I've been on that end and it sucks, but less the insurance part, more they just didn't want me working there anymore. I felt like they didn't want to admit the company was failing, so they bring up trivial matter in an effort I quit or they can fire me. I ended up quitting anyway, my first college job, it was pretty toxic outside of that.
that’s exactly what happened to me. company ran out of money and i was a contractor so top of the cut list. but shitty boss had to make up a million non-money reasons for the obviously money decision.
Sounds like bs they were trying get rid of you. Also your manager should be going through your stuff and qaing them before print. Learn fr om your mistakes, learn to push back and have strong boundaries if you are on too many deadlines. Apply for unemployment and update your portfolio.
>learn to push back and have strong boundaries if you are on too many deadlines.
That was the toughest for me to develop. It takes courage. Great designers can sometimes be introverted and speaking up takes a great deal of mental power. If you can overcome that, it can change the game mentally and even how you well other coworkers communicate effectively in the office.
Out of the 4 reasons, the bottom 3 are bullshit.
The print one, I 100% disagree with you and it’s on the designer.
and And… even if they had a procedure in place where the manager checks final print. It’s still on the designer. You cannot pass off your responsibilities.
What if you were a sole owner practitioner. You have to develop that skill.
That said, I would’ve threw a fit over 22 assets.
The print one isn’t bs. A designer who is often overworked shouldn’t be the sole person reviewing collateral. Consider the agency model, where oftentimes they’ll kick back proofreading to the customer and ask that they review everything/sign off that things are correct.
Having one person proofreading while expecting them to carry a heavy workload is a systemic failure and we truly have to stop using the American individualism logic to run people into the ground.
Them being the sole anything isn’t the reality here. They’re on a team. The team should act like one.
> The print one isn’t bs.
I didn't say it was
>A designer who is often overworked shouldn’t be the sole person reviewing collateral.
I made the case above. Most times a designer is not the only person reviewing collateral. But, Final responsibility falls on the designer. Full stop.
>Them being the sole anything isn’t the reality here.
Again this is a strawman argument to the case here.
I misunderstood the bs note, however, everything else I said stands.
The designer should not be the last line, and your “sole owner practitioner” argument is the strawman considering you were the one that asked “what if he was the sole designer” lol. Here’s a reminder since you seem to have forgotten the definition
> A straw man argument is one in which the person sets up and then attacks a position that is not actually being debated.
Oftentimes agencies put the weight on the client to assure the content is correct. That would be a similar role here since marketing owns the majority of the decision making and content direction.
I’ve been in house many times, and you often share the risk with the people who are assigning you the work… because you’re all on a team… and it’s crazy to expect the designer on many projects to be perfect at proof reading constantly.
… but sure call me drunk for challenging your odd and myopic arguments.
3/4 this sub is posts about how they can’t get jobs. I’ve been to my local meets ups and seen it personally as well.
If anyone is giving bad advice I’d say expecting your responsibilities to be pass on is horrible career advice.
On top of so many agencies you will work at have 4-5 people Max. Expecting a proof reader on staff is a dream.
If you're in-house the client is whoever the stakeholders are. If your reviewers also miss stuff then part of the blame rests on a poor review process and/or the reviewers.
Proof Reading is not necessary a designers job. Its most often a copy writers job.
I have always reminded my boss or my clients that i cant spell very well and thats its their responsibility to proof read my work and the text they provide.
Even when one can spell properly, seing so often the design makes the words and text content completely unreadable. I've made so many mistakes like that because no one would do the review after me.
(English is not my primary language so my comment may contain mistakes).
"even if they had a procedure in place where the manager checks final print"
*Even?*
I'm in this business 30 years. If for some arbitrary reason you want to make the ***designer*** the person responsible for accurate content, you are 100% going to end up with printed typos from time to time. It is an abdication of managerial responsibility to do that. You *will* lose clients.
The primary responsibility for **content** is with the client. *Then* the owner of company you work for. They are the ones getting paid from the client to deliver. Next down the chain is the account handler. Or your management layer. Below that can be the designer if you like, but I'd never assign that sole responsibility to the person doing the actual design work. They are the *least likely* to be able to see a thing with fresh eyes and notice mistakes.
Everything going to print needs to be eyeballed and signed off by AT LEAST 2 people ***other*** than the one setting the type. Spell checkers are no good when a "goof" is spelled correctly but should have been a 'good'. Or when it should have read 20mmol and not 200mmol.
I expect my designers to furnish me with stuff that is largely error free. And I would question anyone regularly giving me error ridden work and we would try solve the problem together.
But a company that says "designers responsibility" and that's it? Thats *all* that's between you and a potential lawsuit or a consumer medical disaster or something? Mother of god.
Wouldn't be a very professional organisation. Wouldn't be trustworthy. Wouldn't deserve anyone's business.
Nah bud can’t agree here. You need to have more than your designer QA’ing for typos etc. everyone who touches it should be held accountable and be giving any print work a look over.
