Ten Reasons Not to Hire a Professional Graphic Designer

Posted by | April 6, 2009 | Design, Marketing | 34 Comments
  1. awesome-smYou really, really like Comic Sans and think it is perfect typeface for all your business documents.
  2. I don’t need graphics. I just want a company logo, brochure, website and trade show booth.
  3. Joe, the IT guy, knows how to stretch and squish photos and place them into PowerPoint to make cool trifolds we can just print out on our desktop printer.
  4. Because you KNOW that people will look at your ad longer if you fill every inch of it with all the information they ever needed to know about your product.
  5. You have all the special effects you could ever need in Microsoft PowerPoint. You know, like rainbow gradients and bevel emboss.
  6. Microsoft Office comes with great clip art.
  7. Your neighbor’s niece is taking a Photoshop class in Junior College and has offered to design your website for free. (Did you see the sample of her totally awesome work included in this blog?)
  8. White space is bad. Those pesky designers are always wasting valuable space that could be filled with star bursts announcing the newness of our latest product updates.
  9. You know that justifying your paragraphs enhances the visual rivers created with double spacing after a period. You do this on purpose to bring back fond memories of fishing trips with your dad. Those darn designers always want to fix them therefore ruining the effect you so carefully created.
  10. Kinko’s doesn’t suck. They do a rip-roaring job on all my important collateral.
  11. Default 12pt Times New Roman type with auto leading is easier for my great-grandmother to read than any of those fancy fonts designers use.

OOPS! That’s eleven. We were on a roll here at Pi Design this morning. Perhaps it was more of a rant. Please comment below, especially if you’re a designer. We would love to hear more reasons why we should not be getting paid for what we do.

34 Comments

  • Christy says:

    You failed to mention the lovely merits of our friendly font Papyrus.

    Papyrus is good
    Zen like trendiness for you
    Use it liberally

  • Judy says:

    12. I can just use the same picture on every page and change the color gradient so it looks different.

  • Sharene says:

    Love the Haiku! Thanks Christy!

  • Bonnie says:

    Loved the “Awsome” error. You rock!

  • #2 is my favorite because people say that ALL the time and are completely clueless about what it takes to put all that stuff together well…I think I have fallen a foul of #9, but only because I am old enough to have learned how to type on a typewriter (google it if need be) and we always double spaced!

  • Darin says:

    Could you replace the starburst with a green moon and have a guy sitting in the crook of the moon saying, “Try Us!” — and would that be 1/2 price since you already have most of the work done?

  • Kathleen says:

    I can download all the fonts I want at freefont.com and use the paint program!

    I think the rainbow and unicorn design is awesome and unique! not…

  • Lisa Kane says:

    Nothing says awsome like unicorns. Except it’s even more awsomer if it has WINGS!!!!!

  • Becky says:

    Wouldn’t that be a pega-corn?

  • Penny wise and pound foolish – doing your own graphics design is like being your own attorney. EVEN if you are a fantastic artist, it still pays to have a fresh set of eyes making your business concept come alive.

  • Lisa Kane says:

    Hmm, Becky….a pegacorn…. Me thinks I need to check Cafepress to find out if the pegacorn shirt exists. Because, as you know, with few sightings of the mythical pegacorn documented, accurate pictoral representation of such would be the DREAM JOB of any graphic artist….how ’bout it Sharene???

  • if the “pegacorn” t-shirt exists I’m in! Small please, white with royal blue 3/4 sleeves and color! Metallic if they have it!

  • Jerry Lund says:

    12. Because your project is going to use ALL the colors, not just 4 colors. (Actual client comment).

  • Sharene says:

    That’s a great one, Jerry! I can just hear it now, “Well, which four are you going to use? Won’t the photos look funny?” OUCH!

  • Joe Howard says:

    Hilarious. Thanks. 🙂

    And I just heard, “We want a spalsh page for our e-commerce store with flash of a rotating globe”

  • Ed says:

    Thanks for the “ten reasons.” As a printer, I can add a few more that I have heard: 12. “I did the entire layout myself in MS Word, what else could you need?” 13. “Resolution? What do you mean? It looks just great on my monitor.” 14. “You won’t need any ‘pantones,’ just match the color from my inkjet.”

  • Alan says:

    Powerpoint DOES have great effects and sometimes I will even get out my highlighters and sharpies to add my own personal touch and special effects!

    They usually hate it when I do that on a screen or projector though…

  • Tracy says:

    This is really great stuff…I love that PIDesign has bascially organized a network group on best practives !!!

  • Ben says:

    Because the logo can never be big enough!

  • Lalo says:

    Because I want to manipulate what is created, so I will need it made in Word. (Actual request!)

  • Natalie says:

    12) That’s what an intern is for!

  • Barbara says:

    We’ve got to cut money somewhere so my uncle’s brother will print it at his shop for free and he wants it in publisher since he doesn’t know how to use those fancy programs and he has a lot of orange ink left over from a soccer team job, so can you change that photograph to something orange. Oh, and he says he can throw in some lime green paper for free. Oh yeah, and he said to let you know that his apple IIe doesn’t have a lot of RAM, so he couldn’t open the last file you sent!

  • Josh Brown says:

    Price drop justification #1 – “I could do this stuff myself, I just don’t know the programs…”

    Price drop justification #2 – “This should only take you about 30 minutes.” (tri-fold brochure)

  • Sharene says:

    Thanks for all the great additions, folks! We may have to post another blog with the next 10 reasons using all of this input. Stay tuned.

  • 12. why hire a graphic designer when apple provides me with that incredible tool “iWeb?”

    Thanks for the tongue in cheek approach…we’re gonna have to link this to our blog for the naysayers…

    http://republicdesign.wordpress.com/

  • Sharene says:

    Thanks for the link, Thomas. Always appreciated!

  • Jody says:

    When asking about a vehicle wrap we designed and installed, the best actual comment ever was, “So did you have to use a really big camera to do that?” Huh????

  • Very cool stuff.keep em coming.

  • Dan says:

    Maybe you could work with your clients to help them understand the terms you use and don’t expect them to fully understand what everything means. If they did, they would be doing your job.

  • Sharene says:

    You are absolutely correct, Dan. This blog post was intended purely as an inside joke for the design community. We treat all of our clients with the utmost respect and always strive to explain everything in language that non-designers can relate to. Communication is vital to our profession. It is called Visual Communication, after all.

    This blog was written out of the frustration that many designers feel when being questioned as to why anyone should pay us for what we do. Some folks think our job is so easy when, actually, it requires years and years of education and training. Oftentimes I sense a lack of respect for our profession. I, for one, try not to deal with clients who feel that way so I don’t have to spend my time justifying why they hired me in the first place.

    This blog is completely tongue-in-cheek and I am sorry you didn’t appreciate it.

  • Andi says:

    LOVE THIS! 🙂

  • Soosan says:

    12. I have my own copy of publisher, it practically does the work for you.

  • James says:

    I think it needs a DOUBLE RAINBOW!

  • Kathleen says:

    12. Because pesky designers keep telling me to standardise my fonts when using comic sans, papyrus and curlz together do the job so much better!

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