I’m an art director who has been working at an agency for 3 years. Same role, lots of turn over around me, and lots of company acquisitions, it’s like there’s a new person every week. I am trying to stay in my lane and be a good lil art director but I get treated like I don’t know a dang thing when I’ve been working in the creative industry for 15 years. I am aware I have a lot to learn but my work does have merit. We have creative directors who, in my opinion, are terrible. I don’t where they find these people. Inconsistent, toxic, flakey, disorganized, and they love to send others on wild goose chases to find the design that is living only in their head, even if it’s not what a client needs. It makes it hard to listen to them or respect them at times. Tell me, can you relate? Tell me a story about the worst creative director or similar that you’ve ever had to work with and how you handled it.

I’m a designer and we have a lot of meetings in person. This person is more senior than me but not my direct manager.

We work on one category together and they are the type they love to have matching aesthetic fonts, perfect locked layouts, theme colors. They also love to have constant in person checkins for our shared area.

One thing that bugs me though is they constantly retroactively edit meetings. Say it’s 1-4, they will change it later from 1:30-4 or 1 to 4:30 so I get the email notification after we have had the meeting.

We are salaried- why?

I am a student looking to do my master's in UX Design abroad in Europe as I have a keen interest in the field but I have always been worried about design from a financial POV. I have noticed that jobs in business and commerce pay much better and I'm just confused as to whether I should switch my field or not keeping the market scenario in mind.

Amongst other colleges I've applied to, I got into Skema for a dual MSC Program in Product management and UX design. I need to make my decision about Skema soon and I'm unable to judge whether I should do a dual MSC (where I also will have to study management for one year which I personally am not very interested in) which will train me in UX while also keeping an option open for product management or just apply to design colleges and focus on the same? It is a business school and I'm worried about not getting the right design knowledge but Ive heard that Skema is good and the course must be planned well.

Anyone with an experience in either fields or knowing the salary compensation for them both please help me out with this one. Also if someone can comment on Skema's recognition and overall reputation.

I don't know if this relevant here and i might get exposed but I honestly feeling super stressed over this and I don't have many friends to talk about work. At this point I don't even care if I lose my job.

My boss did me a huge help during the pandemic when one of my parent was diagnosed with stage-3 cancer by donating money and also helping me with setting up a fund. My company also helped me by keeping me in the job while I was in the hospital with my parent full-time (basically paying me without having to work). I even wrote to them to not pay me but they wanted to help. I had only 2-3ppl who i could call family who were there for us. After a battle of 18months my parent passed away and I had ptsd post that and it took me almost 2 years to recover from that. I'm married, my spouse has been my only support system.

I've never had any disagreements with my boss except this one when we had a toxic teammate who was bringing the whole team down. It was taking a toll on my mental health and after repeated requests to my boss to do something about the situation and they refused to take any stringent action, i had no other choice but to bring the HR in. I think my boss wasn't expecting me to go to the HR and when I did they told me that I was being ungrateful for the help they did me when I was in need. This broke my heart and ever since then I've been wanting to quit.

I don't believe my boss is a bad person they've always been nice and kind but i definitely think they are not a good leader. Ever since that incident, I really don't trust my boss although i truly feel grateful for what they did to me. We've had some minor disagreements post that but it's really difficult to have an honest conversation with them. I've really tried but its not working. I've made up my mind to quit come what may but I also have this feeling like I'm betraying the company which helped me. My logical brain tells me, it's dumb to think that way but that's how i feel and I can't help it.

I believe I do my best at my job, with my peers, but this emotional baggage is slowly eating me away. It's like owing someone my gratitude, and the only way to give it back is by staying quiet even if it conflicts my values and principles.

I'm scared and i feel manipulated and at this point I might be better off putting up with an a**hole boss rather than a nice boss.