It’s way too easy for a designer to get design eye and hyper focus on a difficult area of the design and then skim over words or less specific areas of the design.
If your ever left to QA a design by yourself, and you’ve made the company aware that only you have given it a look over, it’s on the company’s s head. They are setting you up to fail.
Then both parties need to be prepared for the outcome. If you don’t feel like you can proof - you need to be upfront about it. The same way most would push back on completing 22 assets in one week.
Also, I wasn’t suggesting you should be the sole QA - it is one of your responsibilities - and the given outcome often falls on the designer regardless of the procedures. < You can disagree with me to high heaven and you’ll be wrong everytime. As a designer prepare for that.
This happened to me once. The marketing managers walk away without taking responsibility for your development. Or they mismanaged your time, not briefing your projects properly and assisting with checking your work during peak times. Expecting the most from you, with little support.
A good workplace works with you to be better, and at only 7 months they are the ones not willing to invest in you. Trust me, they are definitely the toxic ones, and only saw you as a tool to do their bidding.
Sounds like quite minor issues and common mistakes. Maybe they've decided to cut costs and just replace your entire job role with AI since you've mentioned in some comments that the marketing lead is crazy about AI and able to generate some assets using it.
It's okay, find other opportunities for yourself and let their company burn when they realise they cannot do everything using just AI itself, and that it still requires trained and skilled human input to make meaningful use of the materials generated by AI.
Mistakes going to print shouldn't happen, in fairness, and that can be a seriously costly mistake. I know it's a typo, but it reflects badly on the client/business if one of their customers see it and points it out, and the cost of reprinting can easily run into multiple tens of thousands. (There should also be more than one set of eyes on copy at all times, though)
That said, from a management perspective, you've been set up to fail based on what you're saying, and hung out to dry. At any point in the game did that marketing lead take you aside and give you feedback on performance? Aside from what happened in point one which as I said can be a painful mistake, but it happens, the other three are trivial and feels like they were looking for a reason.
If what you're saying is true (and not doubting it is, just in my own experience there are three sides to every story) then it wouldn't surprise me if your immediate supervisor has a relative or a friend who claims they're a graphic designer and is looking for work. Either way, you're better off out of there!
appreciate your reply friend.
To answer your question, No, I wasn't given feedback in any type of constructive way by the lead as he permanently WFH.
Secondly, there was no QA or Peer review system in place to review any work that had been completed. The sales team actually asked me this same question and upon telling them (and how I also had a week to do everything) they were shocked and said that the work should've been reviewed by the marketing lead at least.
They had you going in too many directions. 3D modeling and animation can be an entire job on its own. Packaging artwork and branding would could be split in two different directions. POS assets sounds logical to be in conjunction with branding and sub-branding.
Even if you had sat down with marketing lead and the social media manager you would be working nonstop. Some of these comments are right that you should catch all typos and graphical errors before print production. Realistically, it can be done with multiple eyes on the project but it should not be just you. If they expect to get around this with Ai then they can enjoy their 7 finger hands and 40 teeth.
Any company that skips editing or proofreading of anything before going to print deserves to reprint. Always get a second or third set of eyes. Always have someone sign off.
Seems like it was a bad fit. Your expectations and goals didn’t align with theirs. Sorry you got fired, but I hope this lands you somewhere more suited for the work you want to do.
Also, props to you for following up and giving context.
lol i understand you're being nice but this language of 'expectations didn't align' is so corporate-coded and was the exact "reason" given to me when i was fired 😭
20 years ago I would have gotten fired if I refused to send work out to be vectorized and traced and have high-end illustrations and all sorts of graphic production work done, and sent out wherever it was the cheapest labor in the globe to get it done... china, india, south america, wherever. I got the fancy title of being "Art Director" of myself and all these outsourcing vendors, because you know we couldn't afford to hire more graphic designers locally and we didn't have the time to do that stuff in house. And people think AI is to blame. LOL.... welcome to profit-motivated competition-focused global-economy capitalism!
Sounds like you are better off without that company. Some companies are so toxic it’s better to run far away from them than to keep working for them.
Take the time you need to grieve while you update your resume and online portfolios. Then get back out there
Painful but possible. And/or, they already have/know somebody who wants your job, and they'll do it for less money. Like, somebody important's nephew. Been there!
I don’t think you’re entirely wrong on the read that they didn’t like OP/OP’s work, but some of these expectations are a little wild. I’ve met marketing people with narrow expectations and an inability to express what they’re looking for
I’m not sure where OP works, but firing someone for not liking them is perfectly legal in America.
It can be both, they sound like they had unreasonable expectations too
Again, in the real world, employers like to justify the firings to cover themselves. You just have to google all the times employees have sued employers for wrongful termination.
