How are you supposed to react when people say that about your actual work?

I’ve designed some stuff that’s gone out round the company late last week. Feedback is trickling in with this “it looks very professional” comment popping up a couple of times.

Bearing in mind this is my job surely it’s meant to look professional?! Am I exuding amateurish tendencies generally….???

Am I justified in poking these people in the eye?

I don’t know what to say but you sound like you know what you’re doing.

I think they mean the content is shite

If it’s something which other people could do, but would do poorly (e.g. design) then those sort of comment seem par for the course. I think what they probably mean is “christ, that’s pretty good!”

They’re commenting from a lay perspective and are probably trying to find approving phrases but don’t have any other than “it looks very professional”.

Take it as a compliment. 🙂

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damning_with_faint_praise

Or more likely, folk are too unimaginative to think of anything useful to say when they actually approve. It’s worse when they say nothing IMHO.

I’d take it as a good thing.

I would regard that as high praise, but I’m an under-paid amateur so what would I know!

I get that sometimes. I generally think it means “I’d like to think I could do this sort of thing as well as you but my inability to give constructive feedback undermines that belief so let’s say something generic.”

Roughly translates as just about acceptable

So, you’re just another over sensitive creative type! 😉

What is it you design?

What was it?

Can you post it on here and be judged by your peers here. If you dare! 😉

“it looks very professional”

They missed the words “for you” meaning you exceeded their expectations, which is always a good thing. What you need to ask is why they had a lower opinion of you?

Are you a bit of a joker in the office?

From “that 70’s show”
“just take their money and smile like a jackass”

How professional can you make a newsletter look?

Perhaps it means:
We normally pay a professional, we have no budget, what you have done is no masterpiece but better than we expected. It will do.

Quite simply, they don’t believe you did it

Do you work for Unprofessional-props ‘R’ Us?

“Compared with previous output, this one doesn’t look like a five year old was let loose with MS Paint”

Whenever someone has stated that my design work looks very professional I have always acted a bit dissapointed and told them that I was trying to be more “pro-celebrity” 🙂

You sound paranoid!

I’d say it means “we thought you were going to make a right hash of that, but it’s turned out pretty good…..”

Quite often, we have to produce material that’s designed to look less professional. “That looks really amateurish” is the highest compliment this stuff can be paid. But every so often someone isn’t sure what sort of project they’re looking at, and inadvertantly compliments a serious bit of work on its amateurishness.

It could have been worse. At least they didn’t say ‘that looks nice’

Nice? NICE? ****ING NICE?!!!!!

Hang on a minute. Could you just stay there. I just need to nip and get something……

Send them feedback on their feedback, see where that gets you.

“it looks very professional”

=

“Could you add a rainbow and a teddy bear?”

My mums just been up to site, I gave her a quick look round the five houses etc. She commented on how nice the feather edge fence I’ve hand built all round the site was. The comment being “have you really done that”
Yeah cheers mum!

Don’t take it too seriously, perhaps competitors work looks more amateurish.

Poke them in the eye.

“You are the Crank Bros of this industry”

Whilst trimming trees away from some power lines in a woman’s garden for the local electric company, she delights in telling us her son does this “for a living!”.

I’m struggling to see the problem. Personally I aspire to do a professional looking job when I’m being paid for it, having seen plenty of non-professional looking work carried out on a paid basis (to be honest I often do more “professional looking” stuff when not having the time restraints of a paid for job).

Please tell me you’re a graphic designer.

Am I justified in poking these people in the eye?

what do you do? If it’s web design or photography/photoshoppery that a lot of enthusiasts/amateurs do (and some do very badly) I’d see it as positive, if you’re a brain surgeon then yeah there might be a bit of faint praise thingy going on.