How to spot an ama­teur  designer 

this is an exam­ple of that as well…
 

1. Graphic design­ers who feel Hel­vetica is bad font or shouldn’t be used; Fact is Hel­vetica is used by 75% of Amer­i­can busi­nesses and mostly in the form of logo design. If the font Hel­vetica is not one of great­est fonts in the world than how come it’s used for prac­ti­cally every­thing.
   

    

   Pro­fes­sional graphic design­ers know that Hel­vetica is the crème de la crème of fonts for design­ers. Ama­teur design­ers focus on stray­ing from what works to what’s odd or dif­fer­ent. A pro­fes­sional designer knows that recog­ni­tion is key; you should be able to rec­og­nize a brand from miles away. An ama­teur designer focuses on busy typog­ra­phy design rather than a clear con­cise mes­sage.
   

2. Bad graphic design­ers have no con­cept of sim­plic­ity or bal­ance; plac­ing & spac­ing are com­pletely inap­pro­pri­ate and con­fuses the audi­ence rather than pro­vokes them.
   

    

3. Design­ers who use color schemes that do not go together or unify the design they are try­ing to con­vey. For instance using red, pur­ple, yel­low, and neon green as the basis for their color foun­da­tion.
   

    

4. Not hav­ing a focal point or not hav­ing the right focal point. For instance busi­ness cards for a car repair shop should not have a huge image of a car and really small logo and type. The focal point should be your logo your brand not some ran­dom image.
   

    

5. An ama­teur graphic designer copies other design­ers work instead of cre­at­ing his or her own unique style. A lot of graphic design­ers com­pletely rip off some­thing they seen some­where else and go and dis­play a recre­ated copy of that design, and rel­ish in the moment, but when asked to design some­thing unique they lack the skills required to do so.
   

    

6. Graphic Design­ers who rip a tem­plate theme off as their own unique design and claim to have designed it them­selves. They swap out the logo and cred­its and claim the site as their design. This is the worst type of ama­teur designer because they are also a fraud. There port­fo­lio and there web sites con­sist of rips from some of the most major design­ers. These design­ers are lazy they take absolutely no pride in orig­i­nal­ity.
   

    

7. You can tell a bad designer by his logo, most bad design­ers use a basic font and just type out their logo name.
   

    

8. An ama­teur graphic designer will use the default shapes and brushes in Pho­to­shop to cre­ate their logo, why would a designer want to use a default shape? Every­one will know what it is. and more impor­tantly it does not in any way uniquely brand your com­pany. It is a mere sign of an ama­teur graphic designer at work.
   

    

9. Bad or ama­teur design­ers use Dreamweaver for every­thing, good design­ers use dream weaver just for visu­al­iza­tion. Pro­fes­sional design­ers hand code their work, because a pro­fes­sional graphic or web designer knows pro­grams can bloat the code or add extra code that will make your web­site lag. Have you ever heard the say­ing do it right the first time? Writ­ing your own code pre­vents a lot of com­mon bugs and or site errors for design­ers.
   

    

10. A Pro­fes­sional Graphic Or web designer uses a font man­ager and typ­i­cally has between 25,000 fonts to 250,000 fonts if not more whereas an ama­teur designer uses the basic fonts on his com­puter or free fonts he finds on the inter­net.
    

     

11. An ama­teur designer will repeat the same design over and over again using the same color scheme or con­cept never stray­ing, an exam­ple would be a song writer or artist who made a new album but all the songs sound almost the same. A graphic Designer will cre­ate art that is sup­posed to be totally sep­a­rate pieces but they all look the same as if they were part of the same design cam­paign. This is referred to as a Rusty designer.
    

    
     

Read orig­i­nal blog post