Chapter 2. Never Stop Learning
Design school most certainly does not teach you everything. That’s why you, as a successful designer, must be a lifelong learner.
The never-ending lesson
I’ve a picture in my mind where I’m continually learning. It’s a picture in which I’m old and gray haired, yet still fascinated by design. I’m still learning new things that keep my fascination alive.
Designers are lucky: We get to learn for a living. Being lifelong learners not only benefits us personally; it’s crucial to properly serving our clients.
For example, imagine you have landed a brand identity project for a cancer charity. To do the best you possibly can on the project, you need to learn about cancer; about the specific kind of cancer your client addresses; about the people who contract the disease, their demographics, their lifestyles, their worries, and their wishes; about treatments and symptoms; about the doctors and nurses who treat people with cancer; about where and how treatment takes place; about the science behind the disease and the search for a cure; about the people who work within the charity; about nonprofit organizations and how such charities need to appear to their audiences; about boards of directors and others who have responsibility for making decisions; and likely much, much more.
And that’s for one little project on which you might spend only a few months. That’s exciting, but scary, too.
We can’t be expected to become experts overnight, regardless of the client or how much the particular business stokes our passion to learn. So we must also soak up all we can along the way, from project to project, from documentary to documentary, from news article to news article. And we take on lots of additional research beyond that.
The willingness to continually accumulate knowledge has benefits over time: The most highly remunerated design professionals are generally those who have amassed the most experience, because they have the most knowledge to draw upon for every new project, and because the more they know about life, the stronger their capacity to produce stunning work.
What design school didn’t teach you
Part of being a lifelong learner is discovering more about yourself and your profession. Unfortunately, design school often neglects these areas.
I sent out a call to design graduates about what they wished was included in their courses of study. Here are the most important and frequently repeated topics, along with some views of my own.
Communicate effectively
“Design school teaches you how to talk to other designers. There needs to be an entire course on talking to people who are not designers.”
— Stephen Lee Ogden
The majority of clients won’t understand the technical design terms you’ve become familiar with. Avoid jargon. Talk to your clients like you’re explaining the process to a friend (who’s not a designer, obviously). In chapter 15, we’ll look in more detail at specific ways to become a better communicator with clients.
“I’d love a class that teaches how to be diplomatic with people who don’t know anything about design but think they do.”
— Emily Doliner
You’ll meet this client again and again. Many of the people you deal with will see a design meeting as the fun part of their week. They’ll be keen to get involved, which is great. But you need to be clear that when it comes to design and the specific decisions you made when preparing an outcome, you’re the design expert. If a client says, “Can I see it in blue?” it’s your job to ask, “Why?” It’s not good enough if blue is a favorite color. It must address the design brief.
“If you don’t know how to interact with clients, or even close a sale, your talents are going to be restricted. No clients = no designing.”
— Alan Anderson
You can learn how to sell. The best way is through trial and error. Practice is essential. You’re no longer only a designer. You’ll have a wardrobe full of different hats, some of which are mentioned in chapter 4.
Embrace all disciplines
“First-year students should be put through a rigorous program of calculus, economics, history, composition, and public speaking. The goal would be to produce first a thinker, a professional, a businessperson, and an educated individual. Only then should traditional design training begin.”
— Prescott Perez-Fox
As stated earlier in this chapter, the most accomplished and well-paid designers are those with the most experience, those who have put in their 10,000 hours and more. If the items that Prescott mentions here were not part of your formal training, it may be well worth your time to take them on yourself.
Ask the right questions
“At least one design class should pair each student with a business seeking a new visual identity, with the students then taught how to ask intelligent questions, prompting the business to reveal its vision for the new look.”
— Jennifer Null
The specific questions you ask your clients can make or break a project. It’s also not enough to know what questions to ask. You need to know why you’re asking them. Remember, be curious. Chapter 15 covers the client questions necessary for creating an effective design brief.
Learn to listen
“It’s important to learn the difference between a gorgeous solution and an effective one.”
— Catrina Dulay
It’s not always easy to prepare for those times when a client doesn’t want to use the design you’ve fallen in love with. It is easy to keep in mind that clients do know what their own customers prefer, and there are tons of instances when client feedback has greatly improved the outcome of design projects. I’ll share some examples in chapter 18.
Learn to manage your time
“Prepare for the inevitable—the small projects that take time away from the major projects.”
— Andrea Williams
When you’re self-employed, time management takes on huge importance. You’ll be working with more than one client at a time (but not so many that it adversely affects the quality of the results), and there will be times when a deadline changes, a new deliverable is required immediately, a website goes down, or advice is sought. You never know when the next client request will land in your inbox, and if you’ve not prepared for the hours or days it takes to address the concern, it can all be time/money down the drain. Your previously agreed-upon terms and conditions need to compensate you for such additional work. We’ll look at contracts in depth in chapter 17.