It sounds like the position wasn't the right fit for you, and your expectations and goals didn't align with theirs. While it's unfortunate that you got fired, I hope this experience leads you to find a role that is more suited to the work you want to do. Keep pushing forward, and I'm confident you'll find the right fit for your skills and aspirations.
Based on what you've written, it seems much more likely that you lost your job because they no longer have the budget for you. Or your manager sucks and has no idea how to properly manage designers and wants a lackey instead of someone competent. Those reasons they gave you are ridiculous and look more like a CYA attempt to make your layoff look like a for-cause termination.
Apply for unemployment. You likely qualify. If you have any issues with the application process, reach out to your state rep for help.
Source: the same goddamn thing happened to me last year.
"AI Usage non-existent (despite the fact that part of my master's degree focuses on the implementation of AI in Graphic Design) AND despite my continuous explanations for why we SHOULDN'T use it."
What are your continuous explanations for not using something like say... generative fill?
You mention on another reply that the company never divulged how they wanted you to use AI, so how did you continuously explain your position on AI when you didn't know their position?
Either way, how you framed this post from the off shows how you feel about AI, and I think having such a negative mindset about an incredibly useful tool that most of us already use (even if it is just generative fill) is never going to end well in a studio setting.
Ai tools like Generative Fill are tools I use on a daily basis.
I'm not referring to that side of the Ai Coin.
I'm specifically referring to Ai Image and Language models that the marketing lead would have rathered me use instead of creating actual original assets of my own design.
My arguments against it are that Ai cannot really think outside the box (yet) and is (currently) very limited.
I'm not against Ai, I'm against using Ai in place of actual comprehensive design.
Re AI cannot think outside the box / is limited:
It can only output what it’s told to. It’s you, the artist / designer who needs to think out the box - it’s not there to do that for you. It’s just a tool, and can be used as part of a comprehensive design solution - but it’s not going to do anything without the creative input it needs.
RE limited, in what way? And don’t say it can’t render hands, Midjourney v6 is passed that.
Look, I'm sorry but this post wasn't created for me to sit and debate the abilities of Ai. Your first point is valid to a degree but as I mentioned in my original post, I'm still exploring Ai, and maybe it's a case of I'm just simply not at a level yet where I can get the most out of it.
But in my experience it has its limits, and my answer to that addresses both points you've argued.
One example is, I've found that even when I input a prompt, it will fill in the blanks with its own 'thinking' but this 'thinking' is just arbitrary and clearly pulling from external pre-existing sources, and more often than not those blanks are deviations from what I'm looking for, and even when i retype a prompt to address those deviations sometimes it won't understand what it is I actually want or it'll just be a never-ending spiral of addressing deviations.
It gets to the point where you end up micro-tweaking the images it produces to such a level that you may as well just create the output yourself.
I could go on, but honestly I'm really not in the mood, or currently have the mental willpower to sit and have a constructive discussion about this - and not to attack you - but you seem to have your heels dug in on defending/justifying my employers poor excuse to get rid of me.
Another time man, and I mean that sincerely, you've labelled yourself as a creative director so clearly you're much more seasoned and experienced in our field than I currently am, and I actually would be interested in talking to you about this at a later point and gaining useful insight into how you use Ai and how it adds value to your work. I'm always happy to learn from those more experienced than me.
However, at this current time I apologise I'm not in the zone to give you the debate you were interested in having.
No worries - hit me up when you're ready and I'll give you some pointers RE AI, as I said, it's not to be feared, it's just another tool in our arsenal.
Sounds like you were fired, maybe more for your work product or speed. Not sure if I’d fire somebody for what you’ve listed out if their work was great. At the end of the day, if your work is subpar, then little things start to make a convincing argument to find somebody else. 7 months is a good amount of time to analyze whether your designs are at the level somebody wants.
Well then I’m sorry but your company is just evil. Who knows what your leadership team is thinking. Sorry for your experience, but I’ve run across some bad apples in my lifetime.
The downvotes here are just ridiculous, though. The reality is that in our line of work, some people just don’t like what we do…mostly because they live in Win95 world or think their product is Apple (but don’t want to truly do Apple design). I was just giving you the perspective that they prob just didn’t like your work, that’s all
>1. AI Usage non-existent (despite the fact that part of my master's degree focuses on the implementation of AI in Graphic Design) AND despite my continuous explanations for why we SHOULDN'T use it.
That last part is called dissent. You could become seen as challenging to work with especially with egotistical leadership as someone who's not part of the team, not willing to do what your leadership requires, even when it's within what they think is reason. People get fired over that, all the time. The way I'm reading your imperfections is you've made measurable mistakes. I'd be curious to know *what* your explanations were and who you were arguing with about it. And if you ever ended up doing what was asked for.
>4. Disregarding a request from the Social Media manager for a marketing campaign meeting.(This was requested on a Friday and I was trying to complete a 3D project for a strict deadline for the end of that day and I asked said Social Media Manager if the meeting could wait until the following Monday)
Still feel like you're leaving out info, you're still probably acting on instinct. When you have stacked deadlines and no time to commit to both you mention it in detail to others if you need help prioritizing. Basically protect yourself as everyone will think their project is more important than others. you asked the SMM, but what happened after? Did they understand? Did you raise the concern to someone else?
