Matt – er of factly // Bitter rant of an Interactive Art Director
Ok, to begin with… sorry. I have to preface this post with an apology because this day has been testing my patience to say the absolute least. This is the year for me to make some changes and I am beginning to have a feeling that the changes are going to made sooner than later. Fine with me!
So the point to be made in this post is that print designers should stick to print and web designers should stick to web. I am not saying this to offend anyone. The thing is this — my Creative Director here at work has been slowly and surely (in my eyes only) diggin himself a hole. He does not know web. I’ll go a step further. He still asks me if he needs to put a ‘www’ in front of a URL and can’t work a mouse with a right click on it because it’s just too much. No offense if you’re reading this.. you know who you are, but you just ain’t up to speed with some stuff.
This lack of knowledge has brought me into this downward spiral here at work. I kinda feel like it has gotten to the, no, it has gotten to the point where he is asking me questions that are just so damn stupid. Like the person that is so ignorant to design that they think there is a button in Illustrator that makes logos. Or a button in Photshop that makes pictures perfect quality and clips them out for you. “Well, can’t you just grab his arm and put it on her?”
Today he asked me why it would take so long to move a button on a Wordpress Template, change the style of it and make it take you to a different place. “Well, it won’t take that long but there are a lot of steps involved” I told him. To which he responded, “Oh, you mean you can’t just grab it and move it like in Photoshop or something?” It just makes me cringe.
I like to be in management positions. I always have. Probably due to my experience as a retail manager. However, every time a project comes through that is web related, it get’s estimated by people who have no idea how to do any of the things that it takes to make that project a reality. I end up getting stuck in the middle of it because I do know what it would take to accomplish the project so everyone turns to me. Again… Fine with me! What ends up super sucking though is that the CD comes in after I estimate the project as best I can and starts slashing hours and prices syaing “we can do it in less time than that!” And then the AE on the project comes through and says, “I don’t think the client will go for it, let’s figure out how we can cut some hours!” So the estimates get slashed all over the place. And then the mighty hand of God (owner of the agency) comes through, “Come on you guys… I KNOW we can do it for less than that!”
Next step, project goes into production and I get tasked with managing it. I am the Interactive Art Director, “no problem!” Not exactly. You see I’m literally trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents on all the projects we take on. So the project is in production with not even enough hours to bang out the design. Then goes into programming production. Then the mighty hand God (owner of the agency) comes through after the CD, AE and client have checked off on design and says something like, “Ya know, I think we should change this around a bit?”
Well… that makes sense! Not exactly.
Sum it up a little quicker… the path here at the agency is a pretty damn convoluted one. Sometimes I feel like I work inside of a giant pinball machine and the mighty hand of God (owner of the agency) is just flicking those damn flickers around all over the place without even caring about where the ball is headed. It spins me out when things come up that seem to be so common sense to figure out yet they do the opposite and end up losing clients and projects over it. And not just once, then learn the lesson and move on. It’s all the time. I feel like I’m not even getting any good portfolio work here anymore because none of the projects I work on even make it to production. The client gets frustrated and leaves or they fire us before we can make any money. And you know who the finger gets pointed at when that happens? me! Makes me feel real nice.
Oh well. Like I said, this is the year for change. When I do make a change I will be taking things into my own hands and developing a stream lined process for projects to move down. No more AE’s coming through and having to check things off. No more CD’s who don’t know what they’re talking about. No more mighty hand of God slopping the whole thing up just get his thumbprint onto everything that comes through here. It’s too many steps. Too many people. And the client has to pay for all those hours that all those people spend messing things up. It’s crazy. Projects can get done twice as quick or faster for half the price or cheaper. Who doesn’t like that? Everyone wins!
Hope the New Year is treating you and yours well and getting off to a great start. Mine is full of inspiration and realizations at this point.