Hi folks, I'm back with another rant. Today one of my design was rejected something I had put a lot of thought working on conceptualizing from scratch. Then my boss presented a bunch of options from Shutterstock that doesn't even make sense and the whole team loved it. There s two ways to look at it.

a) Design sense of the collective team sucks b) My boss's option got liked and picked because of their role/title

You could choose to be skeptical, and say maybe I'm the problem here who is unable to see good design. But the fact that frustrates me is, now I have to spend time working on those shitty eps files with a thousand glow strokes, gradients and tiny dots that will look terrible on a 30ft print while my boss doesn't need to do shit. Can't even talk to my shrink about this, they are only interested in my personal life and nobody gets it.

Hi, I 37(F) currently work at a big creative agency and at my wits end. I am a Associate Creative Director and have spent years fine tuning my craft and learning along the way to get where I am today. On the contrary, my peers working as an ACD & CD, some in their late 20's a few in their early 30's, have been promoted too early and I believe this is negatively affecting our agency. I have seen their work and feel that they have inferior portfolios, deliver boring work, and lack the design skill-set and eye that should be a mandate.This frustrates me because I am having to work with them in a team, and this is ultimately affecting efficiency and the caliber of work we are delivering to our client. How can one be a creative director of any sort without being able to do the design themselves?The other day I was reviewing some creative work one of our designers produced and was dumbfounded that our ACD selected crappy options to share with our client when there were so many better options. How can an ACD be trusted with gatekeeping when he/her hasn't developed their skill and eye?
Anyways, enough ranting here, but what can someone in my position do to address this issue and fight for better creative work? Have you been in this situation before? Is this just common at every creative agency?

Okay so, my team has been working on a client logo and my boss made an option. His option got picked by the client and we were trying to refine it and we noticed the spacing was off. We've always known our boss was a noob in design (how did he even end up as a manager is a tale for another day) so we had shown it to him and the refined option on a team call. He was okay with it and after a few months he told us that his original option was copyrighted and that it was more "authentic". My entire team was shocked because it was only a minor spacing fix we made and it was an unanimous vote from the teammates. As a designer, I'm super concerned cos he constantly keeps saying there is no hierarchy and design criticism is welcome but i think it only applies to the team but not the boss. I have tried having an honest discussion so many times only getting disappointed every time because he deflects the team's concerns by bringing his life's issues, problems etc.

I will do my best to keep this short.

I don't have a ton of experience freelancing and dealing with clients. I'm pretty sure I have a good grip on what's professional and appropriate but I want to get some seasoned opinions before I decide how to proceed.

This next part will have to be vague cause I can't really include any pics or screenshots withour doxxing anyone.

What I can say is that I was hired by some folks opening a local business to design a logo for them to launch with. Cool. I sketched about 10 different jumping off points for concepts that could say what they were trying to say. Normally it wouldn't be so many but they didn't seem to have an awesome grasp on exactly what they wanted so I was nice and gave them options.

They chose a sketch and I told them I would mock up a very rough vector version of it so we could make sure this was our direction before sank real time into it.

I sent it to them with a quote and they decided to, and I quote, "go with the one I did myself" which was a canva logotype that she had apparently fiddled with before hiring me.

Understandable. They didn't wanna sink a few hundred dollars into a logo. Some people don't see the value. I get it. I charged them $75 for my time (which was incredibly generous) and went on my way.

Fast forward to now and I got a wild hair to check out their website. They're up and running and surprise surprise they are using a very poorly executed version of my concept.

Now my instincts are telling me that this is not only wildly disrespectful but also absolutely not how things are done. I'm not even really worried about or wondering like what my recourse might be legal or otherwise.

I just wanna make sure I'm justified in feeling wronged and pissed off.

Thanks.

When was the last time you were in this situatin, where you are asking for feedback, and someone comes with this strange remark?

I get this quite often. Mostly when it is people, for whom this was not designed that is giving feedback.

In most cases, we should just ignore this kind of critique, because it is not true. And sometimes we should not ignore it, because it carry some value.

But how do we know when it carries value? And how do we know if they are right when they say " This is not intuitive"

Well, I have a few tips on how I deal with this.

