很难，然后有hard.You know that every career has its challenges—and sometimes those challenges can actually be a motivator to keep you coming back to work every day. So is graphic design hard in this way? Or are there other challenges that might make this profession a bad fit for you?

It's not that you're afraid to put in the work. You just don’t want it to be so difficult that you wouldn’t enjoy the job. Sketching your favorite landscape or the faces of your family might come easy, but working with other designers, dealing with clients, and designing for a living all add their own challenges.

It’s not always easy for an outside observer to understand where a job lands on the difficulty scale. That’s why we asked graphic design experts to offer up their honest opinions on what makes working in this field difficult—and their advice for young designers hoping to manage these challenges.

3 Common difficulties that come from working in graphic design

那么我们的专家们发现在图形设计中工作挑战？虽然这肯定不是你作为设计师所遇到的潜在挑战的全面列表，但下面列出的三个占据了很多地面。

1. Imposter syndrome

Remember when you first got your driver’s license and felt like the only new driver on the road andeveryone知道你几乎没有脱颖而出吗？你以前感到患有巨大的综合征。每个人都做 - 但它可能是一种非常令人不快的感觉，适用于你的职业生活。

In the world of graphic design, it can be really easy to feel like maybe you don’t belong or don’t have the technical chops to be considered a “real” designer. Not only are there a lot of different skills and software to learn, but there’s also the challenge of creating good designs that don’t feel like they’ve been done a million times before. As a new designer, you will have to advocate for yourself which can be tough when you feel so out of place.

Levi Olmstead, designer and founder of hiscontent marketing servicesbusiness, admits that this can be the hardest part of getting started. “Thoughts such as ‘I'm not a professional,’ ‘I'm not as good as others,’ ‘I shouldn't be doing this’ are frequent. You're going to have these emotions, and you have to fight through them.”

Like anything else in life, feeling subpar can shut you down, but it can also motivate you to get better. Olmstead’s own experience proves that imposter syndrome can also be used as a positive motivator.

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How can you overcome it?

Jay Teves, a senior designer atDilate Digital, offers this advice. “There will always be something you could do better in every project you undertake. Focusing and mastering one skill until you become great at it is extremely useful before learning something new.”

作为一个年轻的设计师，有很多东西可以学习，练习和精炼，这很容易被压倒并开始相信你永远不会全部落后。通过缩小焦点并掌握一系列较小的技能，您将建立您的信心，并且在尝试新的东西时会更加舒适。沿着你犯错误 - 但你不能让他们劝阻你继续。

“Learning from your failures is the key to achieving a greater outcome for your design career,” Teves says.

2. Navigating negative or questionable feedback

Feedback is great when it makes you look good, but then again, most designers would even settle for feedback that just makes sense. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Olmstead explains this is one of the most frustrating realities of graphic design. “You're going to have clients who have feedback—sometimes that feedback will go against rules of design and may make a design worse.”

It doesn’t matter how solid the design or experienced the designer,some clients are just hard to work with。You may spend hours perfecting a logo that represents exactly what the client wanted. It's modern, not too flashy, incorporates the company name and even their ridiculous request for a cartoon penguin. Minutes after sending what you thought was the final draft, they inform you that the font is too big, the colors too dull, and the format unreadable. They’d prefer neon Comic Sans.

Okay, that might be a bit drastic, but you get the idea. When a client is picky, indecisive, or can’t trust your expertise as the designer, feedback can be a very frustrating part of the job.

How can you overcome it?

据说，客户总是对的。据说，你应该只是吞下你的骄傲并做客户想要的事情。虽然在某些情况下可能是必要的，但是还有其他方法可以导航客户反馈的微妙地形。olmstead提供了他的个人战术。“随时可以自由地嘲笑他们想要的东西，然后通过这个设计和更新版本的初始设计发送。”

This way you can show the client what they want while still giving them a better option. At the very least, you will reassure them that you can implement feedback. At best, they may realize that what they wanted was achievable within your original design.

Another way to navigate client feedback is to anticipate it from the start. Nick Avola, content manager atVisuals by Impulse，讲述年轻的图形设计师，“永远不要害怕说'我不明白。'新的设计师往往太胆怯或羞于承认他们正在与一个项目挣扎。”他说，“学会接受谦卑 - 总是在客户简介尚不清楚时询问更多信息和方向。猜测客户的意图是最简单的脚开始的方法。“

3.创造性的倦怠

您可能有十几个想法为您的第一个广告布局，但在20或30日之后，您可能会开始感到振奋。客户不仅想要一些看起来不错的东西，他们想要看起来不同的东西。当您设计了100种类似物种时，可能难以保持启发。

“我不在乎你已经多久设计、burnout stage will happen at some point. New designers need to be prepared. Your creativity has limits. You need to care for and replenish it—otherwise, your process will become mechanical and emotionless, and the final products will suffer,” Avola says.

It can start to feel like every shade of green looks the same, and you lose track of how many "modern but classic” brand labels or “sleek and simple” homepages you’ve done. If you’re not careful, designing will lose its appeal.

How can you overcome it?

Creative burnout doesn’t have to be a dead-end. Whether you’re approaching it or are in the midst of it, Avola advises, “Take regular breaks, care for your mental health, and inspire yourself with research before jumping into a project.” It may seem like you’re wasting time or not working hard enough but think of it as an investment in yourself and your career. What feels indulgent now will pay off in the future.

This can be especially difficult for young designers if they accept every extra project offered to them. While it’s important to gain experience, Olmstead warns against taking on too much too soon. “My advice would be to take on many small projects at the beginning of your career to learn how to manage multiple clients, multiple client personalities, dealing with feedback, and building your portfolio.”

You may need to pass on some work—which can be tough—but by mastering fundamental skills, you can begin to develop resilience against burnout.

Are you up for the challenge?

在我们所要求的所有专家中，并不是说实际设计是工作的艰难部分。虽然磨练您的技能和学习新工具时可能需要时间，但它是想象的，创造和尝试，将大多数人吸引到这一领域。围绕着设计的工作有时可能具有挑战性，但如果设计是你所爱的，那么选择应该很容易。

下一步是决定您是否希望在图形设计中获得正规教育。考虑我们文章中的事实，“是一个值得还是毫无价值的图形设计程度？“