Burn Your Portfolio: Stuff they don’t teach you in design school, but should

44. Red Flags and Extinguishers

The term red flag is commonly used in businesses to identify that “there is smoke in the air, and where there is smoke there is fire.” Something has happened that indicates a possible impending disaster. In graphic design there are plenty of red flags to watch out for. A few years ago, I got sick of making the same mistakes over and over again, and began to recognize red flags in the design industry. I created some documentation for our company for each phase of production that highlighted these red flags; each one was accompanied by a form of documentation to help put out the subsequent fire. We call those protocols “extinguishers.”

Every client is different, and every problem has its own nuances. The extinguishers ...