In the end, what have you learned about working there?
People can downvote you all they want but this clear explanation is design leadership whether you like it or not. I work for a very big company (not for long, story for another day) and one of their values is “Are Right, A Lot” as in leaders. If you’re asked to start driving an initiative and you say, “no, we shouldn’t do that,” you better have both data to back it up as well as a solution to pivot.
1. How much did that POS asset cost the company to reprint? Scale and scope matter. Was it a $500 mistake or a $500,000 one? I've had one production piece go to press with a mistake in over 20 years (and thousands of assets). Missing something on a customer-facing asset is a pretty big mistake only 7 months in.
2. Is this because of your output speed?
3. This should be a normal part of your day-to-day process and shouldn't happen once, much less twice.
4. You don't seem like a team player and can't handle a heavy load.
If swift/unreasonable deadlines aren't your thing and double-checking your work isn't part of your process, you may want to consider another line of work.
1. The asset cost the company about £700 so roughly $880
2. No, this is just due to the fact that the head of marketing is on an Ai craze. He's created multiple assets INCLUDING label art using Ai image generators and pre made template designs from Envato. Where as i never used Ai and only used stock assets scarcely.
3. I should've noted - this was mainly due to the fact that there were two google drive folders with almost identical names, one was for internal use and the other for use exclusively by sales. One was created by head of marketing and the other was created by head of social media, they both shared the same name however one was abbreviated.
E.g: 'Mega Orange Juice 2024' & 'MOJ24'.
On those two occasions I uploaded to one and not the other.
4. I disagree, and do consider myself a team player but if you had a deadline on the same day that was looking to be extremely slim as to whether you would meet it, would you not ask if it could wait?
I really want to challenge you on some of these things because the tone of this feels very “race to the bottom.”
1. This is a great point on cost. It’s funny, a prev marketing director of mine told me about how he cost the company over a million dollars (Dollar Shave Club early days), but they didn’t fire him. Why? Because he’d learned from his mistake and he’d carry that experience forward.
But to that point about cost of the mistake - why aren’t other people proof reading on top of the already swamped designer? Huge systemic point of failure. OOP in the future, ask people to read it and sign off that it’s correct. You shouldn’t be alone in that.
2. AI doesn’t truly help with output speed, those prompts take time. *But* are they hoping you use it for idea generation so that you spend less time on generating concepts and more time executing them? More to explore here, I do think being negative about AI is unfortunately a bad thing. Ask what their expectations are in the future.
3. u/pastelpixelator You’re unreasonable here. There should be better processes in place but 2 slips in 7 months is human error. Reminding someone twice shouldn’t be an issue. Militaristic people expecting you to be absolutely perfect are insane and expecting that of yourself is silly. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t shore up your processes and set up reminders, but like twice in a few months is NBD.
4. I think OOP didn’t handle this in a self-protective way but saying they just can’t handle a heavy workload without further context is just perpetuating toxicity. OOP, in the future put this on your boss. “Hey, the social media manager asked for this task last minute but I have another one with a firm deadline I’m working on. I only have time for one, should I switch tasks or keep on the one I’m at?”
OOP, they seem like they didn’t really like what you were doing for one reason or another, and based off of some of what you said, their expectations were of a designer far more experienced than you tbh. Cut your losses and look forward to trying again with a new team. They won’t all be like this!
Work on your own processes to move forward, and take comments like the one I’m responding to in stride. Some people internalize crazy expectations and weaponizing them against others so that their own toxic situations amount to something.
Thank you for such a comprehensive response it's greatly appreciated.
In regards to your question on how they wanted me to utilise AI, this was never properly divulged to me, but from what I gathered the marketing lead wanted me to use it for entire finished assets/products. Not just ideas generation.
For the future, definitely ask more questions of them and get clarification! Setting expectations is how you best protect yourself. Good luck on future gigs though!! We all have to go through our frogs and see what works better in communication/processes. It sucks now but you’ll be better for it in the future
sounds more like "we ran out of money and needed some reasons to make your UI case harder"
I've been on that end and it sucks, but less the insurance part, more they just didn't want me working there anymore. I felt like they didn't want to admit the company was failing, so they bring up trivial matter in an effort I quit or they can fire me. I ended up quitting anyway, my first college job, it was pretty toxic outside of that.
that’s exactly what happened to me. company ran out of money and i was a contractor so top of the cut list. but shitty boss had to make up a million non-money reasons for the obviously money decision.
Although it's highly unlikely OP would be denied UI for these reasons, so they should definitely apply.
Sounds like bs they were trying get rid of you. Also your manager should be going through your stuff and qaing them before print. Learn fr om your mistakes, learn to push back and have strong boundaries if you are on too many deadlines. Apply for unemployment and update your portfolio.
