The Effective Designer

D O U B TH E S I TAT I O N

B O R I N GFA I L U R E

B U R N O U TI G N O R A N C E

F E A R

D O U B TH E S I TAT I O N

B O R I N GFA I L U R E

B U R N O U TI G N O R A N C E

F E A R

T H E

E F F E C T I V ED E S I G N E R

A L E X C H A R C H A R

R E T I N A R T . N E T

“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”

― — Kurt Vonnegut

T H E E F F E C T I V E D E S I G N E R 3

— T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S —

INTRODUCTION ................................................................................4

THE RAT ................................................................................................6

A SPACE TO MAKE THINGS ................................................... 13

FINE ...................................................................................................... 21

LET YOUR FAILURE GROW BEAUTIFUL ............................ 27

DEALING WITH LOUD AND SILENT BURNOUT ............. 34

ASSUMP TIONS ............................................................................... 47

JUST… ................................................................................................ 53


— I N T R O D U C T I O N —

I recently learnt that the word essay, more or less, means to explore an idea.

This gels with me because it means that the essay, for many writers,

isn’t a means of imparting a perfect vision of their ideals, one in which

they are teacher and all who read are student.

It means for those who wish to explore, the essay is a long answer

to a question.

The question I wanted to address with this collection of essays is

“what makes an effective designer?”

Are they the superheroes of the studio? Able to generate a thousand ideas

flawlessly? Never face burnout? Never get tired? Never feel fear behind them?

Never worry about the worth of their work? Do they just get to work, day-in

and day-out, producing pieces of perfection? Never uninspired? Never tired?

Never bored?

I was hoping to explore these questions, and I think while we could discuss

if any answers were actually found, I’m happy to have at least explored the

topics.

I think that’s the first step an effective designer might take – they have

a willingness to say they need to work on themselves and that there

are things to learn.

The best creatives seems to be the ones who are constantly learning and

pushing their limits. Sometimes at the great expense of little sleep and

diminished relationships. But sometimes it’s at the cost of basic lessons.

Forgetting that we are nothing but human and we have faults and make

mistakes.

The effective designer is willing to admit such a thing – or even notice it –

and then do something about it.

The effective design is humble, willing to admit their own faults,

and do something about them.


— I N T R O D U C T I O N —

The effective designer doesn’t allow assumptions to make their decisions

for them. They question what works for the problem at hand, for the client,

for their process, and for themselves. They don’t tie themselves to solutions

long-ago established.

The effective designer knows that the gnawing feeling in the back of their

stomachs—the one that entices anxiety—when they pitch a job is something

to embrace, not something to run from.

The effective designer knows how important it is to do whatever it is that

works for them. They aren’t embarrassed by their rituals and their idols

and all the other idiosyncrasies they need to get work done.

At least I think. I’m not sure. These are a few of the conclusions I came

to while travelling through the topic, a journey I enjoyed taking very much.

I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I did. The terrains of each essay

are slightly different. I wanted to not only explore ideas, but ways of

expressing them. A couple of the essays tell a story, a couple are very

blogging, a couple are filled, I hope, with energy.

Thank you for taking the time to not only download this itinerary of

explored ideas, but for reading these words.

Chances are if you’re reading this, you’ve received as a thank-you for

subscribing to my newsletter – another thing for which I am incredibly

grateful.

I appreciate any kind of feedback, good or bad, and would love to

hear from you. Feel free to catch me on twitter @retinart, or on email

via [email protected].

Take care, and make sure you remember explore a few of the ideas that

catch your attention.


THE RAT


— T H E R A T —

The rodent scratches at my stomach, collecting its shavings.

It’s from this oily and black-haired rat that the voice arises.

You know this voice.

It’s the small one.

The sweet one.

It’s a voice that is friendly, and, of course, well-meaning-I’m-sure,

that starts every sentence with “wouldn’t you rather …”.

With its blood-red eyes shining through shadows, it finds its home

whenever we begin. It’s Pressfield’s resistance, it’s the dark wolf, it’s

the frame too large to capture a moment. It’s the bastard that stops us.

It’s the scratch that begs us to stop whenever we start.

Where Does the Rat Come From?The rat teaches our brain to be scared of the scratches. Some time after

childhood a secret deal is made between the two, in an attempt to hide

us away from new effort. With naive sweetness the brain offers drugs as

rewards for distraction.

Dopamine falls, the rat smiles.

Projects don’t get started, but those views on YouTube are coming from

somewhere, right? I see clips with millions of views and wonder how are

because of rodents? How many are little shields against scratches?

The rat’s tools are sneaky. They get into our heads and onto our tongues.

You think the words are yours? You think that sweet little voice is a childhood

part of you, offering protection? Being defensive? Stopping you form making

mistakes? We all think those words are ours, but they come from the rat.

“What if it isn’t good enough?” That’s a rat talking. It uses your voice,

but they are rattish words.

“What if I can’t do it?” He speaks.


— T H E R A T —

“Everyone will laugh at me.” That horrible little bag of bones and bile shoves

its words onto our tongues.

Every new project brings hope. I always hope that, surely, with all my

experience and taste and fancy words that now, this time, finally this

time, the rodent won’t be seen. I beg for his ruby eyes to be hidden

from sight, without a flicker to be spotted.

But they’re there. Every time I try something new, be it an entire project,

a single article, or a new paragraph, the eyes are there.

If I’m writing, or designing, or anything that requires skill and craft and

effort and hope, they’re there. They might hide in the darkness on a good

day, but they’re always there. I can feel them staring. They’re too eager to

shine, too eager to be noticed.

The project starts, it’s claws are sharpened. Into paper and pixels and flesh

scratches are made.

Living With the RatI’ve spent too many years trying to win.

I fought my rodent.

I would pretend it wasn’t there.

I tried to drown it in an ocean of process and resolve and habit and ideas.

I tried to kill it. I thought if it were gone just once that I would win, that

it would never come again.

Never have I won.

Never have I fought with a hope of winning, never has it been gone,

never has it choked. Never have I been able to rid myself of it.

He comes back with every new project. Every single idea gives him

strength and opportunity and power.

Then I tried something different.

I decided to simply look at it without any judgement.


— T H E R A T —

With a mindfulness I let the scratches mark my stomach. I didn’t get angry

or upset or scared as I normally might. I didn’t have time to. I just watched

and noted my anxiety.

“Hello,” I offered, “I’m busy right now.”

Then I got to work.

Surviving the RatThat’s the trick. That’s how you win. You simply survive.

You decide to survive.

You decide that the discomfort is an enemy fighting you, not one to conquer,

but one you simply listen to.

No. No, that’s a foolish suggestion. You don’t listen. That’s too much,

that suggests it has power. No, instead you simply hear it the way you

hear the keys clack on your keyboard.

