The Lazy Designer

I have to stop being a lazy designer. I drafted the following three paragraphs before this one, and just as I was about to conclude the blog entry, I realized: damn, I don't think it's that I can't be a good self-editor (although to an extent, it is true)—I just need to stop being lazy. A lazy designer. That almost seems like an oxymoron. I mean, design is all about details. How can I expect to compete, innovate, and land that all important high-paying technical job without effective effort and energy? It's not like design doesn't rouse me, so I need to bury the laziness once and for all. And after all, I'm getting a Master's degree—this isn't the Art Institute and I'm not just going for a design certificate. It's all about hard work and push myself out of my comfort zone.

So back to the original starting point of this blog:

I love editing...that is, editing other people's work. I guess it's my critical, overanalytical, perceptive nature at play. Sometimes those qualities are bad, like when something doesn't go perfectly at work or in a relationship. Other times, it's for good, like reviewing and critiquing someone's work, whether it's writing or design—especially if it's writing or design. When the good times roll, I make a fierce "wordsmither," grammarian, and type expert. When the bad times roll, I can be hard on myself and others...

I've never been a good self-editor, though. I mean, I'm sure at some, or many, points of our careers, we've said to ourselves and to each other these buzz words: fresh eyes, a second pair of eyes, triple-check, and so on. I say those words ALL the time because, as nitpicky as I can be able other people's work, I can't always see my own stuff. And so what ends up happening is that I get frustrated with trying to correct my own work such that the editing process tends to feel like an afterthought—a quick thing I do before I hit print.

Words & Images, and particularly this classification assignment, challenges me to ressurrect, or construct, that self-editor. Granted, in the beginning of the course, I had to force myself into phase four. When editing feels like an obligatory afterthought, having to revisit and revise feels like torture. That's the "old" me. I realized an hour ago that I, willingly and without force, stayed up all Wednesday night to tweak my classification piece, despite being happy with my original draft, and continuing work as even my work e-mail notification harasses, taunts, and begs for attention. And now comparing the two drafts and I'm saying "WOW!" I get it now.


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I see you bubbling all over the place -- you're yeasty, and I think it's grand!