3 surprising secrets to fast track your design career
Your career progress depends on more than your design chops so work on these skills too.
What if I told you the better you get at design, the less money you’ll earn?
And what if I told you the best design directors, art directors and creative directors in town are all useless on a computer?
I’ve worked with some incredibly talented creative leaders in my time and I can tell you one thing they have in common: they’re all useless on the tools.
They’re all thumbs in Photoshop. They haven’t got a clue how to use Illustrator. And you can forget about Figma vs Sketch, because they’ve got no idea.
In a funny kind of way, that’s why they get paid the big bucks.
And ironically, the ones with the best design skills are working for them, doing the grunt-work.
Craft vs Leadership
At some point in their career, every designer makes a choice. Are you going to dive deep into the craft? Or step forward and lead?
Some people manage to balance a bit of both. But if you never ask the question, you won’t become a leader.
We need both, and there’s nothing wrong with committing to your craft. But if you want to get ahead in your design career, you’ve got to develop more than just your design skills.
Early in my career, I was definitely focused on design skills only. I was fast and slick on my Mac. I knew all the tools and all the shortcuts and I was really proud of the designs I was creating.
I remember one day proudly showing my uncle a wine label I’d created. He’s a bit of a wine expert and he knows more about wine than anyone I know so I was hoping to impress him. I was banging on about the unique die cut and the minimalist design and how it would really POP on the shelf against all those boring rectangular labels.
Then he quickly burst my little bubble by revealing to me that the vast majority of wine is bought in cardboard boxes by people before they ever see the label. So while my design was nice, and certainly every wine bottle needs a label, no winemaker is relying on the label to sell their wine.
Ouch.
But while it surely stung at the time, I learned a valuable lesson that helped shape my career from that point on.
Design is definitely an important part of every business, and great design can certainly lift a brand to greater heights. But it’s worth remembering that design is just one piece of the puzzle.
So here are three other things you can do to fast track your design career…
(1) Understand your client’s business
Why do some brands look so awful? Why do they use that terrible typeface? Don't they understand the importance of creating a consistent look? Don’t they notice that all the big brands in the world spend big money to craft a visual identity?
These are all valid questions.
But here’s another question, and this one’s for you: how does your client make their money?
If you can’t answer this question, how can you advise them?
Maybe their stuff is ugly, but maybe it works. Maybe that thing you're fussing over makes no money for them, so they focus on the real money instead.
If you want to stay on the bottom rung of the design ladder, then sure, keep searching for that unique neo-gothic sans serif that no one else has discovered yet. But if you want to get ahead, step away from your laptop and have a chat with your client.
Yes, your client probably needs a new website or an app or a logo. And yes, you can help with that.
But instead of arguing with them about Arial vs Helvetica, why not use your design skills to help them get more homepage visitors over to their product page?
Or even better, find out what makes their returning customers come back and use your design skills to get them to come back more often?
When you understand how their business works, you can not only help them look good, you can help them grow.
(2) Ask why
Sometimes you don’t have to change their brand to change their business.
I recently completed a project for a client that’s already earned me two more projects with them. And it’s not because of my design skills. I didn’t change their look at all.
It’s simply because I taught them to ask ‘why?’
At every twist and turn in the project I asked why. What were they trying to achieve by doing this or that?
My client, who has run a successful business for years, said he’d now started doing the same in other parts of his business, which gave everything a renewed purpose and focus.
As designers, sure, we can draw a bit and we’re pretty handy in Photoshop and all the rest. But what makes us really different is that we use these skills to solve problems.
When your client wants to add a whole new section to their website and it makes no sense and your guts are twisting because it’s going to make it all so ugly and you want to scream at them because your initial strategy deck already explained that it’s a bad idea… simply ask why?
And when your boss asks you to add that horrible promo to the homepage and you know it’s going to break the whole flow and you think it’s further proof that she’s actually insane… simply ask why?
Sometimes your client or your boss will ask for things that make no sense. But instead of letting your design instincts lead you into an argument, make a habit of asking why. Maybe when you understand what they’re trying to achieve you can suggest a better solution. Or maybe their insane and ugly idea will help create more sales (it can happen).
Either way, having a reputation for trying to understand and solve problems for people will open more doors for you than being a design snob.
(3) Learn about the humans
This is one area I wish I’d paid more attention to early on in my career.
As designers we’re great at making things look clean and smooth and consistent. We can shift the viewer’s eye by adjusting the scale, colour, weight etc. We can make one brand look natural and organic. And we can make another look cool and futuristic.
But what makes people buy?
And what makes them buy now as opposed to later?
They say it’s got to do with building trust, but how do you get them to trust your client instead of a competitor?
Even as you dig into the user research and other analytical tools, are you making decisions based on the statistics, or you are trying to understand the human behaviours they represent?
It’s a whole other can of worms and I’m not pretending there are easy answers. But the sooner you start to learn the principles of psychology and human behaviour, the sooner you can apply them to your work and start to understand the results.
Check out some classics like Robert Cialdini's Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion and Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational. These will get you thinking about how humans make decisions and add some real fire power to your work.
It’s also worth learning more about Marketing and Sales. For that my favourite starting point is Seth Godin’s This is Marketing, and if you want to go real old school, check out his old mentor Zig Ziglar's Secrets of Closing the Sale.
When you know how to shape human behaviour, you won’t just create stunning visuals, you’ll create stunning results too.
The learning never stops
Whatever branch of design you’re into, you’re in the right place. It’s plenty of fun and endlessly rewarding. Study, practice and dive right into it.
And if you’ve got ambitions to go far, remember that your career progress will depend on more than your design chops, so keep your eyes open and try to see the whole picture.
To recap, here’s three things you can do outside of design to fast track your career:
Understand your client’s business so you know where you can make a difference
Ask why a lot to show that you’re not just here to decorate, you’re here to solve problems.
Learn how humans think and behave so you can deliver the results your clients need.
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Photo by Photo Boards on Unsplash
