A rant

Today was one of those days where i discovered how important it was to have an actual "role" in a company. More specifically for my situation- to have a "design" role/title of your own in a company/corporation, in order to:

a. prevent someone from stealing your designs and claiming it as their own.
b. have your ideas heard
c. (relates to A) to cut that bitch to the death that took your design and butchered it up

My current employment relies on pretty much every ounce of organization skills i possess and how disgustingly detail-oriented i can be. The more meticulous i am, the happier my manager is. Aside from that, it calls for zero creativeness. That said one of the tasks was to design the event brochure.....in Microsoft Publisher. For those who don't know what it is- its like a layout/document making program for non-design folks who doesn't care to learn for actual long document/layout making programs like Adobe InDesign and Quark. Simply put it- Publisher is extremely limited in its "functions" comparatively to the other design programs I normally use thus, I can ONLY make something look so "nice" given my limitations. I did my best, i presented what i felt was a brand new look and feel to what is a relatively "boring" and dull brochure yet, compiled with the corporate guidelines.

Next thing you know after about 10 revisions, my work gets shipped off to the Strategic and Communications department for "approval", andddd i pretty much am unable to touch my own work anymore.

Why?

Because, the "designer" in the cmm department did a much more creative job because they laid it out in Quark.

But i wasn't allowed to use Quark? I didn't even have access to it on my computer?

The corporate "designer" added a few other real snazzy elements to the design.

Well, those snazzy elements happen to just be small arrows that flew everywhere, CLUTTERED the page - but ripped my existing layout. Changed the font - but essentially stealing and kept all the elements that III came up with to improve the brochure. But still claimed it as their own.

The kerning was off, the white space was unbalance, i suspect they have zero idea what margins are, it was amateur-looking, and a shit load of other design-related issues that i dont remember but i do remember circling and underlining it as it was reviewed during our weekly committee meeting. Whats even more funny is the fact that the bankers who are part of this committee that i am on, were able to point out PRINT-RELATED issues with the layout.............and they're freaking business men! That's how OBVIOUS the mistakes were. But its okay because they loved the arrows. Oh they fucking loveeeeeeeeeeeeed the brilliant arrows.

As a result of all these "changes" (aka font change and an explosion of arrows), this communications "designer" will be in charge of completing the brochure and i am not allowed to touch it anymore. Even though its been under my charge since November.

You can freaking bet my attitude was NOT chirpy during the entire meeting after i was told this and im sure my face was sour as fuck.

All because, i am NOT the designer and simply just a minion. A minion who's very good at making lists.

FML.

You get walked on and your work is unappreciated and not credited to you. And this is why boys and girls - i need a fucking full-time graphics job.