1. Understand what intuitive design is.
2. Understand the problem, before you try to understand the solution.
3. Understand the people whom it was designed for.

My good friend Martin and me, have created a podcast about design - and in this latest episode, we explain what defines intuitive design and after listening, it will be easier for you to have that conversation when someone says "Your desing is not intuitive! " :)

You can find it here: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/0MFGoHkV8yb

Please comment, If you have any questions, or stories about this yourself

Hi all, what's your top advice for dealing with all the different print preparation requirements when ordering prints of your art? What were your biggest print issues? I'm talking like, top 5 most common problems you've faced or that I should try to avoid.
I know my file should be 300dpi, cmyk, and have a bleed area if needed. Anything else?

Hello all, so I’ve been upset lately regarding this thing going on in our studio and was wondering if there is any bright side to it that I can look on to.

Our studio does interior and product designing and both the departments have one designer, me being the interior designer.

Me and the product designer get along great all the time and have always enjoyed working side by side, however lately I have been assigned some tasks that are basically not part of my job but his.

More specifically, it is regarding making of graphics and reviewing content that goes into the annual catalogue of products. I am glad to take up the role thinking its fun to explore something new.

The problem is that the boss always has something to say about what I am making, even though it’s way better than anyone in the studio can produce right now.

Now I generally do not mind taking up additional duties in this studio, and almost always fulfil those alongside my regular work. On the other side, the product designer is looking always busy and never ready to take up any additional duties, not even participating in basic organising activities once a month or so.

I do not know whether it’s appropriate to be upset about it or I am just missing on some aspects and not looking from his point of view. What reason could he have to avoid anything outside of what he’s doing? Because he generally doesn’t seem like a lazy guy, as he’s always the first to arrive and last to go, and always working, never slacking off.

Kindly give me some opinions. It is greatly appreciated.

I was hired to do graphic design. They wanted html and css too. I had a little bit of experience in that and I told them that. Turns out we didn't do much web stuff. I mostly redesigned tech bulletins that looked like shit and converted pdfs into InDesign files. Someone had deleted all of our InDesign files.

One day, I get told to make a single web page that would advertise one of our product lines and link back to our main website. I could do that. I found a slick template, customized it with our images, colors, copy, etc. It looked nice. Showed boss lady and she liked it except... a lot changes. Changes I didn't know how to do. After about a week, I've made no progress and she's complaining. Soooo, I take a tech bulletin, stitch it together into one tall panorama. I compress the fuck out of it so it doesn't take forever to load and BAM, there's your web page. Boss lady loved it and I'm a hero.

I haven't worked there in over a year and that web page is still going strong.

edit - Make it 7. How could I leave this one out. It's my most memorable, for the wrong reasons.

​

Boss: We should do some info graphics, they look soo good! *attaches examples & links*

Me: Yeah I Agree.

Me: I just need... the info.

—

Sales Rep: Please design A4 flyer *attaches a ton of PDFs with many many pages each*

Me: *After 15mins going though everything* Okay, looks like there’s 3 different products I think? You’ll have to let me know which ones you want and exactly what info you want for each.

Sales Rep never replied.

—

eDM goes out from eComm manager (long time ago when I wasn’t involved). I forward to the eComm manger & boss. NB. This boss and I are also close family.

Me: Is this new email layout? If so, the logo has got to be considerably smaller.

Boss: I don’t mind the logo size.

Me: Pretty basic design principle. Generally speaking it's going to overpower anything below it. Wouldn't expect non-designers to understand!

Boss: Where is the middle finger emoji when you need it.

—

Our IT liaison: Need to change something on the booking form template - can you please give me access. (PDF file. She used to do this form in Word, and at some point boss asked me to redesign it)

Me: *Calls her* uhh hmm no I can’t sorry, I’ll have to do any changes and send a new file.

Our IT liaison: *the biggest sigh I’ve ever heard*

—

As we’re almost ready to roll out a brand refresh.

Boss: Also get everyone’s email to use our new brand font.

Me: errrr umm yea…. No. No we can’t do that.

Boss: Why not?

