5 things (well, lots actually) elite designers should stop saying

Core Conversations - James Reffell, Design Director at Yahoo brought a collection of big printouts of designers he’d taken in his studio looking very “designer-y” and had the audience, about 60 people, come up with stereotype phrases like “I am the designer and I said the design is right” and “well it works fine in safari”. James tapped into his LinkedIn contacts to get contributions from his network to inspire his talk and seed the discussion.

It worked well and reminded me of an old creative director we used to employ… ;o)

The top ‘no-no’ quotes were:

“Trust Me”

“I did the best I could - there’s only so much you do with…”

“Is all of this stuff really necessary? If we could just get rid of {insert name of essential feature} the design would work SO much better.”

“Yeah but…I am a creative”

“Just tell me what you want and I’ll make that.”

Well you never told me it was supposed to look REALLY good!”

“That will never work”

“This project doesn’t have enough budget to do what I need to achieve”

“That maybe the case but the he client’s still wrong”

“This isn’t really a ‘creative environment’ for you to get the best out of me/my team”

“Your database doesn’t work with my design”…..

“We need our own department and room to work in with lots of books”

“But you need to understand my brain works in a different way to yours”

“That’s technical and I don’t really need to understand how it works”