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advice for new designers
While researching this book, the authors asked people we met to offer advice for designers starting their careers. What would they want to tell their younger selves, looking back now at what they have learned? The ideas presented here overflow with love and kindness.
Carly Ayres Trust yourself and your gut in- stinct. Part of that comes with confidence, so surround yourself with people who care about you and want to support you. If something isn’t fulfilling you or sustaining you, don’t do it. Invest in people and proj- ects that serve your goals and ambitions. Be critical of how you spend your time and energy. I spent too much time in my career making excuses for people who made me uncomfortable and, conversely, in trying to make other people feel comfortable, to the detriment to my own well-being.
Elaine Lopez Bring your culture and your whole self and your identity into design. Design is a set of skills. It’s a set of soft- ware. Those things can be really powerful for telling stories or for educating other people or for bringing in content that isn’t found in the mainstream narrative. As a de- signer, you have the power to tell your own story or to tell a story about your family, wherever they came from, or even to re- search those stories and then bring them into your work. It’s similar to what an artist might do, but you can now use design to make things that other people from your culture or your identity can connect to. You can self-publish. You can make a website. You can have an Instagram feed.
One of my favorite educational Instagram feeds is @knowyourcaribbean by artist, filmmaker, and historian Fiona Compton. This platform provides me with a broader understanding of the Caribbean, which helps to contextualize my Cuban heritage.
This is a crucial time to be a designer. It’s also a tough time to be a designer, because we are tackling difficult topics and it’s hard
emotionally and mentally. Confronting structural oppression and racism are dif- ficult tasks that can weigh you down. It is important to find community and practice self-care and healing.
Irene Pereyra If you are learning to be a designer and you’re just starting out, focus on that. Spend the ten thousand hours
you need to really become a designer. At the beginning, our capabilities don’t yet match our taste. Spend the first five years as a designer bridging the gap between your taste and your ability so that you can execute exactly what you want.
Your next job is to help other designers to get to that point as well. Open the door for them and spread the karma around. I think we’re all overly focused on ourselves. The biggest power comes from enabling other people to do their best work.
As a woman, I think it’s important to do that for other women. Women still make up a small percentage of people who create in this field. That’s why you still have ridicu- lous beer commercials and sexist shit— because it’s just a bunch of dudes in a room making decisions. If women were in the room making decisions, there wouldn’t be commercials like that.
Jiminie Ha Try to read stuff outside of Wikipedia. Know your references. People expect quick answers because information is so widely available, but it is worthwhile to dig deeper and conduct more research on any kind of project. Try to learn all the basic, rudimentary tools in design before creating new forms and breaking rules. Don’t start just messing with design without actually