UPDATE: Here is the official question without all the discussion fluff:
What are the guidelines for asking for a critique of my work?
Are critique questions even allowed here?
There have been a few meta discussions regarding this subject:
- Asking community to critique work?
- How to handle critiques?
- Is it acceptable to ask the community is they feel that a certain design looks really bad?
The consensus seems to be "Yes, they should be allowed, but not without restriction." As many have pointed out, such questions must have a focused direction. Regardless of this consensus, we don't see a lot of questions like this, possibly because of the "subjectivity is bad!" stigma on Stack Exchange sites.
Well, isn't subjectivity considered faux-pas on Stack Exchange?
Yes, and no. I encourage you to read Robert's blog post for a better understanding of the division between what sort of subjectivity works for Stack Exchange sites.
In the old closing system, critique questions that popped up on our site would often get closed as "too localized". With the new system, it would make sense to close them as "primarily opinion-based".
Moving forward, it would beneficial to create a custom off-topic close reason to address critique questions that need improvement. This reason would include a link to the appropriate meta post for guidance.
How can we determine what makes a good critique question?
We need to outline a set of guidelines for writing good critique questions so that we can eliminate as much ambiguity as possible. Writers has a well-written (of course) post in their meta site that we can use as an example of what works: What are the guidelines for asking for a critique of my work?
Yisela has done a great job of writing a first draft for what our guidelines should include. Before we push this into production and make it official, we would love to hear feedback on it. Did we forget something? Tell us! Think it's awesome? Let us know! Think it's terrible? Oh, well... phrase it politely so you don't hurt our feelings.
Q: What are the guidelines for asking for a critique of my work?
I'd like to ask a critique question for my design. How can I do that so that it fits the Stack Exchange format without being too subjective?
A:
If your critique question got placed on hold: Don't panic! We're here to help.
We are a community of professional and aspiring designers, and as such, we sometimes feel we need some feedback on what we have just created. Like all Stack Exchange sites, ours follows a strict Q&A format. This makes it a bit difficult to ask questions that might fall under the "critique" category.
However, we would love to help you, and in order for us to do it, your question will need to fit within a few criteria.
First and foremost, you must have either a specific question about your design or specific guidelines for the critique. A critique question needs to include a specific goal you would like to achieve.
Critique Question Criteria
- You must add one or more images to explain your problem.
- Your question must be phrased in such a way that answers can be objectively voted on by the community. Keep in mind specifically what kind of critique feedback you are looking for.
- Your question should encourage answers which explain their reasoning and back up any subjective statements with experience or recognized authorities.
- While your question should give us an idea of your own style, it should also encourage fair and impartial answers.
Confused? Here are some examples of on-topic critique questions:
- How should ascenders and descenders that share the same space be handled?
- Seeking advice to improve the design of my minimalist calculator
- How do I deal with line spacing when a single descender is getting in the way?
- Designing around an awful logo
- Logo design and text placement
What if my question doesn't meet these guidelines?
The first thing you should do is edit your question to fit the above criteria to the best of your ability. Don't worry about making it perfect, if you are not sure how to write it other members of the community will help you.
Keep in mind we try to be a reference site for design enthusiasts. Phrase your question in a way that can potentially help others.
Close Reason
We've got one unused off-topic close reason (we can have three total). Here is a shameless re-purposing of the close reason over at Writers:
Requests for critiques must include either a specific question about your design or specific guidelines for the critique. See: What are the guidelines for asking for a critique of my work?
