A vision for happier designers

Here's a better way to think about the present and future

The world desperately needs good designers, even even if sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. What you do is important. It’s why I’ve been writing and speaking about design for so long. I want you to succeed in work and in life.

I believe you can be happy as a designer. You can be fulfilled in your career. The rub is there is work to do to get there. We don’t get it for free.

We have to start by acknowledging that there have always been few professional designers and the working world has never valued us as much as we’d like. It might be true that right now jobs are harder to find and the landscape has changed. It’s easy to be afraid and think the worst. But you have reasons not to despair. You’re creative and ambitious. You have powerful talents few people have. We just have to make sure we use those abilities in the right way.

Here’s the vision in three steps:

1. Open our eyes. We are prone to idealism and wishing things were better. In creative work idealism can be an asset but in the real world it’s often a liability. We need more realistic expectations of organizations, businesses and our coworkers in general. We need to succeed in the real world, not the one we’d prefer. It’s self destructive to expect too much and then blame others for the gap (which I call the ego-trap).

2. Reframe problems so they are actionable. It can be healthy to complain, but complaining rarely changes anything. We are great at reframing design problems. Reframing means thinking about a challenge in a way that makes it easier to solve. Whatever complaints you have, find ways to reframe them so you can make progress, no matter how small. It may take days or weeks of effort to find a better frame, but it was right there the whole time. If you feel ignored or undervalued, reframe it into “how can my investigative and problem solving skills explain my opinions in more convincing ways?” This does not deny reality, maybe you do work for fools, but then it’s a test of your creativity (or of your expectations).

3. Use the systems you are in to your advantage. You may be somewhere with many problems. Yet if you are being paid, someone, somewhere is doing something right. Find out who that is. Be curious. Ask questions and listen more. Make allies, starting slow. Place small bets and learn. Solve problems that are important to those who have the resources you need. Earn trust. Slowly the system will start working for you instead of against you. And if it doesn’t, you might need more of #1 and #2.

My hope is all this helps you make peace with the natural tension of being a creative person in a cautious world.

If you’re feeling down about being a designer, I hope this video I made cheers you up.