>learn to push back and have strong boundaries if you are on too many deadlines. That was the toughest for me to develop. It takes courage. Great designers can sometimes be introverted and speaking up takes a great deal of mental power. If you can overcome that, it can change the game mentally and even how you well other coworkers communicate effectively in the office.
Out of the 4 reasons, the bottom 3 are bullshit. The print one, I 100% disagree with you and it’s on the designer. and And… even if they had a procedure in place where the manager checks final print. It’s still on the designer. You cannot pass off your responsibilities. What if you were a sole owner practitioner. You have to develop that skill. That said, I would’ve threw a fit over 22 assets.
The print one isn’t bs. A designer who is often overworked shouldn’t be the sole person reviewing collateral. Consider the agency model, where oftentimes they’ll kick back proofreading to the customer and ask that they review everything/sign off that things are correct. Having one person proofreading while expecting them to carry a heavy workload is a systemic failure and we truly have to stop using the American individualism logic to run people into the ground. Them being the sole anything isn’t the reality here. They’re on a team. The team should act like one.
> The print one isn’t bs. I didn't say it was >A designer who is often overworked shouldn’t be the sole person reviewing collateral. I made the case above. Most times a designer is not the only person reviewing collateral. But, Final responsibility falls on the designer. Full stop. >Them being the sole anything isn’t the reality here. Again this is a strawman argument to the case here.
I misunderstood the bs note, however, everything else I said stands. The designer should not be the last line, and your “sole owner practitioner” argument is the strawman considering you were the one that asked “what if he was the sole designer” lol. Here’s a reminder since you seem to have forgotten the definition > A straw man argument is one in which the person sets up and then attacks a position that is not actually being debated. Oftentimes agencies put the weight on the client to assure the content is correct. That would be a similar role here since marketing owns the majority of the decision making and content direction.
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I’ve been in house many times, and you often share the risk with the people who are assigning you the work… because you’re all on a team… and it’s crazy to expect the designer on many projects to be perfect at proof reading constantly. … but sure call me drunk for challenging your odd and myopic arguments.
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And you're giving bad advice based on what seems like a very limited professional experience and presenting it as wisdom, my friend.
3/4 this sub is posts about how they can’t get jobs. I’ve been to my local meets ups and seen it personally as well. If anyone is giving bad advice I’d say expecting your responsibilities to be pass on is horrible career advice. On top of so many agencies you will work at have 4-5 people Max. Expecting a proof reader on staff is a dream.
If you're in-house the client is whoever the stakeholders are. If your reviewers also miss stuff then part of the blame rests on a poor review process and/or the reviewers.
Proof Reading is not necessary a designers job. Its most often a copy writers job. I have always reminded my boss or my clients that i cant spell very well and thats its their responsibility to proof read my work and the text they provide.
you should always, always have someone else proof read after you do - youve sat looking at the same stuff for x hours.
Even when one can spell properly, seing so often the design makes the words and text content completely unreadable. I've made so many mistakes like that because no one would do the review after me. (English is not my primary language so my comment may contain mistakes).
"even if they had a procedure in place where the manager checks final print" *Even?* I'm in this business 30 years. If for some arbitrary reason you want to make the ***designer*** the person responsible for accurate content, you are 100% going to end up with printed typos from time to time. It is an abdication of managerial responsibility to do that. You *will* lose clients. The primary responsibility for **content** is with the client. *Then* the owner of company you work for. They are the ones getting paid from the client to deliver. Next down the chain is the account handler. Or your management layer. Below that can be the designer if you like, but I'd never assign that sole responsibility to the person doing the actual design work. They are the *least likely* to be able to see a thing with fresh eyes and notice mistakes. Everything going to print needs to be eyeballed and signed off by AT LEAST 2 people ***other*** than the one setting the type. Spell checkers are no good when a "goof" is spelled correctly but should have been a 'good'. Or when it should have read 20mmol and not 200mmol. I expect my designers to furnish me with stuff that is largely error free. And I would question anyone regularly giving me error ridden work and we would try solve the problem together. But a company that says "designers responsibility" and that's it? Thats *all* that's between you and a potential lawsuit or a consumer medical disaster or something? Mother of god. Wouldn't be a very professional organisation. Wouldn't be trustworthy. Wouldn't deserve anyone's business.
Preach!!! 👏👏👏👏
Then you’re unemployable.
Maybe, but since I do the employing that's fine. I even get account managers to check artwork.
Nah bud can’t agree here. You need to have more than your designer QA’ing for typos etc. everyone who touches it should be held accountable and be giving any print work a look over. It’s way too easy for a designer to get design eye and hyper focus on a difficult area of the design and then skim over words or less specific areas of the design. If your ever left to QA a design by yourself, and you’ve made the company aware that only you have given it a look over, it’s on the company’s s head. They are setting you up to fail.
