided to wake from my hibernation to go out and get a job and a life as well. However, I ended up in a design department of a premium item company (oops, I better not to mention what company), and was honourably “badged” to be the Graphic Designer cum DTP Artist. Being the rookie that I was, I was thrilled into the trials of ridiculous dilemmas that I wasn’t readily prepared for. Design was not just striking the right aesthetic balance. It was also about having to deal with the style-impaired (the client) and pleasing those who foot the bill (the client again). They didn’t teach us that in school.

I maybe young but I’ve had my share of stingy-cina-pek client. I was designing a newsletter and an advert when pain-in-the-**s. Ah Pek came along. He said, “wah lau yeh! You all waste so much space one, ah? Take the texts and pictures from the next side and put together lah! I want all in one full page. You know how much lui one page ah? I pokkai means I find you, you know?” Arghhhhh! My integrity and dignity for the profession was severely desecrated by his thoughtless close-fisted talk. As though forcing everything to become one compact page of jumbled trash just to save some pathetically petty amount wasn’t tragic enough, yet he had to nerve to expect the impossible trash to be made into a cost-efficient masterpiece. What, is he expecting to get a McLaren BMW at the price of a McValue Meal? What was he thinking man?
One of the most pantang and hateful thing for US DESiGNERs is when CLiENTs ruthlessly trepass into our territory, marching in and out of the studio like some kind of the police barking reminders that the clock is constantly clicking. And the dangerous part is when they feel you don’t quite get what they want, they would sit down , get closer to the computer and eventually hog the tools of our rezeki. It’s not so much of a possessive thing, it’s just that it drives me off the wall when they start to say things like “Hey, I can do this by myself, look like I don’t need people like you liao and I also got art sense on. Er…press ctrl and what already ah, to take the disc out?”

Another breed of monsters would be the tickle minded not-sure-what-I-want-type. They change their minds on design and colours again + again endlessly They might even give new suggestions + ideas at very final stage to mass production, “Hey, what if we add more cyan to the magenta and take a bit yello away?” “I think the typeface bigger better lah! How?” Er….they never thought of too late to change this and that. It makes me wanna hand them a Desert Eagle and yell, “You kill me lah, YOU JUST KiLL ME lah, PLEASE!!! But usually designers die of natural causes like everybody else.