Just hear the scratches, hear the voices, hear that there’s something

uncomfortable coming from your stomach and then move forward.

But in what direction? Where do you go when your uncomfortable?

1. UNDERSTAND WHY

You start with understanding why you’re making your marks.

The best dampener against the noise of the rat is an answer to “why?”.

This doesn’t simply mean understanding why the problem before you

is before you, nor just why it’s the problem that it is, but understanding

why your solution is going to be of some benefit to the audience.

Such a focus encourages one to understand that there are people who

can be helped by your skill, determination, and effort.

You’re not just helping the local cinema redesign their website in an effort

to revive a dwindling audience.

T H E E F F E C T I V E D E S I G N E R 1 0

— T H E R A T —

You’re helping a business owner put food on their employee’s tables.

Maybe you’re helping the audience remember the magic a movie-going

experience can offer. You’re helping a ticket-buyer have some joy – maybe

you’re helping them find an escape from a miserable week at work. Or

maybe you’re helping two love birds along with their fluttering hearts.

Your reason why might be even bigger. It’s worth knowing why

you’re a designer, developer, illustrator, or for whatever it is that

you’re honing your craft.

Big or small, knowing why helps you move forward.

2. LIST SMALL STEPS

It’s easy to be fooled into thinking that knowing your why means you can

now make grand gestures of effort. That’s a mistake I’ve made several times.

I’ve had big motivation, and I’ve overstepped, stumbling when my feet finally

find ground.

So take small steps. List them out.

I cannot stress enough the joy of a list, especially when it’s used as a kind

of roadmap.

Not something to which your future happiness or misery should be tied, but

something that serves as a reminder of what to focus on and in what order.

Let it grow and shrink organically, as new things come in to mind and old

things are suddenly foolish.

Such a map of targets is a wonderful insurance against the distractions

your rat may offer. So get it all down.

Get everything that needs to be done down and somewhat ordered, careful

to not over think this stage. You just need a few steps to perform, that’s all.

If you’ve not done much of this, make the steps as small as you can. “Sit at

desk -> Open Laptop -> Open Writer -> Type a word” is the kind of list that

can start you writing a thousand words.


— T H E R A T —

The magic of lists is that they can take any form. For a designer it can be

a series of sketches, for an author it could be an outline or character list.

Whatever form your list takes, start small. Focus on the smallest detail

and from here entire worlds can be formed.

3. START ANYWHERE

Now that you know why you’re doing your work, and you have your

list of small items, make a start.

Where? I don’t care.

Neither should you.

That sounds flippant, I know, but it doesn’t matter. Just start.

Pick the item that looks the easiest, or maybe the most interesting.

I’d be weary to suggest picking the toughest problem to solve, just because

it’ll be rewarding, or something fundamental to the project (a grid, a typeface

combination, etc). I only say this because in my experience, these topics are

filled with rat holes.

I now wonder if it’s because foundational ideas are ones that, should they

unravel, an entire project can become increasingly painful. Why wouldn’t

our rat be waiting for us here?

Start small, start anywhere, but be cautious. Play to your strengths,

your level of energy, and most of all, your curiosity.

Thriving With the RatEventually something wonderful happens.

Sometime after the scratchings aren’t as stinging, after we become use to

the pain, then grow comfortable with it, learning to half-ignore it, maybe

some time after we’ve started a hundred times, we begin to respect it.

Perhaps even love it in a “my enemy completes me” kind of way.


— T H E R A T —

With his claws and his teeth he isn’t to be trusted, not ever, no matter your

strength. He can still win. But we can love him. We learn that it’s here to

make its marks because we are here to make ours.

And one day we may miss the thing. Because if the sound of our computers

starting, or of our pencils burnishing paper, isn’t in symphony with the sound

of his claws sharpening, we mightn’t be starting something worthwhile.

The discomfort will be there with every new project. The rat’s muscles won’t

weaken, and it’ll grow more intelligent. But we have to grow comfortable

with its efforts, lest we decide to stop making things, a sooted hell more

vivid than anything the rat could conjure.

As with a deep-cutting grief, you will never be free of it. You will simply

learn to live with it. To show up and expect it to be sitting at your desk,

waiting to nest in the pit of your stomach.

Far healthier it is to welcome it with a smile than to ignore it. It’s a reminder

that you’re making something. Perhaps its a kind of psychological mistake –

one we can learn from.

Tomorrow I will be back to feel his claws again, and to fight him with

indifference as best I can. I will find reason in this fight, because if the

work I’m doing isn’t worth the battle against the stench of his oily hair,

and his claws, and his spiteful eyes, and his distractions, and the minor

and false rewards, then my work won’t be worth anything.

“Hello, my rat. It’s nice to see you again.”


— S E C T I O N —

A SPACE TO MAKE THINGS


— A S P A C E T O M A K E T H I N G S —

I was happy enough with the design but I wasn’t drawn to do much with it.

I just didn’t have the inclination to put all the writing I was doing onto my site.

I knew I wanted to, and I knew I should because of the benefits it’d bring.

But I wasn’t desperate to use the thing.

Then I started to write an article about typography, looking at how to go

about pairing and setting Typekit’s offerings. I fell in love with one of the

examples I put together and decided to apply it to Retinart as a whole.

Something clicked.

Suddenly I thought it looked beautiful. Not just good, but beautiful. It wasn’t

about to win any awards, I’m not that foolish, but something in me sighed

happily and thought “This looks like a home for my writing.”

Now I can’t wait to get my words, these words, this very essay, onto the site.

What’s more, I can’t wait to make more changes. If a simple changing of

typeface and some adjustments to its setting could get me this excited,

what will happen when I smooth out some of the rough edges, and start

playing with images?

When we create the right kind of conditions, we can’t help but want to

make things.

It’s in our nature as creatives to want to put beautiful things back into

the stream, and I think sometimes we just need a little push to do so.

We need to be reminded that while we sometimes make things out in

the cold, there’s a warmth into which our ideas can be housed. And

more often than not, it’s empowering to build such a home ourselves.

Making our paths slippery has always been a good start.

Making it harder to be distracted by bad things, and easier to fall into our

work (hence the slippery path), are good ways to ensure we get to work

even if we aren’t quite in the mood.



Take writing for example. I load up iA Writer on my computer before I turn it

off each night so that it’ll be the first thing I have on screen the next morning.

It works well. I sit down, open my laptop, and start writing. Most of the time

I’ll also put a net blocker on so I can’t be distracted by the web.

There’s similar tricks for design, or whatever it is you need to do.

But they’re tricks. We slip over and slide towards doing the right thing.

But what if we could create a condition that wasn’t just slippery, but

magnetic? What if we could set things up just right so we became

desperate to get work done? To develop our skills? To grow our network?