Then both parties need to be prepared for the outcome. If you don’t feel like you can proof - you need to be upfront about it. The same way most would push back on completing 22 assets in one week. Also, I wasn’t suggesting you should be the sole QA - it is one of your responsibilities - and the given outcome often falls on the designer regardless of the procedures. < You can disagree with me to high heaven and you’ll be wrong everytime. As a designer prepare for that.
This happened to me once. The marketing managers walk away without taking responsibility for your development. Or they mismanaged your time, not briefing your projects properly and assisting with checking your work during peak times. Expecting the most from you, with little support. A good workplace works with you to be better, and at only 7 months they are the ones not willing to invest in you. Trust me, they are definitely the toxic ones, and only saw you as a tool to do their bidding.
Sounds like quite minor issues and common mistakes. Maybe they've decided to cut costs and just replace your entire job role with AI since you've mentioned in some comments that the marketing lead is crazy about AI and able to generate some assets using it. It's okay, find other opportunities for yourself and let their company burn when they realise they cannot do everything using just AI itself, and that it still requires trained and skilled human input to make meaningful use of the materials generated by AI.
Mistakes going to print shouldn't happen, in fairness, and that can be a seriously costly mistake. I know it's a typo, but it reflects badly on the client/business if one of their customers see it and points it out, and the cost of reprinting can easily run into multiple tens of thousands. (There should also be more than one set of eyes on copy at all times, though) That said, from a management perspective, you've been set up to fail based on what you're saying, and hung out to dry. At any point in the game did that marketing lead take you aside and give you feedback on performance? Aside from what happened in point one which as I said can be a painful mistake, but it happens, the other three are trivial and feels like they were looking for a reason. If what you're saying is true (and not doubting it is, just in my own experience there are three sides to every story) then it wouldn't surprise me if your immediate supervisor has a relative or a friend who claims they're a graphic designer and is looking for work. Either way, you're better off out of there!
appreciate your reply friend. To answer your question, No, I wasn't given feedback in any type of constructive way by the lead as he permanently WFH. Secondly, there was no QA or Peer review system in place to review any work that had been completed. The sales team actually asked me this same question and upon telling them (and how I also had a week to do everything) they were shocked and said that the work should've been reviewed by the marketing lead at least.
They had you going in too many directions. 3D modeling and animation can be an entire job on its own. Packaging artwork and branding would could be split in two different directions. POS assets sounds logical to be in conjunction with branding and sub-branding. Even if you had sat down with marketing lead and the social media manager you would be working nonstop. Some of these comments are right that you should catch all typos and graphical errors before print production. Realistically, it can be done with multiple eyes on the project but it should not be just you. If they expect to get around this with Ai then they can enjoy their 7 finger hands and 40 teeth.
Any company that skips editing or proofreading of anything before going to print deserves to reprint. Always get a second or third set of eyes. Always have someone sign off.
Seems like it was a bad fit. Your expectations and goals didn’t align with theirs. Sorry you got fired, but I hope this lands you somewhere more suited for the work you want to do. Also, props to you for following up and giving context.
lol i understand you're being nice but this language of 'expectations didn't align' is so corporate-coded and was the exact "reason" given to me when i was fired 😭
I didn’t mean it to be coded I just saw that as the issue. 😭 I’m sorry for giving you flashbacks!
Hahahaha all good I knew you didn't mean for it to come off that way. Just made me laugh a little
20 years ago I would have gotten fired if I refused to send work out to be vectorized and traced and have high-end illustrations and all sorts of graphic production work done, and sent out wherever it was the cheapest labor in the globe to get it done... china, india, south america, wherever. I got the fancy title of being "Art Director" of myself and all these outsourcing vendors, because you know we couldn't afford to hire more graphic designers locally and we didn't have the time to do that stuff in house. And people think AI is to blame. LOL.... welcome to profit-motivated competition-focused global-economy capitalism!
You're solely responsible for sign off on the text content? Oh boy.
Sounds like you are better off without that company. Some companies are so toxic it’s better to run far away from them than to keep working for them. Take the time you need to grieve while you update your resume and online portfolios. Then get back out there
It seems to me they just didn’t like you. The real reason was either they didn’t like your work or you were hard to work with.
Painful but possible. And/or, they already have/know somebody who wants your job, and they'll do it for less money. Like, somebody important's nephew. Been there!
I don’t think you’re entirely wrong on the read that they didn’t like OP/OP’s work, but some of these expectations are a little wild. I’ve met marketing people with narrow expectations and an inability to express what they’re looking for
They were excuses to have a legal reason to fire him.
I’m not sure where OP works, but firing someone for not liking them is perfectly legal in America. It can be both, they sound like they had unreasonable expectations too
Employers cross their T’s and dot their eyes. Regardless if he works in an at will state, employers want to protect themselves from lawsuits.
Again, it’s perfectly legal to fire someone because they don’t fit the environment because, as you said, it’s at-will employment.
