I’m an artist godammit

There are some clients that love a design so much they don’t change a thing about it. Some ask for changes that come at a point where they’re easy to do and cause no real problems. Then there are those that ask for changes that take ages to do, remove work that took ages to complete or simply, in my view, ruin a design. It’s at these points that working on a project can be a little soul destroying.

Sure the reaction is extreme and the people I work with have known me long enough to know the kind of reaction I have to some client changes but I’m starting to believe the place the frustration comes from is good, even if the outlet can be a little over the top.

I think the problem stems from my passion and feeling of ownership over the work I produce. This sense of ownership goes so far that if a design undergoes enough of the ‘wrong’ changes that feeling actually disappears and with it sometimes the passion for the project as a whole. The passion I have is similar to what traditional artists have for the work they create. Of course I’m not saying I’m an artist and quite so full of myself as the post title suggests but I see this and other parallels existing between design and art. Luckily for most artists they rarely have to change their work after the critics have seen it.

I’ve come to believe it’s this passion and ownership that has pushed me to be able to produce the level of work I do and without it I wouldn’t be trying to push myself to be better. So although I sometimes regret the reaction I have to some client changes, when really it’s their website not mine, I’ll always remember that I wouldn’t be the designer I am if I didn’t react that way.