To hone our craft? Not just because we haven’t any other options or a

lack of distraction, but in spite of such worries?

Here are a few things that work for me. Some of them are physical changes,

others digital, and some are just plain habits. They all contribute to my urge

to start making things.

SimpleKeep things as simple as possible.

The way you make things, the applications and process? Make it as simple

as possible. You need to be able to have an idea and get it down as quickly

as possible.

Distraction-free writing apps help people write because … well, there’s

not much else to do. We can make most of our processes equally

distraction free, and we should do whatever can to do so.

We need to make sure we can start designing and building our ideas

as quickly as possible.

If you’re a web designer, have a generic Gulp setup with whatever grid

systems, boilerplates, and whatever plugins you need to get working

within two minutes.



Or if front-end development isn’t your thing, have a file and folder structure

template for working files, so you can just duplicate it and it’ll bring across

whatever you’ll need to get started in Photoshop, Illustrator, or Sketch as

quickly as possible.

If you’re a writer have an outline, or a series of checkboxes that ensure you

hit all the marks you always want to hit.

Your workshop has to be neat so you can get in, carve out your idea quickly,

find your tools quickly, and not trip over anything.

The more complicated something is, the more likely it’ll fall apart. This counts

for your process as much as anything. Great designers don’t encourage others

to carry around a small notebook and pen with them because it’s cool. They

do so because it’s simple and it works to get your ideas down.

Know the Legends (Have Idols)Become obsessed with a few great people.

Read everything about them that you can, understand how they think, why

they came to the conclusions they did, what the benefit of their work was.

I find this incredibly motivating. We put our idols up above us and in doing

so make them less human. But the more we learn about them, the better

we understand their glories and their failures, the closer to earth they come.

It helps to realise that some people achieve great things but are still human.

I recently (finally) read Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography. Say what

you want about Jobs, the man had a passion for good design and an eye

for detail that changed the world. He showed how you can pursue a vision

even when everyone thinks your crazy, and how important it is to care

about what you do.

Within a couple days of starting to read it, I found myself obsessed with

small details and thinking about how to increase the joy for my audience

in whatever way I can. I also found that I was more willing to have high

standards.



Now I’ve got another two books on Jobs and Apple in the mail as I want

to grow this obsession so it stays with me.

But he’s just one person. I think it’s good to find four or five people and

slowly learn everything you can about them. Find people who are inspiring

and motivating and who make you want to be better at what you do.

It’s better to be able to get into the minds of a handful of people than

have a guess at what a hundred people might think.

That way you can play games in your head as you approach different

problems – “How would he do this?” “How would she handle that?”.

Focus On As Little As PossibleThis is the hardest thing for me.

I want to be a good writer, good podcaster, and a great designer.

I’ve tried for years to pursue multiple interests, but no matter how hard

I try, I find that nothing progresses all that well when I do.

In rare instances I’ve had to focus on one topic (like when I was the

Typography editor at Smashing, I learnt more about type design and

the culture of type designers in a few months than I did in years),

I’ve found I learnt quickly.

It’s true of skill development and marketing (read: craft + ship),

and anything else you do.

Focus on one thing at a time. Put as much energy as you can into what

you’re doing. Don’t worry about fixing up your entire website, focus just

on the buttons or the type or the colour, then move onto the next thing.

Go item by item, not page by page.

Though I should admit I cheat with this one a little and it seems to be

working. Every morning I focus on writing, and every evening I focus on

design. I’d get more done if I focused on one or the other, but for how

my brain works, and the kind of writing I like to do, I need both.



I can also say my focus went through the roof when I started using an internet

blocker that stops me from getting internet access for a preset amount of

time. Hard to be distracted by Dribbble when I can’t get to it.

An Environment That You Can Easily and Quickly Test In.It’s not enough to be able to just sketch something in a notepad.

You need to have a space in which you can test your ideas quickly.

This can be as simple as loading up Photoshop (a ‘template’ psd can work

wonders to help here), or having a local web server always ready to go.

Ideas, even ones in our fancy notebooks, tend to loose their lustre once we’ve

put them down on paper. Get them out into the real world so you can play

with them, so you can show them up, so you can see if they work.

An Understanding of the BasicsMake sure you know enough to be able to get your ideas out. There’s no

point in wanting to build websites and trying to test them quickly if you

don’t know a lick of CSS or HTML.

Figure out what the basics you need to know are and learn them as best as

you can. You can probably get away with knowing 20% of CSS to be able

to test an idea quickly. It won’t be perfect, but it’ll be enough to help you

see if it’s an idea worth pursuing. Then figure out the rest.

You want to build your widget and use it as quickly as possible. You don’t

want to get bogged down wondering where the on switch of your widget-

maker is.



A Sexy Place to PublishThe biggest realisation of my year:

It’s not enough to have a “good enough” space to put your work up.

You want a space that gets you excited to publish.

I was happy enough with my previous site’s typography, but didn’t

have an inclination to publish to it.

Now, with a few tweaks to typeface and typesetting, I’m insanely eager

to fill the space.

The same can be said for your portfolio. Do you have a folio site? Does it

excite you to see your work in it?

What about Dribbble? Does Dribbble get your engine going? Does the idea

of your work being showcased on the site for others to see get you excited?

Whatever home you decide to build for your work, whether it’s full site or

a folder on your desktop, make sure, above anything else, it’s a place that

you’re eager to fill with work.

It’s disheartening to make things and then realise that the place they’re

going isn’t one that you’re happy with.

It’s like making an ice cream cake for a lactose intolerant kid’s birthday.

Doesn’t matter how good that cake is, if the kid doesn’t enjoy it,

you’re not going to be happy delivering it.

An Organised Office, Desk, and ComputerThis is an easy one.

Make sure whatever space it is that you work in is neat.

A cluttered desk doesn’t leave room for ideas.

Nor does a cluttered laptop.

Nor does a messy office.



Our brain tags everything that is in our space. It puts a little bit of energy

into recognising each item, making sure it’s still there, revs up your memories

of what that item is in case you need them, and can end up using a lot of

energy to do so.

Having a thousand items in your space that you don’t need to worry about

is like having a thousand processes running on your computer. Whether it

can handle it or not, it’s not a fun experience and eventually there’s going

to be a slow down and frustration.

Keep your space simple, neat, and organised.

(I’ve found the only exception to the rule with this one is books. Shelves neatly

filled with books actually makes me want to work. But a stack of books on

my desk doesn’t. Go figure.)

Prime Yourself to WorkWe’re all different. The few examples above are what works for me,

but might be kryptonite to you.

It’s likely a matter of degrees and context. I can’t read or write in a

crowded cafeteria at work, but I’m a productive fiend in a busy cafe.

