Some thoughts on design

I was recently con­tacted by a design stu­dent at Loy­alist Col­lege looking to inter­view a designer for an essay she’s writing. Ego-bloat aside, I do really like it when young(er), just-starting-out designers ask me for a “worldly” view of the industry. (Amaz­ingly, it’s happened more than once!)

I think I could have prob­ably fleshed out some of my answers a little more fully, but didn’t want to fall into the trap of becoming overly verbose, which I have a tend­ency to do.

What enthused you to enter this line of work?

In school, I was always a bit of an aca­demic, and I had a lot of troubles deciding between the arts and sci­ences. I love that design allows me to use my whole brain–some aspects are very cre­ative and visual, and some aspects require more ana­lyt­ical thinking and problem-solving. It’s con­stantly chal­len­ging me, and I’ve always found that it keeps me striving to do better. I’ve always enjoyed visual arts but have never felt par­tic­u­larly gifted at them. A more typ­ic­ally “aca­demic” line of work might not have been as much of a chal­lenge for me, and I think that I would have lost interest at some point.

Is there any­thing you dis­like about this career? What would you change?

Because its tools have become more widely avail­able, more and more people are calling them­selves designers because they can run a Pho­toshop filter or cobble together a web­site. And while it’s great that it’s become more access­ible, it also means that there’s more semi-professionals under­cut­ting those of us who are trying to pay our bills this way, and there’s a whole pro­lif­er­a­tion of really ter­rible design run­ning around (espe­cially online!)

I wish that the public per­cep­tion of the industry were a little higher. The GDC is doing a lot of work towards this, and there are loads of people who do under­stand the value of pro­fes­sional design work, but there’s still a lot of people who think that their neighbour’s kid who knows how to use Pho­toshop can provide them with a valu­able branding package for $50. I don’t mean to be elitist about it; having training or being a “pro­fes­sional” doesn’t neces­sarily mean that you’ll be able to create more valu­able work than a self-taught ama­teur. But I do think that design is important enough to a busi­ness that people ought to be willing to pay reas­on­able prices for it! And don’t get me started on the Indian com­panies who’ll create an e-commerce site for 40 rupees, or the online com­panies that create you a “custom” logo cre­ated from cli­part for $300.

What is the most chal­len­ging part of your work?

The easiest answer is “the client”, but that gives the wrong impres­sion. Cli­ents are an integral part of design, and it is their pres­ence that dif­fer­en­ti­ates “design” from “art”. Cli­ents can be incred­ibly frus­trating to work with–they ask you to do hor­rible, ugly things to a formerly clean and well-crafted design, they change their minds all the time, they change the scope of the pro­ject and com­plain about inflated costs–but they also foster good design by cre­ating chal­lenges and for­cing a designer to think around, and for, their par­tic­ular requirements.

When cre­ating a design what do you feel is the most important aspect?

That it fits its con­tent and mes­sage.
Being gor­geous comes second.

Did you draw as a hobby before your career choice? If yes, how has it affected your hobby?

I used to do a lot of drawing, painting, etc. I don’t do it as much as I’d like as often, but I need to do more and I know that doing so will help me with my digital design. I’ve often heard it said that designers don’t NEED to know how to draw, but it really does help. It adds extra dimen­sion and under­standing to your work, and it develops your “eye”, which is integral to good design.

Who are some of you artistic influ­ences? What is it about their work that inspires you?

I’m a little all over the map with this. I love Georgia O’Keefe, I’m a big fan of David McKean, I love Aubrey Beard­sley. I’m fond of Expres­sionism and Sur­realism, as well as Rus­sian Con­struct­ivism. I’ve always really enjoyed well-crafted, finely detailed work in gen­eral (bottle labels, book covers, web­sites). And I really like dark, styl­ized illus­tra­tions (a lot of graphic novels have some stun­ning examples of this).

I find that when some­thing really strikes me as beau­tiful, it inspires me to make some­thing equally lovely. Usu­ally it’ll help me think in new dir­ec­tions, and con­sider things from a new perspective.

How did you get started in design and how long have you been doing it for?

I’ve been designing web­sites since I was about 14–I lived in the middle of nowhere and basic­ally had nothing to do, so I taught myself how to design. I actu­ally never con­sidered it a viable career choice until I’d fin­ished a year of uni­ver­sity (philo­sophy & journ­alism) and real­ized that a degree might not actu­ally trans­late into a viable career.

So I turned around and took a year of design at my local com­munity col­lege, NSCC. (It’s usu­ally a two-year pro­gram, but I man­aged to get by a port­folio review in order to do it in one instead.) What had formerly been more of a hobby became a pas­sion, and school is a great place to get really excited about some­thing. I’ve always been more of an aca­demic with an interest in artistic things, but I never thought that it’d be prac­tical to pursue as a career, so it was really exciting to find an artistic endeavour that also had prac­tical applications!

What is the best school to go to, and how long did it take you to com­plete schooling?

I don’t know what the “best” is. I did it in a year, but in hind­sight, I wish I’d done more. From what I’ve seen, col­lege courses tend to be more practically-oriented (tech-oriented), but uni­ver­sity courses are more com­pre­hensive (theory-oriented). I think it’d be best to have a mix of this!

What are the most important skills do you feel a designer needs to be successful?

Per­sever­ance, determ­in­a­tion, and the ability to stay up all night.

What is the salary like for this career?

Well, if you’re working for your­self, it’s vari­able. But I’ve been really lucky, and my first job paid $38 000 with tons of bene­fits. If you can find a copy of the GDC’s salary review, that’s a great source for salaries across the board–it really ranges depending on who you’re working for, how long you’ve been working, and what par­tic­ular aspect of the industry you’re in.

Thank you so much

You’re wel­come! I hope this has helped, and if you have any follow-up ques­tions, do feel free to send them my way. (And this goes double for the rest of you, too!)

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