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Five unexpected lessons I learned being a designer
They don’t have much to do with design.
Being a designer working with clients is one of the best jobs to have if you want to be good at small talk. Because you get to solve so many problems for so many different peoples, you have to dive into a lot of different topics and niches. The result: you know a little about a lot.
This means you also learn a lot of valuable lessons from your day-to-day. Here are a few unexpected lessons I learned from being a designer.
“Having money isn’t everything and not having it is.”
— Kanye West
1. Every job sucks, in a way
As a designer, you get to work with a very wide spectrum of characters. Some are 20-year-old founders of a surprising startup, others are 76-year-old lawyers who just love their job too much to quit. If you’re strategic in your approach (which I encourage), you get to speak to all sorts of people, in all sorts of companies.
CEOs, janitors, customer service employees, desk-workers, marketing managers, brand evangelists — and a whole bunch of other job titles that never cease to amaze me.
Everyone has shit to cope with, and they all have aspects about their jobs — not just minor ones — that they dislike. They’re all “too busy”, their superiors ask too much of them, they need more days off, and one or two co-workers are the worst people in existence.
What this tells us is that every job sucks, in a way. This isn’t a bad thing, however. It’s a lesson. If everyone, in every type of company, at every level, has pretty much the same stuff to complain about, maybe our job is not that bad after all. And maybe theirs isn’t either.
2. Hospitality is where you get ripped off
Restaurants and bars. I love eating out and sharing drinks with friends. But, after having spending twelve years designing identities for bars, pubs, and restaurants, including their menus and online presences, I know one thing: what you order, is not what you get.
