Design Confidence & Responsibility: Your job is more than just pushing pixels.
The first job I had was packing boxes in a label factory. I left school half-way through A-levels (I later returned after experiencing ‘The RealWord™’) and got this job soon after. It was minimum-wage, boring and everyone there was over 40 and bitter but I made my bed so I had to fucking lie in it. The factory was so cold in the winter time you couldn’t pick up a Stanley knife to cut open packaging. I’d wear 2 coats and thermals to work at Christmas time and my hands got so many cuts and sores they look liked I’d be ravaged by a mighty bear. It was character forming.
However, I got some of the most important career advice ever at that job. My boss said to me on the first day ‘Now lad, everything that goes out that door is your responsibility just as much as it is mine and everyone else’s. Check everything, and speak up if something isn’t right’. This is a lesson that feels obvious now but the more time I’ve spent within design teams — the less I see it’s obvious to some people.
As a designer, your job is design. Sounds obvious but it’s not just whatever project you’re working on that day, or that week; it’s everything that is outputted by your company that goes through the filter of ‘design’. It’s an innate trait of designers to act like ‘quiet geniuses’, sat in their ivory tower conjuring beautiful mockups and designs to be sent down whenever they deem ready. When in reality, we are in the thick-of-it, constantly analysing, creating and asking the difficult questions nobody else wants to ask. You’re never satisfied, you’re never finished, you always can do better.
You don’t want people to come to you for design, you need to take design to them.
Designers love to say ‘we’re problem solvers’ — because we are. But problems come in all shapes and sizes, and usually they won’t land on your desk in the form of ‘Design me a landing page on Sketch plz’. You don’t want people to come to you for design, you need to take design to them. Business problems are design problems. Customer problems are design problems. HR problems are design problems. Designers are in a luxurious position that we can say ‘This sucks. We can make it better.’
Working within a team is essential to any business but taking ownership of your own work is part of design. I’ve not been designing for that long but I’ve always insisted on presenting my own work. I’m not sure why, I guess I just love the sound of my own voice. It’s not always gone smoothly, in fact more time than most I’ve under-sold it and made myself look like an idiot. But I’ve cut my teeth the hard-way and each time it get’s easier and easier. Mike Monteiro, one of my favourite design commentators, once said that ‘If you don’t present your own work, you’re not a designer’.
Every piece of design your teams outputs is partly down to you. You won’t have total control over everything but to be a diligent designer you need to have an interest in what you team-mates are up to and learn from their skill-sets — the goalie always practices penalties with the strikers.
There’s a fine line between being confident and being an asshole. Sometimes and to some people, you may come across as the later — so it goes without saying to pick your battles but in these situations it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission, because you’ll never get permission in the first place.
Brands are starting to learn that design needs a seat at the business table and we have something tangible to offer as a discipline. Some of the biggest brands in the world like AirBnb, Uber, Facebook, Google etc are extremely vocal about how design leads their process. But it’s not going to be handed to you and you’ve got to go get it. Having people critique your work is vital and being able to defend that work when you believe it’s the right solution is even more so. If you see a problem, tackle it.
I’m only speaking from my own experience of course, but I’ve found the more confident you are about your solution the more confident your stakeholders/boss will be. You need to ease their anxiety of hiring you and hoping you’ll come up with the right solution. You need to show them they made the right choice.
It’s almost cliche but being a designer is one of the best jobs there is. But like any job — you can show up and do enough to get by or you can knock it out of the park and try to challenge yourself and the people around you. Know how good you actually are and how powerful design and design thinking can be to your company. You can take ownership of your projects and design in your company. It’s up to you.
Design is your job — now go do it.
