But I'm a Designer - The City and the Publicity

By Raphael de Jesus

Part of "The City and the Publicity" series

At München Digital Marketing worked a designer called Caroline Delatorre. With a bachelor degree in graphic design, a major degree in web design and 10 years of experience in the market, Caroline believed that every project must have its reason, according to the client’s objectives, the market needs and the highest aesthetical patterns.

- But I’m a designer… - she used to say every time when challenged by others, no matter who it was. It was a small publicity agency, and she had a nice position there, which allowed her to make it worth her opinion.

Once, the designer had to reformulate Horizon Real Estate visual identity and created a very detailed brand manual for it. A logo with cursive typing showed elegance, as it was signed by a great fashion designer. The gold, the white, the black and the rose gold combined in a perfect match to create austerity, minimalism and a classy look to attract a picky audience with high purchasing power. Patterns which multiply itselves in many graphic possibilities, from a calendar to the social network posts.

During the brand website development, Israel, who worked there as a front-end, asked for a slider in its layout, a sequence of rolling images, highlighting the company main apartments to catch their users' attention instantly.

- But I'm a designer… -- protested the experienced professional, wanting to keep a beautiful landscape of a horizon she had chosen for the web site front page.

This was the basic tone of their relationship since both entered at München Digital Marketing, and he always chose to stay quiet and do his tasks to not argue with her.

After submitting the finished website to his client, Israel started a new task, for the Law Office Tosatto & Zanchi.

He needed images related to law and justice to illustrate their new website, so he accessed Freepik.com to search for it. On the front page he found a template exactly like Caroline’s early work.

Surprised, he lacked to believe. Next, he searched in the agency’s Dropbox and, when he found the same work, then concluded it was a trickery of her. He asked himself why she had done that, if she was such a good professional. First he thought to tell everybody at work, but got afraid of embarrassing her. Just knowing her secret was enough by now.

After this episode, he tried to not keep himself in touch with her, but it was impossible, because he had to attend another group meeting. The project was again a new website, for Bellevue, a cosmetic-surgery clinic. During their brainstorm, Israel suggested a two-column card paragraph to better show its presentation to the users:

- But I’m a designer…

- No, you’re not.

- What do you mean?

- You brag yourself too much, but you are a template user.

- Bullshit.

- I’ll show you.

Their other team members, who were listening to everything, became paralized, because they never saw Israel acting like that before. Wanting to unmask her, he quickly took the reference and showed it to everybody there.

Caroline started to laugh, cynically and despicably.

- So?

Israel got quiet, doubting her reaction, while looking with a serious expression.

- Dude, you don’t know how busy I am. I have lots of projects simultaneously and can’t lose time with tiny little posts. Can you imagine me having to stop everything I’m doing to run my Photoshop and create all the post design, step by step? It seems a little to do, and it is, but it takes too much of my time. By the way, we have a Freepik license, so there is nothing wrong about it.

Israel blushed himself. Caroline, with a triumphant expression, continued the meeting. The others hid their reactions, as if nothing happened there.

At the end of the day, ashamed, Israel apologized to her for what happened early and she accepted, glad to do it.

Later at home, Caroline breathed a sigh of relief and laughed with herself remembering all that happened that day and how she was clever dealing with that sticky situation. After all, she was a designer.

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Photo credit: <a href='https://br.freepik.com/fotos/pessoas'>Pessoas foto criado por drobotdean - br.freepik.com</a>