—

Getting to the pointy end of finishing a tedious and terribly briefed catalogue with next to no direction other than a giant list of product names/codes in no particular order from Boss 2.

Boss 2: *Shows me a massive supplier product catalogue* We also have access to all of these products. Maybe you might want to include some of these perhaps?

Me: If we want to fit X amount of those products in here, then sure I’ll make it work, but this has to be your decision. Remember this is your catalogue, not mine. I know nothing about these products and nor that I should.

Boss 2: *Silence and looks seriously pissed* Okay.

Don’t think he said much else before walking away.

The day we’re finally sending these catalogues out, I wander out into the warehouse and a conversion between Boss 2 and Sales Rep magically stops. Sales Rep scrambles to say something like that they were talking about me, but was completely innocent. Yeah right. Clearly Boss 2 was placing all the blame on me for the delayed catalogue. What a tosser.

—

Edit - no7

Back in the early days of eCommerce. We had thousands of products, and there were so many without photos (this website was 1 of 3 sites, and it was the lowest priority for various reasons). Fast forward some back and forth with Boss 2 and Boss 2.5, I finally got my way and hundreds of products were picked and loaded onto pallets for me to start some seriously big days of product photography.

Thousands and thousands of photos later. Downloaded and culled them down. Renamed and colour corrected each and every one on its own merits. Sent them off for deep etching and get them back a week or so later. I painstakingly upload over 480 product images to their respective product or parent product and file the high res away in the image library. Batch 1 done and dusted.

A few days or so pass.

Boss 2.5: Alright. So how's the product images going? Everywhere I look, here's so many images missing.

Me: Well.. *Feeling pretty chuffed with myself* I've just finished 500 photos which are now live.

Boss 2.5: *In the most patronising/sarcastic tone ever* Ooookay. There's only 4000 products total, but sure ok.

Can't remember exactly what I said to her, but I wish I stood up for myself a hell of a lot more than whatever I did say.

I work with both (remotely) but the art director is quite the piece of work. He won’t let me check any of his work but he has to check everything of mine. He’s always going on about his 30 years of experience and how he does everything himself and his amazing attention to detail, yadda… t’s fucking grating to listen to if you’ve seen any of his work.

Anyway, we had a client that updated their brand guidelines, shared them with us but was very slow in sending us the assets, one of which was a background of sectioned gradients. I needed to use that background in a comp so I opened the guidelines PDF in Illustrator hoping I could rip it out of there, but it was a lowers pixel image, not a vector. So I just zoom in on the PDF, screenshot the background and save it as a PNG with FPO (for positional only) at the start of the filename.

I share the comp with the cd and ad for their review and the ad asks me where I got the background from as he wants to use it. I tell him it’s only a screenshot and I can recreate it as vector if he needs it for any urgent art and we don’t get it from the client in time but they’d need to allow me 30 mins or so. He says to just send it to him.

So about a week later, the cd asks the ad to send me the artwork he did for the same client, as I’ll apparently need it for reference on my part of the job. The ad sends me a packaged Indesign file of a pull-up banner, it went out early as they need the lead time to produce it. I’m wondering if he got background art from the client and didn’t share it with me so I open up his art and find an EPS file placed in the background with a shitty preview.

I open it up and I’m horrified to see that he’s just placed my screenshot positional on a page in Illustrator and saved it as an EPS. I quickly calculate the res on it and work out that it’s about 3.5dpi in his artwork. I ask him about it and he tells me: Yeah, I made it a vector.

While a lot of us do our real-time brainstorming on a FigJam or miro, I get really annoyed every time you need to refer to a previous brainstorm it's a real pain to find it on the board.

Wouldn't it be so helpful if we could just have embeds of particular sections of the miro boards on an async channel and if you clicked on it, it would just take you to that area on the board?

Think of it, you start a project, and every single brainstorm is so well organized on a thread.

With most designers now working remotely and communicating primarily asynchronously, I was curious how members here collaborate effectively with their teams/clients?

