Like arseh*les
19.06.2026 • Part 1 of ?
There’s a strange idea doing the rounds that designers are “too mean” to each other — and that it’s somehow damaging the industry.
There have always been detractors. And social media has enabled and encouraged rude behaviour for years. Isn’t it a stretch to say that we are less professional or serious as an industry because people say some thoughtless things on the internet?
Creative progress doesn’t come from agreement. It comes from sustained and occasionally uncomfortable disagreement about what “good” is.
Opinions are like arseholes
- everybody has one
Do they they all stink?
Creative history is full of public feuds.
Ruskin and Whistler being one of the most famous examples, where aesthetic disagreement escalated into a libel trial. (Back in the nineteenth century).
Some other examples:
William Morris on the subject of industrial production and commercial design.
In graphic design, Massimo Vignelli and David Carson became figureheads for opposing styles.
I recently learned about Denise Scott Brown vs the architectural establishment*.
David Ogilvy repeatedly criticised advertising that won awards but failed to sell products.
Or Debbie Millman vs Natasha Jen on Design Thinking.
[Note: These aren’t examples of ‘mean’ crit. See ‘social media’ for those examples.]
More recently, debates around logo simplification have seen agencies, designers and critics publicly attack one another’s work. Even our design press has been known to roll up its sleeves and pile in on these ‘hot topics’.
Then there’s the ‘death’ of [insert bait here]… I’m OK with people being publicly roasted for publishing DEATH OF thought pieces.
Perhaps the creative industries’ greatest tradition isn’t innovation but instead arguing about what ‘correct’ innovation looks like.
I am forever watching as people (mainly on LinkedIn) fall out about crit in creative endeavour. Or make proclamations about what is and isn’t appropriate to say in public.
Is it really the public criticism that hurts? Or the quality of that criticism?
Don’t even get me started on the self-proclaimed ‘Science’ types, who have determined that only their product could produce the ‘correct’ evaluation of marketing, design and campaign outcomes.
I have to ask,
Is it really the public criticism that hurts? Or the quality of that criticism? Perhaps it’s the volume of noise surrounding new things?
After all, there is much to be learned from your greatest detractors. And we shouldn’t be afraid of seeing things a little differently when we are presented with new information.
We talk about being bold, brave and vulnerable in communications. In order to accomplish those aims, we must be equally resilient when critiqued.
Critique is necessary for creative progress. Its value depends on the social conditions in which it happens.
We must examine how critique operates socially.
What’s on my mind now?
Accountability (from the critics).
The power balance between ‘peers’ during debate.
Putting the ‘Constructive’ back in ‘Constructive Criticism’.
Challenging ideas, respecting people.
The many faces of feedback…
Words to ruminate on,
“People say to me often enough: If you want to make your art succeed and flourish, you must make it the fashion: a phrase which I confess annoys me - for they mean by it that I should spend one day over my work to two days in trying to convince rich, and supposed influential people, that they cared very much for what they do not care in the least, so that it may happen according to the proverb: Bellwether took the leap and we all went over. Well, such advisers are right if they are content with the thing lasting but a little while — say, till you can make a little money — if you don’t get pinched by the door shutting too quickly; otherwise they are wrong: the people they are thinking of have too many strings to their bow and can turn their backs too easily on a thing that fails, for it to be safe work trusting to their whims: it is not their fault, they cannot help it, but they have no chance of spending time enough over the arts to know anything practical of them, and they must of necessity be in the hands of those who spend their time in punishing fashion this way and that for their own advantage.”
—William Morris,
William Morris (1877) The Decorative Arts. Reprint, Renard Press Ltd, 2024. ISBN: 978-1-80447-097-8.
Further reading:
*On Denise Scott Brown
- https://www.soane.org/soane-medal/five-voices-denise-scott-brown
On Radical Candor by Kim Scott:
- https://www.radicalcandor.com/