When Being a Designer Wasn’t Fun

In my twenties, I worked as a freelance designer for an unnamed global hotel company I shall call Shmyatt. I loved it for its big cabinet stocked full of fresh office supplies, the beautiful staff kitchen, and the 36th floor view of downtown Chicago with window washers visiting from the sky weekly to clean the floor-to-ceiling glass. It felt so...grown-up.

One of my first projects was to design a tag to hang on a hotel room doorknob, like a “do not disturb” sign. This one asked the housekeeping staff to refrain from changing linens during a stay so as to save water. The idea that anyone needs fresh linens changed daily is a grotesque caricature of American wastefulness, but I digress.

The door hanger had three requirements: the brand colors, a line of copy, and a little leaf icon. Do you want to know how many rounds of revisions it took to finalize this tag? Eleven. Do you want to know how long it took? Six weeks.

Why did it take so long? The piece was being batted around in a long game of telephone, starting at the top and following the chain of command all the way down to me, the lowly designer. I was probably the seventh or eighth person in this game of telephone, but there was no way of knowing.

I wanted to ask questions. What is the problem we’re trying to solve? Who is our audience? Is this the most effective way to communicate this message? How would printing these on non-recycled paper with non-biodegradable inks and shipping them affect the size of the carbon footprint we're trying to lessen?

But because my title was "Designer," and because of the limited way Shmyatt (and so many other companies) saw the job duties of such a title, my task was to merely follow instructions...And then re-do it following slightly different instructions...And then re-do it following slightly different instructions...And over and over. As far as they were concerned, I was a robotic pair of hands who happened to know how to use Adobe products.

Since that time, experience has made me an advocate for including design from the very inception of the process. I now insist on asking those questions and learning about the why.

And in doing so, the experience has become so much more engaging. I get to use all those design tools I've been working on and use them to make things that have an impact. It's a rich and exciting way to spend my time, and most importantly of all, it's FUN.