Too many cooks... spoil not only the broth, but kill the spirit, too.

Group Work. Ha! Lemme tell you something at the first place, its a very tough thing. At least for me. The clash of attitudes, the hurting of egos, the ghost of leadership, the misuderstandings... sheesh man! It sucks... And worst comes to worst when the aim is to 'DESIGN' something...

And i write this post after the two group works I was recently involved in. Number one, an architectural project, in which we had to design something. Its very difficult to make someone else to believe that my design is better than his. Why should he listen to me in the first place? He also has got brains. Why shouldn't I listen to his crap ? (Yeah, I know. The same attitude that makes me call his design a crap, gives him the power to call my design a shit.) Its like a two way road.
But we all came to a solution (not the best one, but you see, a design can never be the best.)

How could we design something common? Because we all had the same level of knowledge and same level of power of Veto in the group.

Now consider the other 'group event'. This time I had to design something for a society where I was supposedly the design head, and three guys were working under me. We came with a solution, and when everything was finalised and the design was just going to get printed, one by one, all the photoshop layman people of the society started to bring their own design ideas to it. I try to please one guy and then the other starts crying about the overall attraction.
As if I don't have any design sense, and I must listen to what they say, and dance to their tunes by changing the background to black or brown or red or grey...

And add to that the fact tht most of them have not much idea about Photoshop, or at least, how a design is made on a computer.
So, leaving aside my sense of respect for my design, I incorporated some major issues of conflict in the design and tried to please some people. And when I showed the new and 'modified' design to the team again, some new problems started to bliss me from new mouths.

What crap man!

My opinion? Designing is a personal thing. Or at least, the user group should be highly defined, as in case of a well defined client. If the client says yes, then yes, its done. It should not be like that there are 8-9 clients, raising their objections one by one, not aggreing on each other's opinions and expecting the designer to dance on their tune.

And that's why , I shelved the entire project. Respect my sense of Design, or spare my soul from getting irritated by your distorted sense of designing and handling a group project.


Alok.
Sept. 14, 2008