I can put up with the project managers never doing any work and/or being in the office, I can tolerate when the incompetence causes shit to hit the fan (as it’s so easy to see coming I can side step it mid air), but the complete lack of creativity of my (and the whole design teams) role due to no longer designing and instead simply drawing up the directors designs straight from sketch up in to real CAD really pisses me off
Especially as these designs have a tendency to be thought through, and hence not work. Which means we need to change them to work whilst still having to maintain the main principles of the design (even if it is these that are causing the design to be flawed) so that the changes are unnoticeable, and when we don’t change anything and it doesn’t work it’s our fault. Combine this with a complete lack of information/incorrect information from the project managers. I am finding myself producing drawings that I am embarrassed to put my name to. Hence should I start signing them Alan Smithee as I can’t leave the drawn by blank as this would contravene ISO9001.
First, calm down. Take some deep breaths. I have had this boss before. Actually in a way I would bet that all of us have had this boss before in some fashion. My suggestion is to take it above and beyond on your own. Your boss is not going to know what other ideas are out there until you show him. Do what he asks, but throw your own spin on it as well. It is no different than when I get a request from Marketing and they say I want X because it hit z model. I show them X, but I also show the Xa, Xb, Xc, and A,B,C, and D. Usually they will see that what they thought they wanted was not really what they needed. You are the designer, it is your job to solve the problem and stretch the solution.
Cheers for the response, all calmed down now (was quite cathartic to get some of my issues off my chest).
The job can’t be all bad considering I rang up a recruitment agent to discuss an advertised job only to discover it was working for the company I currently work for (the description made it sound like it was something I could walk straight into funnily enough). Although other things like it taking six months to get overtime paid means it’s time to get the folio sorted and start applying for jobs that I’m not currently working in.