Rustam K. Lead Designer

How to present a project which you are tired of as a case

Sometimes it happens that a complicated project makes you feel bored and depressed, you work with the graphics for a long time and you are too close to this project that your eyes are peeled for it and you think that this project sucks, that it is not good at all.

This is a true cognitive distortion (professional deformation), with this I have sorted out and learned how to treat such thoughts correctly. There is a simple rule of novelty, when we see the finished result without going through the whole process of creating this result, it causes a much stronger wow effect. It can be compared to a dish that was brought to you beautifully in a restaurant and you didn't see all the peel, smell and everything else while it was being made.

So this is what to do when a project is boring to death, and you are at the most important, I would even say, the most critical stage - packaging this project into a presentation case. Yes, I know that the project is good, but until it is packaged and released on the site / social networks, it is not actually finished (even though the client has received all the materials), for you the work is only half done. In medium and large agencies, the presentation of the project is prepared by a designer who didn't work on this project before.

My solution is:

- After completing all the stages and handing over the project to the customer, leave it for at least a month and start other projects, it is really trivial to take a break from it. But it is not worth much procrastination, as your work can lie on the shelf forever.

- Presenting the project is a separate project, not a project in a project, but a completely separate story, and you need to understand it. This will help you treat this NEW project in a new way.

- Try to do each new case differently from the previous one, discovering new techniques, learning new tools (for example, I used static mocaps, now I use animated ones; I used Google presentation, now I use Readymag, etc.). You need to find technical ways to catch that delicious feeling of the project.

- If, for example, you find a very cool mocap that's just super suitable for your presentation, but it doesn't have a developed medium, the way out is simple - you need to make that medium. Moreover, you've already had a rest, the schedule is all there, you can do something interesting and do not coordinate it with someone else.

To summarize it, after you have some rest and treat the presentation of an old project as a new separate project, you will look for points of growth, new tools / techniques / perhaps the meaning. If you feel that after a rest you can strengthen the project, strengthen it. Draw new media, freely and easily, without approvals or edits.

Don't screw it up. Always think about the fact that this project (even more often the presentation of this project) will bring you other customers. In simple terms, it's an investment of your time and energy. Right now you close your browser, return to the project, which has been hanging for a long time and you can't get to it, and start making the presentation. But do it in a new way, start from the other end, use other tools. Do not complicate things, make it easy. Then publish this presentation on your website or in social networks and feel your triumph.

Finally, I'll give a tip to newbies: if you're going for branding/identity - learn to think design-wise, not logos but systems, not pictures and graphics, but meanings. I've learned a little and continue to learn every day. And of course, don't forget the skill of presenting your work, it's probably the most important skill in our profession.