Find your confident self
“I feel like certain clients abuse designers. There needs to be a class to learn how to deal with them.”
— Victor Zuniga
Confidence in your ability as a designer enables you to stand up for your right to be paid. There will undoubtedly be people who expect you to work for next to nothing, but the more you decline these jobs, the happier you’ll be, because eventually you’ll be working only with those who do value your time.
If you have an opportunity to speak in front of a group, take it. With practice, you’ll increase your self-confidence, which will help when dealing with potential clients. In chapter 15 we’ll look at handling the client approach, and in chapter 18 we’ll focus on how to best present your designs.
I used to work as an English teacher, and the experience of presenting language ideas to a class of students has helped immeasurably when it comes to presenting design ideas to a client committee. I’m better at articulating my thoughts, I don’t fill any silences with “ums” and “ems,” and I handle my nerves when the pressure to deliver is on. I wasn’t always as calm, though. It’s only with practice that I became better.
Know your business
“My course was outstanding at teaching us design, but lacked in teaching us how to run our own business.”
— Tim Daff
I hear this over and over, and the lack of knowledge about topics such as what to charge (see chapter 16) and protecting yourself with terms and conditions (see chapter 17) are some of the main reasons for this book.
“I would make sure that all students understand the importance of print-ready files. This was an area that was barely touched upon in my courses, both BA and MA. A lot of people left the course not knowing how CMYK made a full color. Ridiculous.”
— Maria Stevens
It wasn’t until I was employed in design that I learned about prepress file requirements. It’s basic information that can save you time and save your clients money.
“I would include some sort of discussion or lecture on pricing.”
— Eric Lawson
A blog post about pricing is one that always generates discussion. Why? Because it’s so bloody difficult. A class titled “Accounting for designers” sounds like one I would have skipped at university, but change the name to “How to get clients to pay what you’re worth” and no one would miss it. How do we know that what we’re charging is right? We sell a service based upon our education, our skill, our experience. No one’s background is exactly like yours. No one can tell you if you’re right or wrong. They can only tell you what they think. I’ve devoted a good chunk of the book toward helping you with pricing and scheduling (see chapter 16).
“The cornerstone would be where students create a product/company of their own and take it from nothing to launch, writing design and marketing briefs, and designing several key items such as an identity package, advertising, catalogs, and packaging, with the instructor acting as an art director in a design firm.”
— Jon Liebold
The sooner we start thinking as if we’re in business for ourselves, the easier it becomes to turn our actions into tangible benefits. For instance, and in hindsight, if I had started my website when I was in school instead of five years later when I became self-employed, search engines would assign a greater deal of trust to my domain name, helping with search engine rankings today. If your personal name is available as a dot com address, buy it now. Don’t wait. Even if you won’t trade under your personal name, it’ll prove useful at some stage. Trust me. Do it now.
Other ways to keep learning
It can be easy to think you’re isolated in self-employment, especially if, like me, you work from home in a one-person studio. But there’s a thriving community offering design events every day—if not in your area, certainly online. Consider these ideas:
• Set aside 15 minutes each day to catch up on design-related blogs. It’s as easy as opening Google Reader (or a feed reader of your choice), which in seconds has you learning from the experiences of seasoned design practitioners.
• Once a month, arrange a short tour of a local design studio. Not only will you build your network of design contacts, but you’ll also learn how similar businesses operate. When contacting studio owners, always remember the question they’ll be asking themselves: “What’s in it for me?” That’s where your own blog comes into play. Offer free promotion of the studio to your website readers. Perhaps you could prepare a few business-related questions and make an interview out of your blog feature—you pick up business tips and build your contact list, and the studio gets free promotion.
• Organize a regular coffee morning or beer evening with designers and business owners in your area. It’s very likely you can work together or trade services for mutual benefit. At the same time, you can share war stories and learn from the mistakes of others, hopefully before making those mistakes yourself.
• Approach an experienced and respected designer in the hope that he or she will become your mentor. This is a huge responsibility for the person you contact, so be sure to state how many hours you expect to be devoted to you, over what period of time, and what you can do in return, such as the publishing of what you learn from your mentor on your blog (don’t make this sound like a huge benefit for your mentor, because it won’t be, especially as there’s an added benefit for you—it’ll help build your blog’s readership).
• Give a design presentation or hold a workshop in a nearby college. Some people say you can learn more from your students than they can from you. I disagree. But you can become inspired by their energy, enthusiasm, imagination, and the occasional fresh idea. You can be sure your own energy and passion will sometimes wane on your journey. That’s normal. Knowing how to pick them back up is what will make you great.