Monday 7 am. My partner and I are about to present some UI concepts to one of our regular clients. Skype rings.

"Hey, Robert."

"Morning guys" − his smile takes up my entire screen.

Robert is this super nice guy, running a marketing agency and collaborating with people from all over the world. His workweek could be described as a never-ending marathon of video calls, and we happen to be his first one for the day.

The opening few minutes of our meeting get devoted to complaining about the weather (for the sake of tradition), and just as I'm about to start my presentation, Robert interrupts me − "Hey, let me share my screen for a moment before you start. I want to show you something."

His round face is replaced by the square browser window as he starts walking us through this presentation he'd been working on.

I'm trying my best to focus on his pitch, I really am, but there are some 30 more tabs opened in his browser, and I just can't help but look at them. My eyes roll over the tabs, as I realize I know most of these favicons. And then it hits me!

These are all Porn sites!

1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 15, 23. Twenty-three tabs of Porn? What?

Robert, you beast!

I turn my head to Marta (my partner). Did she notice? Oh yeah, she noticed! The embarrassment kicks in. I guess we don't usually think of our clients in the context of their sex lives − yet there was Robert, giving us a peek at his − not even realizing it.

Should I tell him? Of course Not! It would be extra awkward − just shut your mouth and pretend we didn’t see anything.

Robert goes on, describing one of his charts, not having a clue that all I can think of is him masturbating to 23 porn videos − at the same time!

In a heroic effort, we somehow manage to keep it pro, wrap up the call and get the approval for our concepts. The meeting ends and we burst into laughter. Marta is so proud of my sales skills enduring this test.

A few hours later, I'm alone in my office. I'm thinking about Robert. I feel bad for not telling him.

"Rob, wanna hop on a short call?"

"Sure, give me a sec. I need to get dressed," he responds.

Skype rings. His kind face appears again. But this time he looks tired, so I get straight to the point − "Hey... um... you remember today... when you... um... shared your screen during our call?"

Robert blushes. He starts laughing, covering his face with his hands − he knows. Turns out he shared his screen quite a few times that day. At least a dozen of his stakeholders and partners, from all over the world, had a peek at his private affairs until the last guy he spoke to started laughing straight to his face and told him. That's how he found out.

If only I had told him when I had the chance, he wouldn't have embarrassed himself in front of all those other people. And, sure, that made me feel like shit, but what was truly bugging me − what I really needed to find out was: why 23 tabs? What do you do with so many? I mean, I can't even manage half of that myself, so naturally, I had to ask.

"Rob. My man. What exactly do you do with 23 tabs of porn? How does that work? I mean do you...?" (I'm fishing for some pro tips)

His soft cheeks turn red again. "You know what's the worst thing?" He says, "I wasn’t even watching the porn."

OK...

"I was doing research."

Boom! Naturally, I burst into laughter. It was the most ridiculous excuse I had heard in a while. Research? Seriously? I mean that's the type of excuse I would give to my parents in high school when they would walk on me masturbating − "Mom I swear, it's not what it looks like! It's just research for my school project! Close the door, please! No, no, no, don't let the grandma in... NOOO..."

A tiny, tired smile forms on Robert's face. He's ashamed. I can see it in his eyes as he realizes that no one will believe him. I imagine him explaining it to all of his colleagues and them pretending they hadn't seen anything. I imagine him explaining it to those who actually didn’t see anything. I imagine all of them laughing out loud at his "I was doing research" explanation.

So, I choose to believe him, and against all odds, it turns out rightly so − the poor guy wasn't making it up! Apparently, he was working on a marketing campaign for Pornhub − doing the actual research, practically getting paid to look at porn ads. And as if seeing hundreds of penis enlargement banners he would never be able to erase from his memory wasn't enough, he ended up doing it publicly, in front of his peers.

At that moment, the whole "research" explanation made the situation way less embarrassing. The image of my client masturbating was suddenly replaced with him doing this simple yet daunting task (a competitive analysis, if you will). It was just work, like any other. But even after six years, I keep thinking about it, and I am still not sure what to make of it.

