Being a Student Soc Graphic Designer
I’m writing this to procrastinate on my duties but I just wanted to share my experience being the in-house graphic designer of an active university student society. Not really a review of the role or anything, just talking about how I (personally) feel. And I guess for privacy reasons I won’t be specifying what student society of what university and to ensure plausible deniability should any one of the executives of the club come across my blog.
Overview
For a few months now I’ve been taking on little graphic design tasks as the Graphic Design Executive of [REDACTED SOC NAME]. And so far I’ve successfully worked on redesigning a logo and loose (VERY LOOSE, EXTREMELY LOOSE) brand identity. My first few tasks were usually just menial-yet-important things like logos, but as someone who HATES logo design I did eventually express my desire to have that logo work offloaded onto the artists or other designers. So far the tasks haven’t been anything big. No actual brand guidelines or whatever, though I suppose given the theme of our society it wouldn’t make too much sense to stick to one particular style.
Projects and Tasks
The logo redesign was a task that I take a lot of pride in to be honest. It was an effort with an actual process and feedback, and I found that the outcome is pretty successful in communicating the idea of diversity and uniqueness in the society, with a little bit of a cool, contemporary edge to it. It’s an entry on my design portfolio.
At the moment I’m working on a massive series of posts for the society’s Instagram page. Dear god has it been taking a long time to chew through these. I’ve never had too much problem with slowness on Photoshop but I did discover recently that 16GB of RAM just isn’t enough for a smooth design process across multiple artboards. Sometimes I wish Figma had the image manipulation qualities of Photoshop. I’d never turn back >.>. I’ve been thinking of upgrading to a desktop PC just for this reason actually…
What I like
For starters, this is a really easy design role to get you started and feeling proactive though I don’t know how much I can say that in earnest because I’ve been procrastinating with society stuff in favor of other paid client work… It’s nice to have some agency in the creative work you put out especially when it also is public-facing work that people WILL see. Agency in the sense that I fully understand what the club’s whole vibe is like, because I AM one of the club. And I still get giddy whenever I see the logo I designed on the club’s Instagram page. Like look! I made that with my own mouse and keyboard! The realness of the work I/we do for the club feels, well, real. It’s not just speculative or hypothetical, these logos are going out there. People are seeing the visual work I’m creating and associating that with the club. And I guess the social aspect is nice too… LOL.
What I don’t
I think besides obvious downsides like not being paid (because it’s volunteer work so no one gets paid; fair enough) and not really being like, CLIENT clients, is that the sanctity of the [graphic] designer’s workflow and convention doesn’t really get respected by non-[graphic] designers. What I mean by this is, I’ve noticed that non-[graphic] designers don’t understand the conventions, workflow, best practices, or rules of thumb of [graphic] design. Which is FINE. Not everyone understands visual communication practice. THAT IS OKAY. The issue lies in when non-designers try to challenge what designers already know. We understand what makes things legible, salient, meaningful, memorable, or loyal to brand identity. This is reflected in the choices we… I’m talking too much. TLDR; Design is 90% getting the client to trust you, and you can really tell when they don’t trust you when they try to take the reins themselves. I’m saying that it’s just an effort to advocate for your own skills and experience as a designer if you don’t want to be relegated to an artistic miracle worker.
Clearly I have a lot to say about the overall topic of design, the designer, and design integrity, but I’ll save for that when I have something more profound to say.
Closing Paragraph
I don’t really have a conclusion to this. I just wanted to talk about what it’s like for me to be a graphic designer for a university student society. It’s nothing like being an in-house designer at a construction firm, or working at Pentagram, what a dream lol. I’m sure other people have different experiences with clubs, and these experiences are just unique to me, my tasks of the role, and the club I’m in. Don’t take what I write as an endorsement, or a rant, or anything like that. It’s just an articulated diary entry.