The worst thing about designing anything new or different is the degree to which other people are just plain shitty about it not looking like anything else. I’ve never understood that. What difference does it make to them? Why go out of their way to tell me how crappy it is because it “should” be some other way so it is like every other thing that someone else has done? What is that about?
There are probably 50,000 people designing things with skulls on them – at some point people will be tired of them. There are tens of thousands of products with tattoo styled designs and graffiti styled lettering as if tagging under a bridge was made into a skateboard design. Why does the world need one more thing that looks like that? There are plenty of those designs. And, where did it come from that colors must be in certain combinations and not anything else? Who decided that? And, why would my own little group of friends and family be so adamant about what design and design color combinations and complexity or lack of complexity must be? Where did they get those ideas?
It is as if there is a snobbery about colors and color combinations which was far beyond anything I would have expected. And, there is an obnoxiousness about anything that looks different that is far beyond anything I would have guessed for it to be the twenty-first century rather than 1930 something. How did this happen?
I have been mocked, shunned, and my work rejected before it ever got anywhere out of my little world by those close at my elbow in it. Where I rather expected the greater world at large to be that way, the extent to which it has been worth deriding me and mocking me and even, shaming me about it in my own home from those closest to me has been very surprising and extremely disheartening. Somehow, I’m supposed to design things that are different than anything else, try new things in design, create it online in some form where it can be seen by the public and possibly purchased in that form for some reasonable price, promote it all over the internet as if it is the treasure among all amazing treasures, tell everyone I know or meet about it and generally, express how great it is even though I am the one who designed it. This is what must be done for any creative designs, innovations or inventions to be commercialized – but, at the same time – anyone gets to attack the merits of it without regard. This is ridiculous. If the world likes any of it, I will be surprised and understandably so because at every turn my own family, grown children, friends and acquaintances have made every effort nearly every single day to tell me in no uncertain terms how completely and utterly worthless and shitty the designs are that I’ve created. I do find that hard to believe but it is the truth. And, maybe they are right – I don’t know.
What is obvious to me, is that it is very unlikely that every design I’ve created is shitty and worthless. It is just unlikely. That the world may say so – won’t be known until I find a way or rather, ways for the world to know about any of it. That requires an entire art and science of its own. As much as I’ve helped others to promote and show the world their websites and businesses, as I’ve tried to do those things with my work – I fail miserably to do so well enough to be in any way effective. But, it is not for a lack of trying.
Online, it is very time consuming to be one person doing the work that would really take about twenty people to do it right. Or, to hire other businesses to effectively do those things from fiddling with websites to posting the designs elsewhere, write something, post the designs in the first place designing them as they are being posted and then finding better ways to tell people about them. Then, to have so much time spent being derided for doing it at all because – of course, unless it makes a ton of money right this minute – there is no value in doing it. Of course. I understand that. But the effectiveness of my business is being compared to those businesses with a marketin and operating budget of $2 million a year using loans and startup capital from sources that are not available to me. Of course those businesses have sales far in excess of what I’ve generated so far – they can buy advertising and placement in search results and hire people as well as other companies to help them do the job successfully.
I was actually horrified to learn that my children – especially my daughters don’t want to have or to build a business of their own – nor to help with any I might have to build it or be a part of it. That is actually scary. But, I can’t say that I blame them. There have been no rewards in it for me over the years and they have watched as business after business in our communities and in the US have been destroyed and dismantled, even large stable and profitable ones. It isn’t worth it as far as they are concerned.
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It seemed to me, several months ago – that if I couldn’t get any help creating a business with the business startup resources that are available – because my credit score is – insufficient credit – credit score of zero – that I could build some products using the designs that I’ve created and could create (which I’ve done) in order to get the money from sales to support myself and create a number of other business things I wanted to do. Well, that is wrong. Not going to work. Not happening and not likely to ever work apparently. That is so sad that it is funny. But, true.
So, after working day and night six days a week and sometimes, seven days a week – I can honestly say – don’t do it. If it could’ve worked, it would have already. And, after the disdain, contempt, disrespect, rudeness and utter disregard I’ve received from my own children about it – I can also honestly say, there isn’t one thing in it worth doing – not to build the design business to fund the inventions as businesses and in fact, not to worry with those inventions being brought to the public marketplace either. They probably wouldn’t make any money either and therefore, regardless of their merit – wouldn’t be worth anything. It is insane making – nothing else.
What a shame.
– cricketdiane
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Oh and if all that wasn’t enough – a couple days ago, my daughters explained that it messes up the designs to put certain colors together – apparently there is some set of rules about what combinations of color are acceptable and what is not – they refer to my designs in some color combinations in very negative terms but I only discovered that it was the colors and not the design when they admitted it a couple days ago – absolutely obscene.
This is an example of colors that are “not supposed to be used together” in a design. Good fucking grief. When did my children become such color snobs and closed minded about design? How the fuck did that happen? Of course, it could be reserved for what I do as opposed to what they would simply buy when it is produced by anyone else and offered online or in a store where they see it – AND buy it. Assholes.
nyc landmarks 50 – 1 cricketdiane – 3-2e
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