5 Things To Know Before Starting A Career In Design, According To A Creative Director
'Let the practice of design be your teacher.'
Welcome to the Collective World Careers Newsletter. Collective World is a one-of-a-kind creative network powered by the minds and voices behind The Thought & Expression Company. We’re so glad you’re here.
Today, we’re sitting down with Creative Director KJ Parish to talk about what she’d want to tell visual designers who are entering the creative field for the first time.
Dear future designer, I expect you're reading this because you're a creative person contemplating a career in design. Or maybe you're already on that path and thought that perhaps this article written by some other designer might either confirm or disprove your misgivings about becoming one yourself. Either way, let's talk about this.
The world needs good design. If you're breathing, you've experienced the effects of poor design: city planning that makes zero sense, books you can barely read, furniture assembly instructions best used as a fire starter, apps that confuse more than help you—this list goes on. I want to point out that in most of the examples above, professionals were almost certainly PAID to do this work, and it STILL resulted in poor design. That's right; design can be professionally done and still fail. That's why it's up to YOU, future designer, to cut through the noise in your head (and the world) to serve up more of what the world truly needs: thoughtful design in service of the collective.
Let the practice of design be your teacher.
1. Good design is not about the designer.
You may have gotten into design because you are incredibly creative. Maybe you're an artist and a career in design seems like the most lucrative and stable path for a visually innovative type such as yourself. That's all very awesome, and your skills are appreciated and needed worldwide. But make no mistake, design is a service-oriented job. Using your unique perspective, life experience, and talents, you will repeatedly transform an idea into something functional or solve similar problems again and again. The more you practice design and hone your craft, the more people will hire you to solve the kind of problems you've solved before. Even so, it's rarely about the designer. Think about it: people don't walk around cities thinking, "Thanks to Johnny Designer X, these street signs are so fabulous! Good thing he liked forest green and sans-serif fonts when he started working for the city because, without his amazing taste, all these street signs might have been pink and comic sans!" Furthermore, the person who designed that billboard for cosmetic dentistry didn't sign their name on the bottom.
Design may or may not be highly visually creative, but it is almost certainly done in service to someone or something. So much of what we collectively appreciate in the designed world was created by people we'll never know or find on Instagram, and that's pretty cool. Yes, there are knowable and famous designers in the world. But the vast majority are quietly skilled craftspersons who show up and do the work. You have no idea who they are. You may be one of them someday, and I hope you are.
2. Successful designers are discreetly excellent communicators.
You could be the most brilliant Photoshopper ever, but success in design hinges on your ability to communicate effectively with others. Most projects begin with a problem to solve or an idea to envision and start with a brief describing what's needed. Depending on the job, your process, and the budget, the discovery process could be incredibly short or long, but the nuts and bolts are the same: you need to be very sure you understand the problem you are solving and the expectations of your client. If you don't, you will lose time and money. If things slide off the rails due to a lack of clarity initially, you will lose more than just time by solving the wrong problem—you might lose patience and even clients. Don't hop right into Procreate as soon as you get a brief, even if you are an excellent visual communicator and a blog once told you to share all the brilliant sketches you made during that last conference call immediately. Instead, pause, review everything you know so far, then ask more questions. Every stage of the discovery process is really about communication. In my experience, most people are not great communicators. Therefore, I recommend you make it your job to be better at it than your clients. Calls and emails are communication methods, as are mood boards, sketches with commentary, and task lists in shared project management tools. You will need to understand the project thoroughly before tactfully setting expectations for what and when you will deliver the end result (not to mention payment expectations if you are a contractor or running a design shop). Setting reasonable expectations and communicating effectively protects your precious life minutes down the road. No one wants to trash weeks of work and trust me, quantities of communication preserve your mind, body, and soul from burnout when doing service-oriented work like design.
3. I wish they were, but design and art are not the same thing.
I went to art school twice. The first time, I studied fine art alongside an internship in furniture design. I wanted to express myself creatively, hoarded potential art supplies like most fine artists, and trashed more art than I can remember because I ran out of room or it became home to an army of spiders. However, my art was all about me. It reflected my inner world, helped me process emotions and thoughts, and kept my hands and mind busy.
