Advice to a young designer
A brief account of recent learnings on a design career you'll love, one you'll thrive in and ultimately where you'll do the best work.
You'll sometimes have the shit gigs
Let's face it, we're not all blessed to work for the companies that give you insane amount of money or growth. That's okay. You've probably heard the phrase "you're either learning or earning, you rarely get both". I think there's a lot of truth to that.
Prioritise passion over profit
You may or may not agree that design is your life's mission or calling, you can always be actively choosing work that's important to you, the work that gets you up in the morning, or the work that you think about during your work day. Meditate on that.
Output not input
You should always choose to take responsibility for your work and not compromise on craft and quality. That said, too often I see designers worrying about the state of their portfolio, their next job, their network and the next latest design trend. Put simply, what I'm trying to say here is, pick the work you most enjoy and the audience will follow.
Use your internal measure
Measure your success on the designer you were yesterday, the work you did yesterday and the skills you had yesterday. Seth Godin puts this point nicely in The Practice:
It’s about throwing, not catching. Starting, not finishing. Improving, not being perfect.
Choose people and purpose
Make sure you spend more time in your career working with people who's mission you align with, who's values you are in tune with. Ultimately, building anything that the world will see, requires humans and delight to co-exist and so in order to replicate that in the digital realm, one must first feel that in the physical one.
Don't compare
Admire other designers, but don't aspire to be them. Spend less time online, go out in nature. Giving this advice to myself as well.
Share, uncompromisingly
What you put out into the world will find it's audience. Whether it takes 5 minutes or 5 hours, someone will resonate with your message. You're the only you, and the world needs your unique perspective now more than ever.
If every day design feels like you've achieved nothing, congrats you've made it you're a designer. If every day you feel it's the most exciting and gifted job in the world, congrats again you've made it, you're a designer.