Hey, great! Thanks for the feedback.

I started out this morning like any other day at work—come in, check my email, browse the internets, and get to work. About an hour after I got in, the big boss came to my desk and unceremoniously dropped some sheets of paper on my desk. “Look over these and find a consensus,” he told me. Then walked away.

I picked up the papers and saw my initial drafts for the new logo. The drafts that I’d given him last week, that I’d emphasized were “only the first drafts and not the final product,” that I only let him take because he asked for them and what was I going to say? Me: “No, you cannot have the drafts. We’re presenting the finished designs on Thursday.” Him: “You’re fired.” Of course I gave him the drafts, with the understanding that he was “just going to show his dad.” That made sense. His dad, the former big boss, rarely came in the office and the big boss wanted to ask permission to make changes.

Apparently, though, I didn’t translate “just going to show my dad” into big boss speak. Because the big boss had a meeting today with the big shots of the company—aka everyone in the company who makes more per month than I make per year—and he totally showed them my drafts.

In fact, not only did he show everyone my drafts, he passed them around for feedback. So when I got my drafts back today, they were covered in this:

Wait, what? Did the president of my company REALLY just pass around my initial designs for the entire company’s comments?? Yep. He did.

He could have waited two days, gotten the final versions of the logos, heard our views about the strengths of each, and had two or three good candidates to choose from. But did he wait? No, no he didn’t. Instead, he took my sketches and initial designs—and I had about 40 to 50 counting all the minor variations that I’d printed out just because the change in perspective makes it easier to spot problems in the design—and he presented them to a group of people with a -10 design experience.

These people were seeing my thought processes and my experiments—the good and the bad—and they put it under a microscope and ripped it apart. I feel kind of like I would if he’d read out of my journal.

Seriously, with everything on display like this, it’s trial and error with no room to err. They’re liking things that I tried out but think are awful and are hating things that I think make for a really strong design. And for the rest of the day it’s been, “Hey Jenn, I saw your logos today. I have a few graphic design friends/clients that we could get to work on this….” Me: “Sorry, guys, the big boss doesn’t want to pay for your graphic designer friends/clients with their snooty PhDs. Thanks for thinking about how I felt about this, though. You guys are great.”

As for a consensus? There really isn’t one—there were 30 big shots in that room and 30 different opinions. At this point, however, I’m pretty burnt out, so it just seems really, really funny. Which is probably a good thing for my continued employment.

Again, wish me luck. The big meeting has been moved to Thursday afternoon. And then, even if it’s terrible, I’ll at least be moving forward. I’m looking forward to Friday.