Are you a Graphic Designer?

Bad Designers?

If you are a Graphic designer, check your skills. Here are 25 bad habits that graphic designers often make. After checking the list, I figured out what I still needed to learn and what mistakes I often make. If you find any of your bad habits on this list, it’s time to make some changes to better your life as a designer. Changing these habits will upgrade your design abilities, reduce your stress and make you more professional. Educating yourself on the work of famous graphic designers and their design systems will help you learn and give you great inspiration for future projects.

25 Bad Habits:

1. Taking Constructive Criticism Personally

2. Not knowing the work of Paula Scher, Milton Glaser, Paul Rand and Friends

3. Not Staying up on Current Events and Design News

4. Not Owning the Graphic Artists Guild Handbook

5. Charging too Little for Design Projects

6. Not Using Contracts to Cover Your Butt

7. Not Setting Deadlines for Projects

8. Doing Spec Based Work (If you like it, you can pay)

9. Not Asking for a Down Payment before Starting a Project

10. Using Poorly Designed Fonts from Free Font Sites

11. Using Display Fonts as Text Fonts

12. Using the Comic Sans Font

13. Using too Many Different Fonts in One Design

14. Forgetting White Space is your Friend

15. Not Sketching Before Designing

16. Not Using Rulers on the Screen

17. Relying Totally on the Computer, Especially for Kerning

18. Using Photoshop Filters After Your First 6 Months

19. Using Low Resolution Web Images for Print

20. Not Designing Logos in Vector Format

21. Making Logos Unable to Reproduce Well Small

22. Forgetting to Learn Keyboard Shortcuts

23. Not Saving Frequently

24. Not Backing up Files on an External Hard Drive

25. Not Getting Enough Sleep! Stop Drinking so much Red Bull!

To read the original blog, visit http://www.youthedesigner.com/2007/11/19/25-bad-habits-of-graphic-designers/

By Anna Kim