When I was employed in graphic design, I never did any collaboration. But now that I a freelancer, collaboration is more common. My husband is an illustrator so there are a few projects where we will collaborate. I think it’s good to have defined tasks but also good to hear different professional perspectives.
Collaborating with clients is always a little risky. Some clients know what they’re talking about, others make decisions purely based on personal but irrelevant likes/dislikes.
Folks, thanks for driving a rich discussion around collaboration. Often collaboration ends up just as file sharing and file editing. There is so much more to collaboration than just this. Along similar lines, I would really appreciate if as many of you as possible could help me understand collaboration better by contributing to a small survey. Please find the link below. Feel free to add any suggestions or give recommendations. Looking to improve always.
That is interesting, would no body else have a say on the project that you would be working on ? Or was it a deliberately done to avoid it?
I’m in total agreement. There is this ideal world, where jobs are organized and people are nice and professional. Then there is this real world. In rare occasions when the ideal world happens upon the real world, the sky opens up, and I pinch myself in joyful disbelief.
Hierarchy is great in the ideal world. I am still wishing. But, as I said, sometimes it happens.
Everyone had their own clients and projects. Deadlines were tight. We didn’t schedule in meetings for collaborations or show and tell sessions. The only person that saw the work before print was the client.
To be more precise, where do you think/in what context/use case/function does collaboration take place most in Graphic Design?
So what are you selling? Some type of cloud based collaboration software that you think will be the be-all-end-all for graphic designers?
I read through your survey questions, but they seem to be based upon an undefined assumption about what collaboration is. Collaboration is a broad term that encompasses many different kinds of interpersonal interactions. In a workplace situation, some kind of collaboration happens multiple times in each and every day.
Each time I loan my stapler to a co-worker or take a message for someone who’s away from her desk, collaboration takes place. Do these things count for your survey, or are you mainly just referring to the kinds of tightly interwoven collaborative activities that involve integrated team approaches to solving overlapping problems through close cooperation? What about the spectrum of activities in between? Where is the line drawn as to what’s relevant in your definition of collaboration?
So many of your questions miss the mark because they fail to define what type and degree of collaboration the survey is asking about. As a result, my answer to almost every one of your survey questions is, “It depends.”
Yeah. What PD said.
This is a good discussion, but when it leads to surveys, I get skeptical too.
You put it rightly. It is based upon any and every small activity in the context of Graphic Design. However, what comes to your mind first,without rational , conscious thought about collaboration, and the feelings associated with it.
No hiding it from you guys, the survey clearly mentions the purpose. However, I’m not trying to sell you anything. I am just trying to understand collaboration quantitatively and qualitatively. There’s not going to be any Ad or link to a software asking you to install it and solve all your problems from my side. I can assure you of that.