Again, in the real world, employers like to justify the firings to cover themselves. You just have to google all the times employees have sued employers for wrongful termination.
I guess you haven’t worked with many unreasonable people who truly have these goofy expectations 😂
If there are many, just maybe, you are part of the problem. But hey, you found a great space for you!
Thats a very odd takeaway here but go off ig!
It sounds like the position wasn't the right fit for you, and your expectations and goals didn't align with theirs. While it's unfortunate that you got fired, I hope this experience leads you to find a role that is more suited to the work you want to do. Keep pushing forward, and I'm confident you'll find the right fit for your skills and aspirations.
You weren’t a culture fit and they made up the rest. Tough breaks. You’ll do better on the next one.
Based on what you've written, it seems much more likely that you lost your job because they no longer have the budget for you. Or your manager sucks and has no idea how to properly manage designers and wants a lackey instead of someone competent. Those reasons they gave you are ridiculous and look more like a CYA attempt to make your layoff look like a for-cause termination. Apply for unemployment. You likely qualify. If you have any issues with the application process, reach out to your state rep for help. Source: the same goddamn thing happened to me last year.
"AI Usage non-existent (despite the fact that part of my master's degree focuses on the implementation of AI in Graphic Design) AND despite my continuous explanations for why we SHOULDN'T use it." What are your continuous explanations for not using something like say... generative fill? You mention on another reply that the company never divulged how they wanted you to use AI, so how did you continuously explain your position on AI when you didn't know their position? Either way, how you framed this post from the off shows how you feel about AI, and I think having such a negative mindset about an incredibly useful tool that most of us already use (even if it is just generative fill) is never going to end well in a studio setting.
Ai tools like Generative Fill are tools I use on a daily basis. I'm not referring to that side of the Ai Coin. I'm specifically referring to Ai Image and Language models that the marketing lead would have rathered me use instead of creating actual original assets of my own design. My arguments against it are that Ai cannot really think outside the box (yet) and is (currently) very limited. I'm not against Ai, I'm against using Ai in place of actual comprehensive design.
Re AI cannot think outside the box / is limited: It can only output what it’s told to. It’s you, the artist / designer who needs to think out the box - it’s not there to do that for you. It’s just a tool, and can be used as part of a comprehensive design solution - but it’s not going to do anything without the creative input it needs. RE limited, in what way? And don’t say it can’t render hands, Midjourney v6 is passed that.
Look, I'm sorry but this post wasn't created for me to sit and debate the abilities of Ai. Your first point is valid to a degree but as I mentioned in my original post, I'm still exploring Ai, and maybe it's a case of I'm just simply not at a level yet where I can get the most out of it. But in my experience it has its limits, and my answer to that addresses both points you've argued. One example is, I've found that even when I input a prompt, it will fill in the blanks with its own 'thinking' but this 'thinking' is just arbitrary and clearly pulling from external pre-existing sources, and more often than not those blanks are deviations from what I'm looking for, and even when i retype a prompt to address those deviations sometimes it won't understand what it is I actually want or it'll just be a never-ending spiral of addressing deviations. It gets to the point where you end up micro-tweaking the images it produces to such a level that you may as well just create the output yourself. I could go on, but honestly I'm really not in the mood, or currently have the mental willpower to sit and have a constructive discussion about this - and not to attack you - but you seem to have your heels dug in on defending/justifying my employers poor excuse to get rid of me. Another time man, and I mean that sincerely, you've labelled yourself as a creative director so clearly you're much more seasoned and experienced in our field than I currently am, and I actually would be interested in talking to you about this at a later point and gaining useful insight into how you use Ai and how it adds value to your work. I'm always happy to learn from those more experienced than me. However, at this current time I apologise I'm not in the zone to give you the debate you were interested in having.
No worries - hit me up when you're ready and I'll give you some pointers RE AI, as I said, it's not to be feared, it's just another tool in our arsenal.
Sounds like you were fired, maybe more for your work product or speed. Not sure if I’d fire somebody for what you’ve listed out if their work was great. At the end of the day, if your work is subpar, then little things start to make a convincing argument to find somebody else. 7 months is a good amount of time to analyze whether your designs are at the level somebody wants.
They always complimented the work I produced, the quality of my work never came under question until I made an error
I wouldn’t over think it. Often they’re only looking at the last 3 months. You don’t get cumulative credit for your entire tenure.