Whatever works for you, just make sure you embrace it as much as possible.

They all seem so simple, but changes to your environment, both internal

and external, can bring about the kind of productivity you only dream of.

Look closely at your process and your goals. Try to see what isn’t lining up.

If I were smarter, I would have noticed that my goal of writing daily was

succeeding, but my goal of publishing regularly wasn’t. I should have noticed

that there was a disconnect in the middle.

Don’t make the same mistake I did. Consider what you’re letting into your

mind and life, both obviously and subtly, and adjust so that you’re achieving

what you wish.

Make sure you’re not just honing your craft, but shipping it and are excited

to do so.



FINE


— F I N E —

Fine.

Fine.

Fine. Just fine. It’s fine. Fine enough.

Fine means ok.

It means something is just ok enough.

Not good enough, not even good, and forget perfect, but … just ok enough.

It’s a passing grade. It’s not getting fired for your standard of work, but it

surely isn’t going to get you any praise.

We grow comfortable knowing most of our skills are just fine.

We might be just fine at making a cup of coffee, or gardening.

Our handwriting might be fine. Our appreciation of music and

literature might be of a fine-enough level.

But if you’re like me, and if you’re reading this chances are you’re a little

like me, when it comes to design or development, fine won’t do. Fine is

a death sentence.

Fine is the full-stop on the end of your growth.

Fine means ok enough.

It means stop.

“My skills are fine” means “I can stop trying now.”

“I’m fine without it” means “I’ve given up trying to get it.”

For decades designers have been able to get away with being fine.

The majority of people were once far from design-savvy, and to simply see

their logo, or their photos, or their products, or their words, set on a page

that hadn’t come out of Word was enough to excite them.


— F I N E —

But that’s changing. Maybe it’s when Web 2.0 was a buzzword vommitted

up by middle management types, or perhaps it’s when the iPhone and other

touched-by-Ive products rode the swing of their tipping point. Whenever it

was, it changed.

Our clients, the smart ones at least (and most of them are smart, I promise),

are gaining an understanding.

Not simply an appreciation of what good design looks like, but a gratitude

for what good design can do.

And with both of these things, skills that are simply fine will not suffice.

To stay ahead of our clients’ needs, and those designers who are just fine,

requires work. It requires a constant honing of craft, a constant curiosity

that is answered, a constant practicing of new, and different, and

challenging skills.

It’s human nature to grip tighter as we loose our footing. If some of us are

starting to fall behind now, then the further behind we get, the tighter our

grip around our slowly-becoming-defunct-ideas of design will be.

We will become increasingly … fine.

We will begin to loose clients, respect, and most of all, our relationship with

something we love, with design and development, will worsen. The eyes of

design will begin to wander and we won’t understand why.

You.There will always be work for the just-fine designer. But it won’t be the kind

of work that got them excited to be a designer in the first place. It wouldn’t

even be considered bread-and-butter work, as much as it’d be crumbs-and-

flakes work.

For those who care, their education in design, and especially development,

was never one to hit-and-quit. It was a relationship to build up over a lifetime,

a never ending honing of a craft.

And I think that’s who you are.


— F I N E —

I know you because you’re a creative.

Which means you started down this path wanting to make things better.

You wanted to make people’s lives better, you wanted to create sparks in

their eyes when they look at something, and you wanted that something

to be yours.

And I think you might have felt just fine once or twice. Or maybe for years.

That last one I know too well.

That feeling of fine is your mind’s way of telling you to move.

The same as when you grow hungry or cold or hot or antsy or worried.

Something is afoot and it’s best to tend to it.

It’d be foolish to ignore any such warnings, so don’t ignore the warning

the feeling of fine provides.

It’s telling you to move. It’s telling you to grow and develop. And it takes

a grand amount of energy to do so. You’ll have to stop liking things,

and start loving them.

You’ll have to pull apart good work, ask yourself why was something built a

certain way, what was the maker of these things you love thinking? How can

you learn from their decisions? How can you make your work better because

you better understand theirs.

You’ll need to read. A lot. About your field, about its history, its people,

its heroes, its villains. You’ll need to understand what has been considered

before, what ideas have been given summary in a word, and you’ll need

to start writing with your new-found vocabulary.

But not just words – images, too. You’ll need to look at work and build up a

visual dictionary of words, words you can use in your own work, words with

which you can write your own stories.

But all that is nothing compared to what really matters.

You will need to make things.


— F I N E —

If you don’t want to be the designer with just fine skills, the developer

who does a just ok enough job, then you will need to make things.

I’ve failed for years to grasp this. I’ve given this idea more lip-service than

any other, and yet I never followed through and it’s been my loss.

The last few months of my life have been completely different, and will

continue to improve, because of this one idea that I’m finally starting to

grasp, and I beg for you to grasp it even more firmly than I have -

You have to make things.

Deliberate practice can … deliberate practice should be hard. It should

suck for the first few seconds, or even hours or days, it should have you

feeling lost at times, and worried, and nervous. That’s why it’s exciting.

Those feelings are the antidote to feeling fine.

To make things you need to have ideas recorded.

Ideas can’t just be had, but kept. Carry a notebook with you and write

down your ideas the moment you have them.

People will think you’re crazy for screaming out “hah!” and furiously

scratching at a notepad in the middle of a conversation, but that’s what

recording ideas look like.

If those “hah!” ideas aren’t recorded, or even the “hmmm” ideas,

then you will kill them. They will simply die, and with them the inspiration

that brought them about.

So many people think their ideas are worthless. Most ideas are.

Even the eureka ones. But they stay that way without working them.

So the problem with most peoples ideas aren’t the ideas themselves,

but the people who had them and didn’t act on them.

But they’re fine having not done so.


— F I N E —

Fine for YearsMaybe being fine at design is ok with you. That’s not a bad thing, and I

wouldn’t think any less of you for it. But I would hope dearly that there was

something that you wanted to be great at. Friendships, gardening, whatever.

(I don’t include family as that’s kind of a default thing to try to be great at.)

But for me, it’s design.

Too many mornings brought anxiety at the realisation that I was a just fine

designer. I still am, in many ways. I’ve barely stumbled a few steps, but so

far, they’ve been fantastic steps.

Thinking and talking and typing the words that tell me I don’t want to just be

a fine designer felt liberating. Because doing so is to admit that I’m not where

I want to be, that I am only fine. But in accepting such a thing, I’m giving

myself the opportunity to overcome it.

And I love design and what it does for people. I love the spark it gives

them, the wealth it brings to their lives. I love the happiness it brings.

I love the way moving a few pixels to achieve a balance on a page seems

to give a balance to the whole world, for just a moment.

I love all those things far too much to only have skills that are simply

adequate, to produce versions of those things that do a fine enough job.

