24. Polishing Turds

Creating a quality product is at the forefront of the long list of responsibilities that designers face each time they step into the office. You have to keep pushing yourself to get better and to take your designs to new levels. Every project is a new opportunity to design an award-winning masterpiece and an anchor portfolio piece.

While most projects may start out with this grandiose mindset, the unfortunate thing about graphic design is that it can sometimes become more about polishing turds than creating the next Mona Lisa. Let me illustrate this with a hypothetical example.

Client X needs a logo designed for his landscaping company. You scour your favorite design books for ideas. You click hundreds of landscaping websites ...

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