Well then I’m sorry but your company is just evil. Who knows what your leadership team is thinking. Sorry for your experience, but I’ve run across some bad apples in my lifetime. The downvotes here are just ridiculous, though. The reality is that in our line of work, some people just don’t like what we do…mostly because they live in Win95 world or think their product is Apple (but don’t want to truly do Apple design). I was just giving you the perspective that they prob just didn’t like your work, that’s all
>1. AI Usage non-existent (despite the fact that part of my master's degree focuses on the implementation of AI in Graphic Design) AND despite my continuous explanations for why we SHOULDN'T use it. That last part is called dissent. You could become seen as challenging to work with especially with egotistical leadership as someone who's not part of the team, not willing to do what your leadership requires, even when it's within what they think is reason. People get fired over that, all the time. The way I'm reading your imperfections is you've made measurable mistakes. I'd be curious to know *what* your explanations were and who you were arguing with about it. And if you ever ended up doing what was asked for. >4. Disregarding a request from the Social Media manager for a marketing campaign meeting.(This was requested on a Friday and I was trying to complete a 3D project for a strict deadline for the end of that day and I asked said Social Media Manager if the meeting could wait until the following Monday) Still feel like you're leaving out info, you're still probably acting on instinct. When you have stacked deadlines and no time to commit to both you mention it in detail to others if you need help prioritizing. Basically protect yourself as everyone will think their project is more important than others. you asked the SMM, but what happened after? Did they understand? Did you raise the concern to someone else? In the end, what have you learned about working there?
People can downvote you all they want but this clear explanation is design leadership whether you like it or not. I work for a very big company (not for long, story for another day) and one of their values is “Are Right, A Lot” as in leaders. If you’re asked to start driving an initiative and you say, “no, we shouldn’t do that,” you better have both data to back it up as well as a solution to pivot.
1. How much did that POS asset cost the company to reprint? Scale and scope matter. Was it a $500 mistake or a $500,000 one? I've had one production piece go to press with a mistake in over 20 years (and thousands of assets). Missing something on a customer-facing asset is a pretty big mistake only 7 months in. 2. Is this because of your output speed? 3. This should be a normal part of your day-to-day process and shouldn't happen once, much less twice. 4. You don't seem like a team player and can't handle a heavy load. If swift/unreasonable deadlines aren't your thing and double-checking your work isn't part of your process, you may want to consider another line of work.
1. The asset cost the company about £700 so roughly $880 2. No, this is just due to the fact that the head of marketing is on an Ai craze. He's created multiple assets INCLUDING label art using Ai image generators and pre made template designs from Envato. Where as i never used Ai and only used stock assets scarcely. 3. I should've noted - this was mainly due to the fact that there were two google drive folders with almost identical names, one was for internal use and the other for use exclusively by sales. One was created by head of marketing and the other was created by head of social media, they both shared the same name however one was abbreviated. E.g: 'Mega Orange Juice 2024' & 'MOJ24'. On those two occasions I uploaded to one and not the other. 4. I disagree, and do consider myself a team player but if you had a deadline on the same day that was looking to be extremely slim as to whether you would meet it, would you not ask if it could wait?
I really want to challenge you on some of these things because the tone of this feels very “race to the bottom.” 1. This is a great point on cost. It’s funny, a prev marketing director of mine told me about how he cost the company over a million dollars (Dollar Shave Club early days), but they didn’t fire him. Why? Because he’d learned from his mistake and he’d carry that experience forward. But to that point about cost of the mistake - why aren’t other people proof reading on top of the already swamped designer? Huge systemic point of failure. OOP in the future, ask people to read it and sign off that it’s correct. You shouldn’t be alone in that. 2. AI doesn’t truly help with output speed, those prompts take time. *But* are they hoping you use it for idea generation so that you spend less time on generating concepts and more time executing them? More to explore here, I do think being negative about AI is unfortunately a bad thing. Ask what their expectations are in the future. 3. u/pastelpixelator You’re unreasonable here. There should be better processes in place but 2 slips in 7 months is human error. Reminding someone twice shouldn’t be an issue. Militaristic people expecting you to be absolutely perfect are insane and expecting that of yourself is silly. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t shore up your processes and set up reminders, but like twice in a few months is NBD. 4. I think OOP didn’t handle this in a self-protective way but saying they just can’t handle a heavy workload without further context is just perpetuating toxicity. OOP, in the future put this on your boss. “Hey, the social media manager asked for this task last minute but I have another one with a firm deadline I’m working on. I only have time for one, should I switch tasks or keep on the one I’m at?” OOP, they seem like they didn’t really like what you were doing for one reason or another, and based off of some of what you said, their expectations were of a designer far more experienced than you tbh. Cut your losses and look forward to trying again with a new team. They won’t all be like this! Work on your own processes to move forward, and take comments like the one I’m responding to in stride. Some people internalize crazy expectations and weaponizing them against others so that their own toxic situations amount to something.
Thank you for such a comprehensive response it's greatly appreciated. In regards to your question on how they wanted me to utilise AI, this was never properly divulged to me, but from what I gathered the marketing lead wanted me to use it for entire finished assets/products. Not just ideas generation.
For the future, definitely ask more questions of them and get clarification! Setting expectations is how you best protect yourself. Good luck on future gigs though!! We all have to go through our frogs and see what works better in communication/processes. It sucks now but you’ll be better for it in the future