What about you? What things are you too fine at?

This essay is heavily influenced by Mel Robbins’ incredible TEDxSF video, please watch it.

Then watch it again and take notes.



LET YOUR FAILURE GROW BEAUTIFUL


— L E T Y O U R F A I L U R E G R O W B E A U T I F U L —

Failure stands behind me, his breath falls against my ear.

A sharp pain rips through my chest.

He whispers, with as much contentment as a Nirvana-reaching Buddhist;

“You’re not one of them. You’re just you.”

I’ve failed. Somewhere I’ve done wrong and all my work was for naught.

I’m not been creative enough, or smart enough, or impulsive or cunning

or original enough to have avoided it.

The worst part is what I don’t want to admit – he’s only as strong as I allow

him to be. His strength has only ever been as strong as my willingness to

give up, to ignore the next step. When he has the last word, he’s evil.

But if I speak after he’s whispered his spite, if I get up after I’ve fallen,

he quickly becomes quite the ally, perhaps even my biggest cheerleader.

If I lend him some respect he might just show me the way forward.

And if I’m lucky, I may just witness my failure grow beautiful.

Focusing on Outcome“We become fixated on our intended goal and completely

miss out on the joy present in the process of achieving it.”

Thomas M. Sterner – The Practicing Mind

The beautiful marks of others inspire us to make our own. But somehow

we forget that what we see is the result of thousands of small decisions

and outcomes – many of which were very wrong.

We never see, so never have much of a chance to even consider, the drafts on

the floor, the chopped off fat and gristle, the rough edges that offer splinters.

Not being there for the birth leaves us with the impression that the work just

is, and the people who made it did so with a wave of the hand.

Even if we intellectually know this to be childish, when we come to sit

down and do our own work, we seem to encourage the idea.



We make our marks and mentally compare them to the images in our

heads, the final products significant enough to find a home in our memory,

and keep pushing, hoping the work to turn beautiful.

When we’re in this mindset failure isn’t just a simple road bump, as it should

be, but a force highlighting to us our shortcomings. It shows us that the vision

we have of ourselves is skewed, and that the beautiful work we so admire

didn’t come from nothing, but came from skill we don’t possess.

Failure doesn’t hurt because it’s a reminder that we can’t do something.

It hurts because it’s a reminder that we wrongly thought we could.

Shift of Mindset – It’s An Opportunity to Learn“… experiences where you’re forced to slow down, make errors, and

correct them—as you would if you were walking up an ice-covered

hill, slipping and stumbling as you go—end up making you swift and

graceful without your realising it.”

– Robert Bjork quoted in The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle

Some of us might very well be intellectual sadists – we might find more

comfort in failure than in success.

We know how to handle the failure we have before us, the failure we’ve

seen before, we know that it’ll keep us where we are now, so we won’t

have to learn new terrain, won’t have to risk running into an even scarier

kind of Failure, one with an ever more capital F.

Tens of thousands of words could be written on the major step needed

to turn Failure into a friend, but the gist of it is simple:

As much as it initially hurts, failure serves us better as a reminder to learn.

Such a reminder only turns dark if we ignore it. If we ignore the small failure

it’ll grow into something much worse. If we continue to build our project,

even after we’ve seen a fault, we run the risk of the entire thing caving in.

All because we’ve been too proud to admit a mistake and correct it properly.



How to Take Advantage of Failure

ACCEPT YOU’RE ON THE EDGE OF YOUR ABILITIES

The first thing to do is to look at the mistake and accept the wonderful

fact that you’re on the edge of your ability.

And I really do mean wonderful.

It means you’re about to learn, to grow, to avoid this kind of mistake in

the future. That little twinge that we get at the back of our throats, that little

lump that makes us feel as if we are out of our depth is exactly the feeling

we want. We have to work until that feeling is gone.

We can’t learn what we think we know. We have to be open to the possibility,

and in the case of failure it’s more of a probability, that we don’t know how

to do something.

The more adamant we are that we already know something that we don’t,

the faster failure turns dark.

Being presented something you don’t know is a gift our work gives us.

These moments shouldn’t just be accepted, but sought out and relished.

UNDERSTAND THE PROBLEM AS BEST YOU CAN

With our egos pushed to the side, and our willingness to learn engaged,

it’s time to slow down.

At some point before the failure was felt, something went wrong.

It’s important to understand the process that lead up to it.

Sometimes this is as small as stepping through a few lines of CSS, and

maybe that’ll only take a few minutes; other times it can mean looking

at the questions you asked during research, and maybe that one will take

a few days.

The point here isn’t to find a new solution right off the bat, it’s to slow down

and see what’s really going on within the problem. Your previous solution

didn’t work. Why? It isn’t as simple as saying “it wasn’t the right fit” – you

need to realise that the shape of the problem is different than you thought.



Of course you can brute-force solutions. You can keep punching in variables

and start sketching and start looking up words in a thesaurus. But that won’t

stop you from running into this problem again – that’s symptom-fixing and

leads to more failure.

At this point it can be worth writing. Even if they’re just notes in Evernote.

Write out the problem as best as you understand it, write out the solution

you used, and then write where it went wrong. It doesn’t matter how long

or short your writing is – if it takes up a fifth of a Post-It note, that’s fine.

Just get it down however you can.

(To be honest, I say write because I like to write and always have a desk filled

with index cards and Post-it notes. The point is contemplation – really think

through the problem piece by piece. If you’re more comfortable doing that

in your head, and it actually works for you, then go for it.)

The key here is to step through the problem, piece by piece.

You want to make sure you understand how each part of it connects

and makes the whole, so you can spot where mistakes can creep in.

Most failures are small mistakes that sneak in via the cracks the

misunderstandings create.

Enough research into the problem will give you a slew of new options

to try out.

TRY A NEW SOLUTION

So do just that. Read through what you understand about the problem, look

at the solutions you have as options, and pick the one you think will best fit.

If it doesn’t work, then write about how it doesn’t work. How’s this solution

different to the previous one? How is the failure different to the previous

failure?

Just as importantly – once you find the right solution, look at it and

understand as best you can why it works. Do more writing, write about

why it worked and how you found the solution.



BUT ... I’M NOT SMART ENOUGH TO SOLVE IT

What if the problem is too complex to solve? What if you feel like you’re not

smart enough to solve it?

I love the idea of grit. It seems like grit is more important than intelligence.

Studies have been done showing how testing someones grit will give a

better prediction of whether they will succeed in life than testing their IQ.

And more often than not, those with more grit will outpace those with

a higher IQ.

Stepping through the problem and trying to understand it requires grit.

It requires a willingness to work through a problem even while nursing a

bruised ego.

The process outlined above – stepping through a problem piece by piece,

trying to find the pieces you don’t understand – requires grit more than

intelligence.

