Just yesterday a third year design student had contacted me asking for one piece of advice I would provide to her and other fellow graduating students. Here is my response in long form:

In a sea of Designers

It’s almost 2011, the web is crawling with great talent by the day (just check out Dribbble’s Popular page), and both clients and employers are increasingly starting to use such sources to find designers. If that’s not enough, it also seems that everyone and their mother wants to be a designer. Oops, almost forgot about the 12-year old  nephew sitting in the basement with a pirated copy of Photoshop making you reconsider changing careers.

So how do you prepare for the dive into the sea of many other designers? Learning, understanding and conveying sense of value to your work.

Learning value

It’s been awhile now since graduating college, however from what I can remember and from talking at conferences and universities with current students, schooling seems to only touch base on the craft and performance of design and designing.

“I worry about the medium, because not enough designers are working in that vast middle ground between eye candy and hardcore usability where most of the web must be built.” – Jeffrey Zeldman

Sure, adding pretty effects is a nice touch of style to a site, but if the website, for example, doesn’t function as intended or you cannot justify the decisions you have made to a client other than the fact that “they look good” you are in danger of failing as a designer and problem solver. Understanding the differences between style and design is the opening of doors to conveying sense of value.

Reading books and thinking about design from an experience and functional standpoint, rather than a stylistic standpoint is a great place to start learning.

Understanding value

Whether you are job seeking and interviewing with potential employers, working in-house and reporting directly to clients or your boss, or running your own independent design business, only half of what we do is actual design work. The other half, well, that folks is called “business”. Love it or hate it, you have to learn how to sell yourself, your services and your value. And you cannot sell any of those without understanding what exactly your value is.

If I was an employer seeking to hire a Designer for my team, I would be more focused on the ‘why’ rather than the ‘how.’ Give me a week with someone and I’m sure I could teach them the basics of Photoshop (ie: that 12-year old nephew I mentioned above), but understanding the basics of Design from a functionality and purpose perspective is what many lack, as did I fresh out of school.

Sidenote:

How incredibly timely of this email. Just as I was in the midst of writing, Mail App goes ‘ding’ and here is what appears:

Well, ‘name blurred by Mosaic filter’, this one goes out to you as well.

Conveying value

My best advice for Designers, future graduates, career seekers, and career changers, and anyone else looking to succeed (and by “success” I mean love doing your job day after day, year after year): convey ‘the’ and your value of design and decision making.

From a person seeking employment’s perspective, understanding and conveying your value and the value of each decision you made for each piece of work will keep you swimming happily on the bottom of the ocean, while the other fish float to the top (one instance where you don’t want to be on top… remember that goldfish you once had?).

Also, at some point while working in-house you will be reporting to either a boss that reports to “the Board of Final Decision Makers” or you might be speaking directly to the client, so having your value guns loaded will save you endless hours of frustration and revisions. Conveying the value to others will assist in them not making decisions based on look but rather other elements such as usability, functionality – you know the valuable things.

From a freelancer’s perspective, conveying the value of your work and decisions will also prevent more headaches throughout the year. Understanding the value will help to keep projects from spiraling out of control, provide confidence in yourself and decisions, and help you better stand up for your work.

Next time someone asks you “why should we hire you?” or “why are we the best match for this project?” you might be a little more prepared for what you can bring to the table.

Even when designing that next project, think about if, for example, adding in that extra visual element is adding to the value or devaluing the task at hand. If great design lies in the details, then working with or for great companies lies in the value.

“Design without meaning or reason is nothing more than a pretty picture” – Unknown (but if you do know, please let me know and I will replace).