First, a little background on me. I have 23 years of experience in the field and have been working as an in-house designer at the same place for three years. I’m looking to get something more senior and move out of the place, but there’s not much going on in my area right now. The only reason why I took this role is because I was laid off from my senior designer role three years ago, and I was desperate to find something with benefits for me and my family. I’m actually surprised I got hired there. I guess you could say this was initially a “burner job.” When I first started it, I started to like it, but now, not so much. There’s one other designer who has around six years of experience. I’ve never worked with another designer who didn’t communicate with me on anything, so it’s very frustrating. I’ve held meetings with her and straight up asked her if I ever did anything to offend her or make her mad and her answer is always “no.” She gets offended and/or mad if I make suggestions to her designs during reviews and she tries to “get back at me” by nitpicking mine and saying I should “do this” or “that” when sometimes her suggestions don’t make sense. I’m sure she thinks that I think I’m the greatest designer of all time, which I know I’m not, but I do know that I know more about it than she does. I’m not learning anything new there so I’m really itching to get out and get into something where I can grow and use more of my skills. Have any of you experienced this with a younger designer? How did you handle it? I don’t understand it. When I was her age, I soaked up as much information as I could to be better.
Yeah, that’s frustrating and happened to me in the past too.
I think it’s pretty common workplace dynamic - a mix of experience levels.
She’s probably insecure about her work, or worse, not receptive to feedback, and that makes collaborating much harder. A defensive reaction usually to me comes across as feeling threatened, even if you have no ill-intent.
It can get messy if it turns into a tit-for-tat critique war. Probably need to find common ground and set boundaries for public reviews, so that the challenge can be made constructively to each other without coming across unprofessional. I’d start by pointing that out that it’s not helping anyone, most of all the company, the boss, the client, or yourselves. Try to find a common ground where you can maybe start with, ‘You did an amazing job here with this, and I have some ideas if you don’t mind, I’d like to suggest 3 things’ - and that’s all it should take, make small but polite conversation about things you’d approach.
Itching to leave is the worst, I’ve had this many times in my career, and it’s the worst feeling, I remember I woke up one morning and the sun was shining in the window, life was nice, and then I remember it was Monday and had to go into this flipping place again and my day just got worse from 5 seconds of getting out of bed. That is not good - if you feel this way then leave, there’s no point in being there.
If you’re not learning or growing and if you’re itching to leave, friction amplifies the dissatisfaction. If there were better opportunities, I bet this wouldn’t bother you as much.
If you want to hang in there:
Change the way you give feedback - approach first to find common ground
If she’s resistant, maybe phrase things as questions instead of suggestions. Something like “Have you thought about trying X?” instead of “You should do X.”
Some people just don’t take direct critique well.
Pick your battles If her work is objectively fine but just not how you’d do it, maybe let some things slide unless they really matter.
If none of that works for you:
Shift focus to what you can control since you want to leave anyway, focus on building your portfolio, networking, and applying for roles/companies (even if they are not hiring fire them a CV) where you’ll be valued and challenged.
At the end of the day, you want to work somewhere that challenges and respects your experience, and it doesn’t sound like this is it.
Thanks Smurf2. I made the decision months ago to start looking around for something else. Neither me or the younger designer feel valued. I would love to be around an art director or some professionals with more experience in the field. This role is really for junior to mid-levels. Like I said previously, I’m shocked I was hired in the first place with my experience level. Change around here is tough and nobody listens to the designers.
Well as they say, if you want to change your reality you need to change your mentality.
Good luck
This can be a problem with people who opted for online education or are self taught. They don’t know what it’s like to be in a room with other people, face to face, and hear their critiques. So they confuse your critique of their work as a critique of themselves, and it seems like a personal attack.
Begin the conversation by praising the things that work, then go into the things that you think need to be changed, and close by praising the things that work again. It’s called the “sh*t sandwich” approach to criticism… the bad, sandwiched between the good.
I do enjoy damning with faint praise. The trick is not to be caught.
We’ve been finding that a lot of Gen-Z kids don’t take well to face-to-face anything. Especially criticism.
Funny you say that because she’s not educated in GD, she’s self taught. How did you know? Is it that obvious?
That’s the truth!
I think the most important part of the brick-and-mortar university design education I received was the in-person, hang-your-work-on-the-wall critiques that happened every week. No one wanted to be on the receiving end of negative criticism, so everyone worked their butts off to avoid the humiliation and embarrassment the next week. The fierce competition meant rapid improvement or being drummed out of the program.
That winnowing and learning process doesn’t occur in self-directed or online learning, where people naively pursue what they like and think is cool. Even in the for-profit schools that have sprung up like weeds in a garden, profits dictate not being too hard on the students for fear they will drop out and quit paying tuition.
For me, going to a physical school meant more than just getting a degree, it was about surrounding myself with like-minded people who pushed me to improve. Out of my entire class, I’m the only one who stayed in the industry.
While in college, I worked in a print company to support myself (I learned more working in the company than going to college), trained for my Black Belt in karate, and competed internationally. There was a point where I juggled two jobs, printing during the week, security guard shifts on weekends, while still training and studying. I had days where I’d finish training at midnight, take a shower, and almost instinctively leave the house for work at 2 AM before realising my shift hadn’t even started. Everything was walking and public transport, and looking back, I don’t know how I did it.
But all of that built resilience and discipline. It gave me an appreciation for hard work and the craft of design. Maybe the real issue isn’t just about education, whether traditional or self-taught, but about how willing someone is to embrace the challenges that come with mastering their field.
Maybe part of the issue is that younger designers see this as more of a ‘chewing-gum’ field, something disposable, trendy, and easily replaceable. With tools like Canva and AI making design more accessible, there’s less emphasis on mastering the craft and more on just producing something quickly.
For those of us who came up working in print shops, dealing with real-world constraints, and learning through hands-on experience, design is more than just making things look good. I think the difference is that we had to fight harder to learn, whereas now, trial and error is easier, and the stakes feel lower. That might be why there’s a disconnect in how feedback and critique are valued.