THIS IS A LOT OF WORK…

Seems that way, huh?

It kind of is. At first, anyway. The point of trying to understand the failures

you have is to stop you from repeating them in the future. Isn’t it worth

spending a little bit more time now so that you don’t spend it brute-forcing

your way through it again later?

The more you know about your craft, about where failures can sneak in,

the more you’ll be able to start networking information.

The failure you understand today will connect comfortably with a failure

you solve next week, or next month. You’ll be creating a stronger and

broader web of knowledge by doing all this.

So in the long run, not only will such a process stop you from repeating

mistakes, it’ll allow you to tackle more complicated problems with confidence.



Small Failures Turn Into Big FailuresMost people see failure as a catastrophe.

The only start to notice the failures they have on their hands when entire

portions of a project come undone, or when the whole things crumbles.

They don’t think about the small mistakes, just the big one. They see all

forest and no trees.

But any big failure, any catastrophe can have it’s lineage traced back to

smaller infarctions.

Working through them, as they arise, and understanding not just what

the failure was, but why it was, the context in which it was allowed to

slip through, will have you levelling-up your skills rapidly.

It sounds odd, of course, that by moving slowly through problems you’ll

learn quickly. But it’s important to look at what you’re doing in the long-term.

The real failure would be if we were to repeat our mistakes and limit our

growth by staying actively ignorant.

Above me, wind does its best

to blow leaves off

the aspen tree a month too soon.

No use wind. All you succeed

in doing is making music, the noise

of failure growing beautiful.”

– August in Waterton, Alberta by Bill Holm


DEALING WITH LOUD AND SILENT BURNOUT


— D E A L I N G W I T H L O U D A N D S I L E N T B U R N O U T —

We’ve all experienced that burnout moment.

It’s that moment in which we’ve got nothing left to give but keep trying

anyway, when we’re left without much more than a shell to live in and

motions to go through.

We’re fried and broken, and wish desperately for our work to make sense,

for our energy to come back, for things to be fun and as they were. In such

moments all we want is for our work to feel like our work and not like torture.

“Are you alright? You’re a little grey” our friends and loved ones say with

concern. “You should get some rest.”

The Loud and Silent BurnoutsWith anguish I remember my three biggest burnouts. I bet you remember

each of yours, too.

It’s hard not to – they’re like the huge fights we’ve had with family and

friends. What was said and done may no longer be so fresh in our minds, but

the pain certainly is.

You might not even remember what project you were working on (for two

of mine, I don’t), but you probably remember where you were and what

was said when you genuinely realised you were at breaking point.

Was it when a loved one was telling you you weren’t looking so good or

acting normal?

Or was it the recovery? Something that was forced upon you by either the

concerned loved ones or your subconscious flinging you to the couch and

your body not having the energy to fight back?

Since doing research for this article I’ve realised that I’ve had a fourth burnout

moment. One that I’ve seen others have, too, and it’s lasted years.

It happens slowly and without notice. So I’ve been calling it Silent Burnout.



You suffer from all the same symptoms as regular, let’s now say Loud Burnout,

but in a smaller, more consistent way. Feeling bored seems normal, being

agitated is part of the job, and not caring about the work or your skills is so

common you don’t even notice it.

You might not be overly tired or look sick, or feel empty, but you still,

I’m afraid to say, have burnout.

Six Areas Where Burnout HidesIn doing surveys and interviews with over 10,000 people, from a range of

different businesses and industries, Professors Christina Maslach and Michael

P. Leiter found that most issues come from a set of six categories:

Workload (too much work, not enough resources)

Control (micromanagement, lack of influence, accountability without power)

Reward (Not enough pay, acknowledgement, or satisfaction)

Community (isolation, conflict, disrespect)

Fairness (discrimination, favoritism).

Values (ethical conflicts, meaningless tasks).

What about us designers and developers?

HEAVY WORKLOAD

What designer doesn’t have a lot to do? It’s so common for designers to

work 12+ hour days that it seems ok. It isn’t.

LACK OF CONTROL

Whether we work with clients or work in-house, we’re often doing work at

the whims of people who know less about design than we do. We can do and

say all the right things but we still have to seek their opinions and approvals.

This doesn’t always work out so well.

But we will often get the blame, no matter how much of the final design

is or isn’t our own, when it doesn’t work as expected.



INEFFICIENT REWARD

Compared to other industries, designers and developers can earn a

decent pay, so it would be silly to focus on money, but acknowledgement

is something that isn’t often given.

Inverse to what might happen when things don’t go as planned and we

get the blame, when things go right, it’s often the client who takes the

credit. Or even more senior staff.

NO COMMUNITY OR A TOXIC COMMUNITY

Especially for in-house designers, feeling isolated can regularly happen.

When you’re treated like a service that is just another checklist on a product

or event launch, its easy to feel out of the loop and as if our opinions

aren’t worth much.

UNFAIRNESS

Much of the work we do can be an awful lot of fun, but with the fun always

comes the more tedious tasks.

If the fun aspects of a project keep going to another designer in your studio,

and you continuously get dumped with the more routine (read: boring) work,

it can be hard to feel as if going into the studio is worthwhile.

CHALLENGED VALUES

It’s a horrible day when you have to work with clients or do jobs that go

against your ethics, but it does happen, and sometimes it’s the only work

we can get.

And it doesn’t matter if you’re working in-house, freelancing, or as part of

a studio, I’ve no doubt that you have to deal with meaningless tasks and

wild goose chase solutions.

Or worse, doing work that is meaningless both to client and user.



A LITTLE ADDS UP

Design and development being the oft-pursued-for-love careers that they

are means our ranks are filled by those who started down their paths upon

their own volition.

This means the six areas from which burnout can arise were previously

in our own control.

Maybe that’s why it’s common for designers to burnout to the point of

starting their own studio or business, or freelance full-time. Or simply

abandoning their careers.

It’s when any of the six areas get to extremes that burnout gets loudest.

But what happen when the faults from any of these areas is subtle enough

to happen daily without notice? For months, or years?

To me, that’s silent burnout.

A Few Signs of (Silent) BurnoutThankfully, most of you probably aren’t suffering from burnout, silent or loud.

But it can be hard to tell without knowing what the signs are, some of which

will seem to most to be normal results of having a job. They aren’t.

BAD WORK HABITS AND ROUTINES

It’s our habits that show how ingrained our paths to burnout are.

A few questions for you:

How many hours are you working each day? How much time do you have

outside of work to relax? Do you have any? Are you sleeping less than you

need to so you can get work done? Are you sacrificing parts of yourself to

get work done that doesn’t hold any special meaning for you? Are you

doing it for days or weeks at a time?



