Is Bullshit OK?

Bullshit is such a strong word. It is to designers to take bullshit and make it look and smell like a beautiful flower on an 70-degree spring day. Sometimes clients can hand us a mess to decode. In order to create an effective design we must take the piles of bullshit and make it into something that is inviting for the clients target audience.

Often I have been given projects that have terrible headlines and body copy but I have to work though it in order to complete my task, which is to give the readers something that they would want to read. There has been a number of occasions when I have had to send copy back to a writer with some suggestions on what would help make the article flow better. We as designers are the last line of defense for the bullshit.

I think we all have had to take bullshit and turn it into something flowerie. I know when I first started to design I used a lot of bullshit to sell my designs but most of the time the bullshit was sniffed out. I started to realize that I needed to believe in my designs. Have I worked on some projects that I didn’t like the final product? Yes, but I always did my best to turn it into some type of flower. All flower don’t always smell good. But they usually look better than BULLSHIT.

Oh, there is one more thing. We can also try to bullshit ourselves sometime. Designers should not wear rose-colored glasses. I order to create great design we have to be open and honest to ourselves. We can sometimes convince ourselves that apiece is what the client needs. When in reality we have convinced ourselves that what we have packaged is what the client needs.