My pet peev at the moment is made from the culmination of comments that result in the idea that what I do is easy and shouldn't cost much.
And frankly, people - it's pissing me off.
Yes, you can just make a website and save yourself the $1500 the web-designer was going to charge you. Yes you can just "mess around" with Photoshop at home (ay?) to learn it. No, you don't *have* to pay a designer for your prepress artwork when you have Word on your machine (gag!) to make PDFs.
But
BUT
_IF_ you want YOUR website/photographs/artwork to LOOK professional and NOT like it just PLOPPED out of a dog's BOTTOM, you need to get your SHIT together and LEARN how to do this stuff PROPERLY or hire someone who CAN do the work and pay them ACCORDINGLY. If you don't want to do and redo and REDO work that becomes the laughing stock of your local printer then stop saying things to me like "this should be easy" when it's PATENTLY OBVIOUS you have no FUCKING IDEA what the difficulty factor on this task IS!
"Can you just take the A4 advert you did last January and make it A5. Replace that one photo with these four and change the text to this _much_ longer version i've printed out for you so you can just type it in. This logo has to be visible on the page too so I scanned it from our business card for you. This shouldn't take you long at all."
"I've told the customer you will give him three examples of characters so he can pick one for his training module. He's looking for a character like Word's paperclip, but something *original*. No, no.. there is no instructionally sound reason for using a cartoon character, we just thought it'd be a nice free "add on" for the project - quite frankly, they loved the idea and it clinched the deal! The client and I look forward to seeing the three original character drawings tomorrow at 9am."
"I've allocated 4 hours to "look and feel" and so that should be plenty of time for you to come up with several interfaces so we can show the customer. content? oh don't worry about that now, just do the interfaces, don't worry about what content we need to show, or how much there is, or how many menu items there might be, or how we're going to navigate around the site, or what kind of technology the customer requires, just do the interfaces so they can pick one."
I have spent more than 6 years learning how to make this look easy and I'll tell you something for nothing.. its NOT EASY. The software and training is EXPENSIVE and time consuming; the learning associated with a lot of it is EXTENSIVE and HARD TO COME BY and it NEVER STOPS! It's bloody HARD coming up with ideas and colour schemes and image placement and enhancement and type and creation and original artwork and cartoon characters and metaphors and themes and pitches to clients and novel ideas for an engaging online ex-fucking-peirence. It's hard translating your ideas (and i use that term loosely) like "it has to be 'wow' and have 'pazazz'" "it needs to be sexy" "it needs to get into the hearts and minds of our customers" into a tangible thing when you don't even supply any content, logos and other assets (even when asked - REPEATEDLY).
Lets face it: you don't even know what you want until I show it to you ANYWAY.
And that's not even getting into all the stuff I don't NEED to know to be a Graphic/Digital Designer. I know all this OTHER stuff because I'm smart, I've done the WORK and I have an ability to LEARN! I have the most VALUABLE and VARIED SKILLS in one package you'll ever have the MISFORTUNE of DISMISSING with your off-the-cuff remarks that devalue the skills needed to do what you need me to do.
So _just_ shut UP!
*deep breath*
I know I should have thicker skin. But I'm a "creative" and it feels like I'm being pecked to death by ducks - one peck doesn't hurt but the whole flocking lot is eating me alive.