I guess I'm yet to figure out if it's better giving your colleagues a peek at your sex life, or showing them that you're working for the porn industry.

Btw, I decided never to tell Marta about any of this. She still thinks Robert is just really passionate about his porn.

Hi

Two years ago I finished a one year course of Graphic Design and in the same year I've started a stage in an marketing agency.

The agency already has a graphic designer and they teach me a lot of very useful things.

After some month, the boss offers me to work in the agency as a Social Media Manager with a small fee and I accepted, also because they continued to train me on copywriting and on the advertising side of design.

Now, after two years I became an handyman: Social Media Manager, Video Editor (occasionally), and manager of facebook campaigns of our clients. All with a low salary (because the agency is small, we are 4 employees).

My growth as a graphic designer has stalled and my boss insists on making me grow towards the Facebook campaign manager path (but I don't like it).

So now I am stuck in a decision: Quit my job and try to become a freelancer or not?

Hi there!

I've been working at my first design job as an in-house designee for 2 months now, and lately I've been noticing design concepts and files on my pc that I haven't been working on. I can tell that they were there and I can see thumbnails, but they've been deleted so I can't open them.

This company has been in business for 40 years and have never had it's own designer, they've only used freelancers for a logo before. I was hired especially to take design tasks on me (redesign logo, website, flyers, ads, the whole branding really). Seeing these concepts on my pc just feels weird to me.

Should I confront my boss, and if so, how?

If they wanted to hide it, why use my pc? Why open and make files on it to delete it again? To say I feel betrayed might be a bit much, I feel uneasy in the least.

Thanks :)

Lovely interview with a super talented designer Nayab Fatima, she’s sharing her opinion on how to present your work to the clients, along with some tips on how to do it right.

I work at a retail company and I’ve been working on a brochure for the last 2-3 weeks for our customers. My boss makes a few revisions to the content snd I wrap it up and I’m getting ready to send it to print. Boss says hey can you send this up to “parent” they want to look at it. I get an email from said parent asking for the artwork asking for the actual artwork files so they can make adjustments. I send said files with all product images embedded in the AI file so there won’t be any issue when they open it. They then ask for all of the photos separately because the designer can’t find the images. So now I have files that are all embedded and no way to Unembed without doing them all manually. I ask why they can’t see the photos because they’re embedded and no answer just a request for the images again. I ask the parent to have the designer call me so maybe I can help open the files properly. They call, and I can’t understand a word they are saying because of a shitty phone line and broken English. I ask what parent company asked them to do and they said they were asked to redo because it’s ugly. I guess my design degree is right out the window. The fact that they tried to slyly have someone else do it is not only annoying it’s kind of a slap in the face. Why not just ask me to try again or send me examples of how they can see it improve rather than have the new “designer” call me and tell me it’s ugly?

I have many horror stories but here’s one:

I had a client who I worked with for years and always received payment so I stopped asking for a deposit.

I was asked one day to design a flyer for client from one of her old flyers. I designed the flyer and sent it back to them for changes. Client suddenly decides to send me a different flyer back with the comment ‘can you make it like this one’ so I changed a few things around and make it similar but better for what she needed this flyer for. Client then comes back with ‘sorry, you forgot to put details on it and I’ve had it done by someone else now so I won’t be paying you’

Obviously I’m not just a graphic designer I’m also psychic because I put all the details she asked for on it. Turns out she wanted me to guess and now she’s not my client anymore and she is ignoring my invoices! Woo! Remember folks, always ask for a deposit.

I have been growing frustrated with this for a while now and I just want to check if other people feel the same or if I'm overreacting.

I have been using the drawing software Procreate for a while now. I use it for digital painting and sketching. To get better at it, I joined a few Procreate community pages on Facebook.

Lately, I have been seeing a lot of posts of people asking for advice on doing graphic design on the app. Like designing logos and business cards.

I can only comment so many times that they should be doing it in a vector program and that logos should be vectorized.

Driving me CRAZY.

