In graphic design, feedback is important as it forms a link between the designer and the viewer helping them make impactful visuals. Using feedback as a tool, designers can better their work, improve their craftsmanship and foster stronger relationships within the industry.
Let’s see how designers can use feedback as a resource in bettering their imbued skill.
Also Read: Effective Graphic Design Techniques for Skill Enhancement
- Change Your Mindset
A primary principle that comes into play when aiming for any enhancement is the growth mindset. One may consider criticism to be a negative aspect of feedback but often it is how clients or potential users perceive the design. So, to take constructive feedback, it is important to move the focus from the person being highlighted to the situation at hand.
When getting feedback, one has to understand that it’s the work that is being the focus, not the person who built it. This kind of distancing from the focal point assists in minimizing defensiveness and enhances receptiveness. If you accept that there is room for improvement in your design abilities, then feedback will not be a disheartening experience but instead, constructive one.
Also Read: 5 Ways Graphic Designers Can Expand Their Skill Set
- Consult Particular, Practical Critiques
Critiques are more relevant when they are more specific. Comments such as “Make it pop” or “It feels off” leave the user with no room for further development. If you want to receive more fruitful information, encourage the reviewer to substantiate their comments. Questions like “Could you tell me what feels off?” or “What else do you think would lend more ‘punch’ to the piece?” can bring clarity from vague generalizations to what needs to be done.
Also, exposing oneself to feedback from a variety of authors – clients, colleagues, or a mentor results in a multiplicity of views. The design team can provide operational feedback, while the customers can be more effective in giving feedback in terms of usability. Having those multiple views creates a balanced view of the results of the work and how to further improve the work.
- Distinguish Between Initial Responses and Considered Responses
There is nothing wrong in feeling defensive when your efforts are being critiqued, after all it is a normal human response. But getting defensive and reacting at the spur of the moment can also be detrimental as it can eliminate the chances of constructive criticism being received. Instead, look at the situation in its totality. Do not critique the feedback instantly, but allow some time and then come back to it as if it was the first time.
In your own time and space, aim to probe the relevance of the criticism and how it is consistent with the goals set for the design. Once the emotions are put aside, look at feedback as an asset rather than an adversarial response. Then look at the project summary again and ask yourself, does the criticism support the purpose?
- Use Feedback to Inform Your Development of Skills
Feedback can be a great source for suggesting areas of your graphic design skills that need improvement. For example, if a client always wants some modifications in color scheme usage, it is likely that this is one area that would benefit from a bit more attention. Constructive criticism is not necessarily negative; in fact, it provides a learning plan where every piece of criticism can be integrated into learning the desired skill.
In this way, feedback incorporates goals into skills development, directing a decision of whether to develop skills in typography, composition tidiness, or color schemes. Understanding the relationship between feedback and skills, helps to create a symbiotic feedback chain, increasing the effectiveness of each subsequent application of skills learned.
- Maintain a log of Feedback points and Evaluate them
Having a record of areas of criticism and your responses to them in a feedback section is an ideal way of assessing how far one has come. Recording the main points of criticism and praise offered for each particular project, it becomes possible to observe patterns over time, document progress, and understand the transformation that happens with one’s design vision. Use this log to prepare for new projects, ensuring that you do not forget the things you have already done and do not repeat errors that have already been committed.
This can also serve the purpose of motivation. Observation of how previous assessments have enabled one to advance up the skill chain is a reminder of the importance of feedback in one’s life as a designer. When going through their earlier work, most people will appreciate that constructive criticism brought about people who made better designs.
- Use Constructive Feedback to Go out of Your Comfort Zone
Constructive feedback is an opportunity to make changes that you wouldn’t otherwise consider making. If the criticism tells you to apply a different style, like going with simple rather than complex, treat it as a challenge. Go past the comfort levels pushed on you and try different styles, color combinations, or techniques to perhaps grow your designing skills.
Pushing the boundaries is one of the most effective techniques when it comes to improvement as a designer. When you use such new techniques, you are challenging yourself to new ways of thinking and processes, all of which are essential in this dynamically changing field. Focus on the feedback instead of trying to stick to what you have as your center style and always strive to improve.
- Use Feedback in an Iterative Manner
When utilizing feedback, it does not imply that every design must be highly modified after a single review. Indeed, think of feedback as a process, and a process of design at that. You can begin with making modifications from constructive criticism and then going back to see how effective those modifications are. This technique allows you to consider other opportunities without losing sight of the goal.
- Develop a Balanced Response to Feedback
As one of the designers on the team, it is likely that not all comments from the reviewers will fit into your vision or the vision. This is a titanic challenge! However, it is also worthwhile to accept the simpler solution before becoming emotionally recharged – don’t take it personal. It is always important to understand that the vision of differing groups will differ and that the feedback given by one person may not sit with the in-house designer. It is perfectly acceptable to seek clarification, elucidate on what the appropriate design entails, and in some cases simply agree to disagree.
Of course, the saying should come to mind that ‘if you never ask, you will never receive’. There is a time and a place to be able to criticize other artists’ work and the method to which they chose to create that piece of work, however respect the artist and understand the audience. There will always be some clients or end users who will have primary feedback. Being able to contain a fine line between criticism of ideas and focus on the person, is an important attribute for being in client-oriented design.
- Don’t Limit Yourself to Client Feedback Only
Client center feedback is important in all situations, but for a designer’s more in-depth knowledge of the true audience and approval of the work, it is wise to extend the search in the work or to find critique circles that are engaged in design. Websites that center on design like Behance or Dribble are one example, import the work into those platforms as the work will be accepted. These critiques help with the more technical aspects of the work and omit many placements that other audiences focus on.
Designer peers help with their feedback to broaden the circle of instruments and practices, equally constructing the physical object of the project, but the perspectives are alternative. The secondary feedback helps because it is ‘external perspective’
Conclusion
Constructive anxiety can become one of the strongest motivators for professional and personal development in the life of a designer. If you consider it with an intention and plan in mind and accept it for what it is, there will be reasonable progress in every field of design.
Always keep in mind, every piece of feedback gets you closer to perfection. Further, if constructive criticism is taken to heart, the outcome of new designs will fit the target audience, clients, and the designer himself. Let constructive criticism become one of the instruments on the way to graphics design mastery, and the entire process will turn into a reliable evolving cycle.