Need for Speed

Quick turn projects have little room for error. You need to have a pretty good idea that whatever concepts you’re attempting will look good, fast. There is no time for doubt, and therefore, little time for curiosity. After all, whatever you show the client needs to look considered, “designed,” requiring you to immediately jump into realizing a concept.

More often than not, this forces the team to lean back on pastiche. Emulating something that already exists helps threefold: 1. It already has banked familiarity and associations to support the concept, 2. You can be pretty sure it will look cool by the end, and 3. Easy moodboarding. You can show the client exactly who they want to be in a cluster of other folks’ stuff.

This, ultimately, is the allure of Pinterest boards for the time-poor designer. The algorithm feeds us trendy looking images instantly. We can collect enough of them into a mishmash, without feeling like we’re ripping off anyone in particular. And boom, I have a squeaky “new” concept that will look “modern” (at least “popular”) that the client will appreciate.

You may already know where I’m going with this.

This is forcing designers to work like AI: quick prompts that average the current trends as defined by an algorithm.

The real power of the graphic designer is process and experimentation. This requires NOT knowing what the final design will look like when you start. This requires time.