HOW DO YOU FEEL BEFORE YOU GET TO WORK?

I use to get physically sick every morning before going to work.

I thought I had a stomach bug. For over a year.

I was too pig-headed to think I could be suffering from some sort of burnout,

and when I arrived in the carpark I could only think of everything (read:

Anything) I’d rather be doing than walking into the office.

HOW DO YOU FEEL WHEN YOU’RE AT WORK?

Throwing in the towel on creative work, not caring about how it’s coming

out at the end of the process, not worrying about your own concerns and

professional opinion are all signs of burnout.

As designers and developers we put a great deal of effort into building

our experience and knowledge. So when we start to stop caring about

such things, it’s a sure sign something is wrong.

This leads to personality changes – frustration and cynicism, trouble thinking

and concentrating, happy to supply average or even mediocre work, eating

and drinking badly, and most of all, a lack of motivation.

HOW DO YOU FEEL WHEN YOU GET HOME?

We might treat it as such, but it isn’t normal to bring your frustrations home

with you. It isn’t ok to spend what precious few hours you have with yourself

or with your family thinking and talking about how painful your job is.

We think it’s venting, and that it’s cathartic, and it is both those things,

but that doesn’t make it ok.

If you’re unable to leave the troubles of your workplace at the workplace,

if they’re invading your home, you’re priming yourself for burnout.

HAVE YOU ASSUMED YOU CAN POWER THROUGH?

Don’t we do this to no end?

We wear the long hours and little sleep we get like badges of honour,

proud of the effort we put in.



It’s as if it’s in our DNA to power through exhaustion.

So it becomes a habit, and when things start to go bad with the boss,

the client, the workplace, we just do what we know – power through.

But too much of it and you’ll be burnt out before you know it.

Sometimes powering through simply means ignoring warning signs.

Avoid Burnout by Finding EngagementIf we can find something within our work to connect to,

we can often avoid burnout altogether.

Achieving technical mastery over your craft might be where engagement

is found. For others it might be thinking about the short game and what

they can achieve in a week, and yet for others it’ll be the long game to

be played over a career.

Or maybe for you it’ll come from considering how you can benefit the

client and audience, how you can make their lives wealthier with your skills.

Whether you find one thing or multiple, what you find engaging has

to be meaningful for it to withstand threats of burnout.

So, ask yourself, what are your most meaningful reasons for being a designer?

There’s no wrong answer, as long as it’s one that gives you reason for showing

up everyday.

(Sidenote: your answer doesn’t have to be something that is found at your

current job. If it can’t, it might be time to move on.)

Once you’ve established where you wish to find engagement, how do you

foster and protect that connection so it can withstand the occasional threat

of burnout?



DO ONE THING AT A TIME, FIND INTEREST IN IT

Start by doing one thing at a time.

By now, we all know that multitasking simply doesn’t happen. At best,

we switch from one task to another so rapidly and in such short bursts

that we burn through whatever energy we have.

It’s no way to build a skill or engagement with a task.

Give your attention fully to what’s before you – even if it’s boring. Maybe

especially if it’s boring, so that you can get it done quickly and well enough

that you don’t have to do it again later.

Concentrating on a single task is also the best way to develop skills.

Getting good at something can often make us infinitely happy.

Why not chase that happiness as often as you can?

REST

Stop.

You need to relax more than you probably do. Without stopping to rest,

the brain doesn’t get a chance to put away all the information you’ve

been feeding it, so your memory will start to become flimsy. All that

skill-building will be for nothing.

You’ll also be easily frustrated and, simply, bored.

Go find as much quiet novelty as you can. Read daily, go for walks,

meditate, play video games, eat meals with family, grab coffees

with friends.

Just stop. Often.



HAVE DISTRACTIONS/SIDE PROJECTS

A side project is a wonderful thing.

It’s a way for you to build your skills, either ones that you’ll bring back

to your daily craft, or to a hobby on the side, and it lets your brain stay

engaged and develop.

Without the limitations applied to us that clients and managers are

always going to present, it lets us explore and make mistakes freely.

It’ll also allow you to build your skills higher than your current job will allow,

which can be a secret weapon (we’ll come back to that) when you need it.

SUPPORT GROUP (FRIENDS)

When we’re working long hours it’s easy to forget how helpful a small group

of friends and family are.

Friends and family, those who we know will be there no matter what, are

exactly the ones we will often push away first. Subconsciously we know those

who love and care for us the most will be able to withstand such a shoving.

They’re also the people who are best at giving us back our energy,

happiness, and perspective.

What a bad day takes from us can be given back in a 20 minute phone call

with a friend, so as things get worst, make sure you work to hold onto those

people as firmly as you can.

KEEP YOUR PORTFOLIO UP TO DATE (THE SECRET WEAPON)

This is your secret weapon.

Firstly, it lets you see how your skills have progressed.

If they haven’t improved, it could be that silent burnout has been distracting

you. It might be time to find a side project.

But if they have improved that’s a huge win – you’re now worth more than

when you were first hired. This means more confidence to ask for more

money, or, if needed, to move on.



It’s also a reminder that you’re on a career-long path. You can either take

comfort in knowing that where you are now is a short stop, or get moving.

By keeping your portfolio up to date you have files ready to be uploaded

to Dribbble or Behance if you’re a designer, or Github if you’re a developer.

Involvement in the online design and dev communities is so wonderfully

rich that it’ll help catapult the quality of your work, remind you of what

work is like outside of your bubble (and we’re all in one), and perhaps

lead to opportunities you wouldn’t otherwise have. All good blocks

against burnout, as well as an awful lot of fun.

Burnout Comes from Mismatched RelationshipsBurnout often arises simply because the relationships between you and your

client, boss, or even colleagues, is a mismatched one. Even the relationship

between your skill set, interests, and assigned work can be out of whack.

The idealistic working environment exists, but only because right kind

of relationship exists, and each party expects from the other exactly

what the other wants to give.

Burnout can be avoided when the goals and expectations of both

the employer and employee line up.

Both of which can be worked on so they align more closely—-it’d be unique

to find an employer and employee where it happened on day one—-but if

neither party wants to shift because the other’s expectations are so far off

their radar, then it’s only natural for the relationship to be put under strain.

This doesn’t mean changing our ideals or who we are fundamentally –

it means looking for the problems we can solve so that we are an asset

to our employer while still being the kind of designers we want to be.

But sometimes what a client wants from a designer is a button-presser.

And sometimes designers want to give a lot more.



Neither are wrong by any means. But it wouldn’t make for a good relationship

if what we want to give and be as designers doesn’t line up with what the

client or boss wants from us.

So as you would any other relationship in your life, make sure you nurture

and make sure everyone is happy, while also being given room to develop.