Hello everyone. Recently signed up on DesignCrowd, and submitted a design for a contest. It was rejected with the “blurriness” reason. I read all guides,submitted another one, same situation. I have only one left until account block. Anyone faced something like that? I tried to contact support, but no clear response, just lining me on guides page. No idea what to do. Would really appreciate some advices! Thank you!

Hey guys,

Does anyone have experience on DesignCrowd. I’ve started using it recently but it feels like clients are really vague with what they want and expect designers to guess?

I designed a flyer today which contained everything the client asked for but the winner was a designer who included everything the client didn’t ask for... am I missing something here? I’m not too bothered about the not winning part - I’m a fully qualified Graphic designer working full time outside of this, I’m just exploring in my spare time.

I just don’t want to invest too much time in this if it’s always a guessing game.

What are others take on the site?

I do custom portraits for people. It takes a long time to complete each and a lot of work goes into each one. It’s a recent side business and I’m always excited to get a customer, so when I saw someone dming me I knew it was an interested customer. To my surprise the conversation went a bit south. Here’s how it went generally:

Cus: Hey! I heard u do portraits Me: Yes and I’d love to do yours. In you’re interested you should check out my website ... Cus: WOW they look 👌🏼 ! Just dropped my ice cream 🍦 1 sec Me:... Cus: Okay I’m back, u no my birthday is coming up in a few days Me: Congratulations! Cus: Man it’s been a tough year for me tho. I’ve have 5 surgeries and spent half the year in the hospital Me: Sorry, I think you may have texted the wrong number (I thought this was way out of context and she must have texted it to the wrong person) Cus: this is my name right? Me: Yes. Anyway, let me know what you decide, I’d be happy to draw you!

It was an awkward interaction. I was trying to be professional and kind but I never expected someone to use their birthday and tragedies to get a discount on my artwork...

Not my work but worth sharing. It's funny how time flies so fast. https://designrshub.com/2020/07/applications-and-their-old-counterparts.html

Hi guys, I'm just entering my design career, and I've just got my website running and applying for jobs, great right? Well, it's been...weird so far.

The first interview I had, the person interviewing me started off by saying he hadn't conducted any interviews before. Okay, fair enough. He starts with okay questions like, "how long have you lived in town for?" "What school did you go to?" But then I was a little surprised when he asked me if I was single. I figured, I'm a man, he's mentioned his girlfriend already. He's never done an interview before. Even though it was totally inappropriate, I quickly say I'm single. Then all the sudden he's asking me more, way more inappropriate questions."what's your diet?" "Where do you live?" "Roommates?" "Live alone?" "Family in town?"

I did my best to give vague answers, even though I knew they weren't professional in any way, some stupid part of me still was thinking I didn't want to botch my first interview. It wasn't until he asked me to come to his house that I totally got kidnapper vibes or something and I bailed saying I got another offer.

Okay creepy. Even if it was fine, probably not the kind of dude I want to work for.

Well today I get my first request form via my website.

Yay!

But my heart sinks when I read the email.

A different man, but still creepy. He's trying to ask my about my age, what I like to do, asking me all the questions that were already answered on my website, as if he didn't even look? But then finishes it with "I really look forward to getting to learn more about you." This, again, kinda gave me bad vibes? Which...there was no mention of any work this guy actually wanted. Just questions about my personal life??

Is this normal? Should I just ignore stuff like this?

I've been a designer for more than twenty years. I've worked for clients ranging from fortune 500 companies to sole proprietorships. Yesterday, I went sent a pitch deck in for review, and I was told it was beautiful and sophisticated, but could I "make the graphs more emotional?"

That's definitely a new one.

first time poster, mods- feel free to remove if this breaks any rules of the page

I just graduated in June with a BFA in graphic design. I don’t have years of experience, yet I don’t want to undervalue myself either. I was recently told by a professor that anything under 20$/hour is too low for quality work. I trust them, but I want to get multiple opinions.

So designers- from your experience, what would you recommend for an hourly rate?

Thanks :)