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That time a senior designer named Carol told me my work was 'too clean'
I was about 3 years into working at a small studio in Portland, and Carol was a freelance illustrator we'd bring in for projects. She looked at my layout one day and said, 'you've got no texture, no human touch - it looks like a robot made it.' It stung at first, but she was right. I started adding rough sketches and scanner noise into my digital work after that, and my stuff finally started feeling like someone actually made it. Anyone else had a critique that totally flipped your process around?
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tara34512h ago
Read an interview with Stefan Sagmeister where he said perfection steals personality, and that stuck with me ever since. He talked about how leaving in a little mess or imperfection makes the work feel alive, like a person made it, not a machine. Now I purposefully keep some rough edges in my drafts, even if I have to fight my own instincts to clean everything up. Did you end up keeping that scanner noise as a permanent part of your workflow?
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