"What part of working in design professionally do you enjoy the most? like, is there one aspect or type of project that you enjoy more than others?" - ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
neotula Figure if I can still answer this evenly on a day where I feel ... less than charitable towards the dayjob as a whole, then it's a remarkably honest answer. :P
So there's almost two parts, or two answers to this. Medium-wise, I very much enjoy that odd space between architecture and print graphics; a lot of folks call it experiential or environmental graphics, these days.
I've written a bit about that over here, about the permanence, about a sense of place and texture that digital design very rarely has. There's also the fact if you're decent at photoshop / 3-D thinking / renderings / sketchup, you can essentially create
anything to sell, and that's a super-power when it comes to suits. And likewise it gives you, the individual, an independence that is very rare.
The other part of the answer ...
Corporate design is fun for me in the puzzle-like visual problem solving sense. It's a little bit of 3-D chess when all the pieces are together.
Say the suits need a logo in order to finalize a 5-year contract with $big_media_company where the two powers sell a TV show or a product together, or whatever. You're not only pleasing your direct boss, or their manager, but I would at least say 15-20 "cooks in the kitchen" as well as two companies as a whole, if not their off-shoots.
Said logo needs to be legible, resonate with the target audience
and the suits
and the CEO
with very odd ideas and your design team, be of the times but not too on-the-nose-trendy, need to be in presentation with a whole brand identity that survives being picked at by all the stakeholders, and on-time (aka due yesterday) ... it very quickly becomes less about the "creativity" and more about "does it do the thing in the minimum amount of time and the minimum amount of politics".
This
can be hell; part of the issue I had today is rescuing a similar initiative because a few designers got carried away with being "creative" (aka have nothing to show after weeks and a VP's nipping their heels) and not focused on the business or human side.
But man, when it does happen just right? You get a slam-dunk logo (or design or whatever) that's solid as hell, the suits trust you because you've got a track record of other slam-dunks, there's kudos from Fortune 100 companies in your inbox or from the top dog, and there's that sense of satisfaction and stability and pride at threading a very tricksy needle.
that's a high.
very different than a drawing high, or even a design-for-fun high, but it's one all the same. ;)
