Creeping Mediocrity

Eric warned against what he called creeping mediocrity: the result of a diminished creative work ethic; essentially, the attitude that something is good enough.

"I think that's the thing that endangers all creative endeavors," Baker said. "You see a few people doing really excellent work. You see some people doing really good work... and then you see a lot of people doing mediocre work. If it's just O.K., it's almost worse than if it were bad." Bad work is typically produced by people who just don't know what they're doing. O.K. work is made by people who just don't care.

How do we put a halt to this creeping mediocrity? "I think the key word is 'passion'," said Pat, holding one of the medal winners. "The person who worked on [this piece] was passionate about it... every single detail. That's really the difference whereas other pieces may fall down at some point."

But passion alone isn't enough. As we all know, a number of contributing factors determine whether or not a piece will be successful. "A lot of it is communicating with the client," Pat said. "I think that's where a lot of people fail. I think more people fall down in that area than anything else. You can be a great designer, but if you can't sell the concept and continue to hold steadfast throughout the battle... you can lose at any point along the way. So often people just fall down and die... they just give in."

"I've never seen so many different size sheets of paper in one bound book... So many pieces with half-sheets in the middle," said Rick Binger, alluding to the number of expensive printing and finishing tricks he saw. All of the judges noted—with perhaps just a touch of envy—what to them seemed like an unusually large amount of "big dollar" projects among the entries. "That really amazed me," remarked Eric Baker, "the amount of money I saw lying on those tables." As if you needed to be told, not all of those pricey printed pieces were deemed worthy of inclusion in the show. "We all saw a lot of incredible missed opportunities out there," said Eric, lamenting what might have been had the money for certain entries been spent in service to a solid, original concept.

Looking at what someone else has said about you (even when you have been lumped together with the rest of the local design community) one might be tempted to think how presumptuous can you be! Three strangers (well-known, but still strangers) ride into town on their reputations and start laying down the law like Marshall Dillon. They normally come equipped with little or no knowledge of the area market, and are prepared to make only the most superficial judgments of local design work. Some of it they label good.

But why is it so hard to know if you're doing good work? Are there absolutes that the show judges and a only a few others are aware of? It seems like as soon as you begin to go beyond the basics and fine-tune your work, you leave the realm of immutable design principles and enter the zone of subjectivity. Ultimately you realize no amount of design commentary can help you divine the ineffable secret to that elusive commodity good design. But it does give you something worthwhile to ponder while you're sitting in your office in front of your computer, working away like a good little drone.