At my day job for an employer, there is a new hire. The boss liked her, but did not know exactly what to do with her, but he hired her anyways. (That goes to show there is always room in the budget for new hires or raises, if the boss is in the mood.)

At first she helped with marketing tasks, building out eblasts from templates, and working on training videos. She recently started working on design tasks. Now, I am all for sharing the workload. I don’t have to be the one who does everything, but I realized, she was not a designer at heart.

I was worried about her updating PDFs for completely new content, rather than opening up InDesign or Illustrator and then exporting a new PDF, but then I saw she was also swapping out icons. Again, it does not have to be my icon in the document, but I was confused on her choice of icons. I tried explaining how all the previous icons had the same base styling: inside a blue-background circle, with white icons bases, with lime accents, and with a thin dotted orange line in each icon graphic; they had a uniform look. In contrast, the stock icons she was throwing in have different styles, different scaled designs, and just did not look uniform. It reminds me of how when I started working at that place, how everything looked so hodgepodge. Sure, the icon described the new text, but it did not do it in a uniform appearance to the other icons, and that is what bothered me.

One non-designer art directing another non-designer to edit a PDF in a quick-edit PDF software.

The woman than said that this was just a job, and she was just putting something in there, as requested. 

And that was it: a designer cares.

A designer has it in their blood to make sure everything communicates effectively and with consistent branding.

She was willing to put something else in there, if I told her so, but she did not “see” the problem with the choice she made. I certainly can’t be watching over someone on all their design choices myself. This person was supposed to relieve me of duties (even though I never asked for it).

What my employer prioritized was not a designer. I don’t think he even reviewed any portfolio from her. What he prioritized was a butt in the chair. He prioritized in-person help, not talent-passion, and this was the result, right in front of my face. Had we been looking for a designer with talent, surely we would have posted a design job, I would have shared it in my personal network, and I would have looked at portfolio links from people.

Sure, the woman is nice enough, and I do feel friendly with her, but she is not a designer. She doesn’t see the difference. That will translate to all the design assets going forward. Do you want filler assets, or do you want effective assets? What is the point of us doing anything if filler is all we will show? Clients that pay more for good design will see the difference, and not bother initiating contact for sales.

I was not prepared for another designer to be on the team as it was never spoken about. I knew we talked about more developers, more business analyst, more testers, more tier one phone call support, but never a designer.  At some point on and off, I would dabble together a style guide, but since no one ever read or followed it, it was not a top priority; it felt more like a pet project. At some point, per the boss’s directives, we updated the company logo but I did not document that in the style guide; since we had this new hire, I did rush to at least update that part of the style guide and the woman did pull the hex codes from the style guide at least. The colour was from the style guide, but that was not enough to make the differently drawn icon feel like it belonged on the page.

Someone can open up a tool and replace text, but they are a mimic, or parrot, not a creative thinker. They won’t see the whole picture. They will do what you ask, replace the text, but that is all. This was a short term fix rather than long term thinking.

If I had a choice in the matter, I would have preferred a recent design grad, rather than someone who does not care about design.

It turns out, I am a designer, I love design, and I do still get bothered after 18 years when I see lazy design.