PDX Critique

Meeting Format

The PDX Critique format: up to four people may sign up in advance to show work. The purpose in showing your work is to get constructive feedback to help you improve it. The overall meeting format is one of positive, active dialog rather than stuffy presentation with a few questions at the end.

You can sign up to show work at a future meeting when you attend a meeting, or you may sign up by email to Stacey or Janet. We would love to hear from you.

We will have a laptop and a projector at the meeting. You may show work online, or you may bring in physical objects to present.

Each person who has signed up to show work will have about 20 minutes to show and get constructive criticism on how to make it better. If you are showing work, please keep in mind that it’s helpful to your audience to start with a brief statement on the goals you tried to achieve with the work to provide context for feedback.

We will also reserve a block of time for Quick Crit. Quick Crit works like this: If you want a Quick Crit, tell Stacey or Janet when you arrive and we’ll put your name on the list. Quick Crits will happen on a first-come, first-served basis. We’ll do as many as we can before our time slot expires. You’ll have about 5 minutes for your Quick Crit.

We’ve reserved a two hour block of time at Cube Space. When we’ve used it up, we’ll go out and relax.

Guidelines for Critique

We designers tend to have fragile egos. Please keep this in mind as you offer criticism, and please offer criticism respectfully. The point isn’t to tear work to shreds, it’s to help a fellow designer improve their work. Please try to help identify the problems you see rather than firing off solutions to solve the problem.

Example of identifying the problem: “I’m having a hard time reading your body text.”

Example of stating a solution: “The red text shouldn’t be in 9px on a blue background. Make the text white.”

It can be hard to resist the urge to suggest solutions, but we ask that as a group we try to confine our remarks to problem statements, and brainstorm solutions with the presenter on request.