Design Is Like A Bad Kid

So the character sheet I designed was put up on reddit and is currently sitting near the top of r/rpg. I'm really pleased with this specifically because I know that people will be honest on Reddit. This give me both the opportunity to see what could use some work with it and what asinine opinions a large subset of nerds has.

Design is weird because it's like art in that I spend a lot of time on it when I'm making it and it puts me in a similar trance but it's also unlike art because it serves a more specific functional purpose. Illustration should be evocative and help contribute to the tone of the project but within that theres a lot of creative freedom. Design can just be wrong, it can point you in the wrong direction and cause you to fall off a cliff and it doesn't really matter the font of the writing on the sign in that scenario- although I suppose you could argue that you shouldn't be following signs that are written in papyrus in the first place.

An important lesson I learned in art school is that critiques are better if people have been drinking. It opens people up. On the internet you don't need alcohol because everyone's an asshole already. Which is good, especially when you need feedback like "does this work at all" (I think the sheet mostly works, it could use some tweaks).

As long as you remember that people are looking at everything through their own shitty glasses. I try to think about what people say about a piece of design from the perspective of "how are they going to try and use this" and "what did they think I was trying to make it for." If their critique doesn't survive that blockade then it probably wasn't worthwhile to your design.

Oh yeah the title. Design is like a bad kid because you may love it but it also might kind of suck and it's up to you whether or not you fix that.