What is critique?

Critique is a time where you can get honest feedback on your work and begin to improve your project. Critique helps you get better at receiving feedback and at talking about work (both yours and your peers).

You should not enter a critique expecting to be told your work is perfect, nor should you expect to feel dejected and defeated. The best critiques make you excited to get back to work and continue to refine your projects.

Things to Remember

Critique is not a competition. Everybody is here to learn and grow and you can often learn as much from giving feedback as you can from getting feedback. Pay attention to the critiques of work from other students as there is much to learn from discussing work beyond your own.

Critique serves the work. Not the person. It’s important to remember critique exists to make the work better. This is not a critique of you as a person — a bad critique does not make you a bad person.

There’s a difference between being nice and being kind. A nice critique is telling someone their work is good to avoid hurting their feelings but a kind critique is telling them their work is not where it should be so they know it needs to be improved. Be kind and honest, not nice and disingenuous. (Being kind is also about not offending, dismissing, or belittling the person you are talking to.)^[1]

Criticism should not be prescriptive or offer guidelines unless it also gives context for where those guidelines come from. Every principle of ‘good design’ comes from somewhere — ie. they are not neutral.^[2]

No voice is more important than another. (That includes me!) The best feedback can come from anywhere, and anyone. Everything is up for interpretation but also note that ignoring what everybody says probably won’t help your work improve.

Critique is like an all-you-can-eat buffet. Just because you get a suggestion for changes or revisions doesn’t mean you have to take it. Just like an all you can eat buffet, all criticism is available for your taking but it's up to you what you want to eat. It’s your job to sort through what is helpful and what is not, what gets you closer to your goal and what doesn’t, who understands what you are doing and who doesn’t. Take the feedback that is helpful and ignore the rest.

Critique is empowering. You should walk away from critiques with clear next steps and an understanding of how to push your work forward. A critique should not make you feel like you’ve failed but instill in you a love of revision and iteration. A successful critique should end with an excitement to continue working.

How to Give Feedback

Offer criticism within the project’s intent. What is it trying to do? Who is the audience? Don’t give feedback without first asking questions to understand the goals of the project.

Ask questions. Don’t give feedback without first asking questions about the goal of the piece: What is its goal? Why does X do that? Is this working? Does that make sense? We can provide better criticism and push projects further when we fully understand the intent.

How to Get Feedback

Be clear about the type of feedback you are looking for. You have some control on directing the conversation about your work. Are you looking for broad, conceptual feedback or specific, granular feedback? Are parts a work in progress you aren’t ready to get feedback on? Let us know. Think about what you want to get out of the critique and bring a list of questions or concerns with you. (“What do you think?” is not a helpful question.)

Be confident. Know why you are showing us what you are showing. It’s important to know why you are doing the work you are doing. We will tell you your work isn’t working but will be open minded in your ability to convince us otherwise. (A critique that begins with “I’m sorry…” is off to a bad start.)

Feedback that usually isn’t helpful:

Formats

Wall Crits Traditional critique format in design/art schools. Work is pinned to the wall for the entire class to see. Each piece on the wall gets a dedicated amount of time for the class to respond to and talk about. (Pros: easy, see all the work in class. Cons: time consuming, easy to ‘perform’.)

Workshop Modeled on the Creative Writing MFA workshop model, a discussion is had about the work in question but the designer is not allowed to speak about it. Other students interrogate the work, ask questions of each other, point out interesting or problematic things, and seek to interpret the work. At the end of the discussion, the designer is allowed to speak again, answering any open questions, defending decisions, or asking new questions of the class.

Cranbrook Workshop An adaptation of the Workshop model, the Cranbrook model is geared a bit more towards a design critique. Students are assigned another work to look at and critique. Over the weekend (or week, or until the next class), they must write a critique of the assigned work and design a pamphlet with the full text of their critique. Copies are printed for the rest of the class. The designer also writes a short statement about the work. During critique, the student reads their critique and leads a discussion of the work in question. The designer can’t speak until the discussion is over, after which they read their state and respond to any questions or comments.

“Speed-date” Tables are positioned into a long row in the middle of the classroom. Students are divided into groups, sitting on each side of the row, across from another student. One side is the “feedback getters” and the other side the “feedback givers”. A timer is set for 5 minutes. The Getters present their work to the givers and the Givers provide feedback. After five minutes, the Givers move to the next seat to Give feedback to the next Getter. After a full rotation, the roles are switched so those who gave feedback will now present their work to get feedback. This is helpful in allowing a range of feedback and giving every person in the class equal opportunity to speak (it prevents those who like talking from dominating discussions and those less comfortable speaking in a group more opportunity to share feedback). Furthermore, because you don’t know what anyone else, you may give feedback that’s already been given — the Getter will start to see patterns or gaps in their work because of repeat mentions. Additionally, In presenting your work quickly, over and over, students get better at talking about their work and

Only Questions Critique can be formatted in any way, depending on the class (on the wall, speeddate, workshop, etc). The only requirement is that all the feedback must be presented in the form of a question for the designer to record and consider when they go back to revise. (What would happen if this wasn’t a poster but a book? Why is the use of blue here feeling out of place?)

Artist Questions A flip on the Only Questions method. Here, the designer/artist/maker leads the discussion on their own work. They prepare a series of questions to ask the rest of the class about their work. In responding, the rest of the class attempts to answer the questions directly and honestly.

Resources/References/Additional Reading

The Creative Independent. Matthew Salesses on On asking questions instead of offering suggestions

Bardzell, Jeffrey. How to Do Design Critique

Casali, Erin. Asynchronous Design Critique: Getting Feedback

Cezzar, Juliette. Why is so much of design school a waste of time?

Earls, Elliott. Grad Student Critiques Teacher | Studio Practice #115

Ellison, Chappel. Giving and Taking Criticism

Goldstein, Mitch. How to Crit

Kaplan, Marty. Giving and Receiving Feedback: A Guide to Doing it Right

Lange, Alexandra. Criticism = Love

Lerman, Liz. Critical Response Method

Lloyd, Alexis. Four methods for good critique

Salesses, Matthew, Craft in the Real World

Saunders, George. The perils and blessings of creative writing workshops