I also cherished functional beauty, so I wanted to learn how to craft things people would use. I thought I could pull off feeling creatively fulfilled by designing functionally beautiful things and make a living at it, but I soon discovered that personal expression and design were two very different things most of the time. There are exceptions to this, of course, but for the most part, design compels you to dig deep and come up with the best solution in the service of something that has nothing to do with your personal identity or preferences. Art, however, doesn't require function. It can be utterly useless to almost everyone and still be deeply meaningful to just one person. Art might exist on or within something functional, but at some point, it becomes predominantly one or the other. I will leave it to you to determine if a fuzzy blob that doubles as a chair is art, or if a chair that looks a little like a fuzzy blob is just cool design.
In any case, when I understood that my creative skills would help me serve others well as a designer, and that my personal art and creative expression would exist mostly outside of my design work, I felt relieved; I woke up to a reality where it was cool to be a craftsperson. I went back to school for graphic design. I could give of myself and feel good about my craft because I didn't need to shove my "self" into my work. The less me there was, the better the design proved to be. I could come from a pure place to serve others and excavate what each project needed to be the best version of itself.
4. Kill your idols, but you can keep them in your inspiration chest.
It's tempting to admire successful designers or artists and start creating work just like theirs or to follow general design trends dogmatically. It's also possible to intentionally avoid both because you are simply too cool and Avant guard to be influenced. I recommend you trash all of that thinking. It is just more ego. Enjoy what you admire in the visual world and collect a vast library of inspiration you can dip into anytime you feel a little lost or afraid of that blank screen. I won't dig into how to develop your design style here, but please know that yours will form the more you trust your instincts over time and collect a body of work from a wide variety of places and people. Inspiration is fuel. It's not about hopping into your inspiration chest and coming up with something to copy. It's about igniting that spark within you. Inspiration is everywhere, and you are part of a long lineage of humans who have created, communicated, and problem-solved over generations. Your ephemera collection (whether physical, digital, or both) becomes a world of its own and will always give you insight and ideas to try. Nurture this collection as if it were your private garden. Take time to build it slowly. You will need to prune it when something no longer provides energy. (And no, using Pinterest for an hour at the beginning of a project looking for something to copy is not building an inspiration chest!)
5. Shred your ego.
Really, this whole essay could be about this very thing. It's at the heart of anything important while your feet are on the ground. But, as it relates to design, shred your ego whenever you have the opportunity to do so.
You are going to have great projects and wonderful clients. You will hopefully be able to stand back someday and say, "How I served helped the world in some small way." But you will also inevitably have horrible client experiences. You will encounter people with a precise vision who think of you as a Photoshop specialist to whom they can stand behind and dictate instructions (this is painful). You'll work with people who don't know what they want until they have tried every option. I have encountered every manner of frustration working directly with individual creatives, small and large companies, and friends. As you grow in wisdom and skill, you will learn how to avoid these experiences by identifying the signs early on through communication and setting clear boundaries before you design.
Nevertheless, however tempting it may be to go head to head with someone who doesn't value your time or skills, see if you can use these experiences to shred your ego instead. I'm not saying stick with terrible clients. But when something uncomfortable happens, when a client offends you, or a friend you decided to help out becomes demanding, take a pause and let your ego die a little bit. Here's why: when we really get to the heart of the matter, it hurts to be cut down by someone with words or actions. It can make you feel small and incapable. But rather than defend yourself from that small and afraid space, let the experience wash over you and let the offended part of you die. Don't internalize negativity; let it exist without fighting it because it will inevitably lose power. Instead, accept that someone is unhappy with you, not a good friend, or taking advantage of you. Then respond without reactivity by setting clear boundaries or removing yourself from the situation without needing to defend yourself.
Why bother with this calm approach? Why can't you tell someone off or give them an earful about just how much more experienced you are than them? Because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. You'll discover that you can take a blow and move on the next day with a clear head because you didn't hold onto or ruminate about the projects or relationships that did not work out. You can accept on a deeper level that you have a purpose and something to offer even when someone doesn't appreciate you. It's okay to die to someone else because what's essential within you still lives. Sometimes that same creative nature and desire to serve that drives us is what makes us vulnerable to self-defeating behavior when we receive or encounter negativity. But make it a practice to shred your ego, and you will learn that you can take hits and still create with purpose. You can fail at something, sleep well at night, and produce meaningful work the next day. You can learn from discomfort instead of hardening to it. In my experience, the larger the ego, the more fragility hides underneath. These are the folks complaining on the sidelines because they are too afraid to fail, not the ones quietly creating, solving, and growing.
For more from KJ, check out her work on Instagram and Shop Catalog.
To connect with our network of writers and creators, you can join our community on Discord.