The internal designer struggle // Time VS Value
Friday, February 20, 2015 |
Throughout many of the creative industries, it seems to have become a common kind of practice for there to be loads and loads of competitions for people to enter. Doesn't matter if you're a designer, illustrator, writer or whatever else: there's always something!
But on the other end of the scale you have people saying "don't do it! Your time is worth more than that!" Resulting in a never ending internal struggle.
As someone who is an aspiring designer and does truly want to make a name for herself, I find it so hard on where stand on this front.
True, it's great exposure IF you win and you can win a prize. But it also sucks slaving away on a project for what could amount up to weeks of effort to never win! And yeah it can look great in your portfolio but you wouldn't expect a brain surgeon to do a surgery to get recognition or to win X amount. You certainly wouldn't expect them to have to pay a fee to do it either so why do people in the creative industries always seem to have to push that little bit further?
Personally I love working on competition briefs even if I don't send them off but to push myself to try new ideas. But I do feel creative people do deserve more credit than they get...
How do you feel on this subject? It is quite a controversial one!
6 comments
Ahh I know this struggle all too well! With anything creative you're always gonna feel like your work will be better for spending more time on it, but sometimes it's just practically impossible!
ReplyDeletelily x
www.jolihouse.com
Exactly! x
DeleteWhen I did art/design in high school I always felt so much stress being creative. And it's true - there is always the struggle of just getting it done or spending time on it to make it perfect. But it's hard to know what to spend the most time on.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more! Throughout my school Art&design studies I didn't enjoy it as much as I have through college and uni. But looking back now if I were able to do more with design and experiment with media for art I probably would have enjoyed it more! x
DeleteI've only entered one competition (for textile federation) and I don't think it's necessarily a cop out to enter them as long as you know the terms and conditions... The problem is that even though they are good for your cv/portfolio you never really get any feedback on why you didn't win (if you did lose) so for me that's what makes it bad. I don't know if I would go out of my way to enter one, like for textile federation that was submitted for my photoshop brief at uni anyway. If you love what you're doing I don't think it's a problem but you can't enter competitions forever!
ReplyDeletexxx
Exactly! They're good to work on but at some point you need to be able to move on and do real life briefs for actual companies! xxx
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