Conclusion (the tl;dr version)To me, in my uneducated and highly speculative opinion, it seems as though

there are two kinds of burnout. Perhaps some will think that silent burnout,

the one that you don’t really notice but builds up slowly, is just a stop on the

way to what I refer to as loud burnout, the one that everyone notices you go

through and you can’t help but be brought down by.

Whatever the case might be, remember not to be embarrassed by what you’re

going through – you’re not alone and it shows no weakness to ask for help or

to let others know you need a break and an opportunity to either recharge or

to change how you and your company goes about getting work done.

The best first step you can take is to look at the six areas from which burnout

can arise.

Workload (too much work, not enough resources)

Control (micromanagement, lack of influence, accountability without power)

Reward (Not enough pay, acknowledgement, or satisfaction)

Community (isolation, conflict, disrespect)

Fairness (discrimination, favoritism).

Values (ethical conflicts, meaningless tasks).

It’s also important to find engagement.

This can mean looking in a lot of different areas, but you need to find

meaning in your work to find the energy to keep doing it. This could be

focusing on your skills, either in terms of aesthetic or technical, or perhaps

on benefiting the user. Or it could be something else altogether.

Just as important, or maybe even more so, is ensuring that you give yourself

the opportunity to rest. Stop and breath and relax and laugh and have fun.



You’re not wasting time by wasting time, you’re recharging your batteries.

Your work will be better for it – you’ll think more clearly, and get better

results.

Burnout is rarely the case of either you or your coworkers, workplace,

employer, or client being at fault. It’s often the result of a mismatched

relationship in which one party has different expectations to the other.

It’s always good to work on improving the relationship first, but finding

work elsewhere might be the option you have to take.

Work is still going to be work. It’s going to be boring, and the relationship

you have with your workplace, your coworkers, your clients, and with the

work itself, is going to come under strain on occasion, no matter how

much you try to avoid it. It’s just part of the working day.

But it’s important to know when such strain is starting to put you under

too much tension that you might end up snapping, either slowly and

quietly, or loudly and instantly.

Most of us are designers and developers because we simply love it as our

craft. It’d be a shame to let anything ruin that relationship, one that we are

solely and completely in our care, one that can last an entire, satisfying and

enjoyable, career.



A Hardly Scratched SurfaceI’ve hardly scratched the surface on what causes burnout, how to treat it,

and how to avoid it. I’ve not even come close to covering a fraction of the

things you can do to feel human again, nor to stop burnout throwing you

around.

There are a number of amazing articles written, and if you’ve come this far,

I highly suggest you keep going.

This article started by me looking at a PDF by professors Christina Maslach

& Michael P. Leiter [http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/business/06.

BURNOUT.FINAL.pdf]. It’s only a few pages long, and even if you don’t read

it, I’d highly suggest checking out the checklist that’s a couple of pages in.

You could even just fill it out in your head, but it’ll be enough to help you

see where things could be going wrong – even if you think they’re fine.

That’s the thing about silent burnout – it’s kinda hard to hear it coming.


ASSUMP —TIONS


— A S S U M P T I O N S —

The worse things that our assumptions can lead us to is inaction.

“I can’t possibly start a business.”

“I’ve never been creative, I can’t be a good designer.”

“I’m not smart enough to …”

“I’m not talented enough to …”

“I don’t know enough to …”

Every single one of these lines of thought are nurtured in assumptions.

We look at others and see the wonderful things they’re doing, at what

they’ve achieved, where they are, and assume we’re not going to be able

to do the same.

We look at award winning work and think “wouldn’t it be nice to be

that good?” or “nah, they’ve just had good clients, my clients won’t let

me do that.”

We read words imbued with so much beauty and grace and assume we

could never reach such heights with our own.

Those people we admire? We assume their talent came to them naturally.

We assume they’re just smarter than us, we assume they’re just more

charming, or interesting, or better than us.

The problem with assumptions is that they’re almost always bullshit.

They’re fake. They’re what we say to ourselves to cover the gaps in

our knowledge and to use as an excuse to not do the work.

And we allow this pathetic little lies hold us back.

We assume we aren’t capable and all that assumption gives us is the

promise that we won’t even try.



We Ignore PossibilitesGame makers encourage us to venture down different paths, to explore

rooms and caves and buildings that we wouldn’t ordinarily walk through.

They do this because they know the great joy that can be found in doing

the unexpected and finding in it something exceptional, something that

made the travelling worthwhile.

The player doesn’t walk down a city block and assume there’s no point in

going down dark alleyways or to the edge of the map. It’s often these off-

the-main-road paths that are the most enjoyable and provide the most

surprises and rewards.

The same can be said as we explore our skills and talents.

For the longest time I assumed I’d be happiest using serif typefaces

for my site.

Then I experimented and now realise how much time I lost, how many

opportunities to develop beautiful designs with beautiful typefaces slipped

by because of my assumptions.

I’ve made assumptions about how best I write, what I should read, what

I should think about. I’ve made hundreds of assumptions that have done

nothing but hold me back. Hindsight is wonderful and, yes, of course, gives

us the clarity to see our false assumptions. But that’s just an excuse to not

experiment.

An assumption limits you. It doesn’t only limit the kind of work that you’ll

produce, but it’ll limit the number of cards you have up your sleeve.

Think of all the assumptions you’ve made.

What’s the best size for body copy?

What are the best colours to use?

Are you able to learn a new programming language?

Is it possible to use no colour?



Is it possible to use three, four, ten typefaces and it still look good?

Is it possible to use an illustration instead of a photo?

Or nothing instead of either?

Is it possible to write 500 words a day for a year? A thousand words a day

for a year? Is it possible for you to write a book?

Is there anyone you know who could be a connection into a new industry?

Into a new batch of clients? Any friendship you can use to help improve

your own business?

We so easily get stuck in our ways thanks to assumptions. Not only do we

miss out on the chance to explore new ideas and methods, but we are

completely cut off from the possibility of mixing our old, stead-fast beliefs,

with our newly-attained knowledge to make exciting and interesting, and

maybe even original, work.

Challenge What You Know to Be TrueWhat if you wrote down everything you take to be true?

Ok, that might take a while.

Pick a topic. What’s your craft? Let’s start there.

Let’s say you’re a designer.

Write down the best way to do something. Maybe set type. Write down

all the rules you have about how to set type beautifully. Best typefaces,

best colours, best sizes.

While much of these kind of things are completely subjective and rely

on the context of the project, audience, and so on, we still hold some

base rules that we never venture from.

I’m asking you to write those down.



Always assumed that serif typefaces won’t work for body copy?

Great, write that down.

Always thought text should be black and not grey?

Great, write that down.

Write down as many assumptions as you can think of.

(“Rules” are different to assumptions. “Rules” tend to be the stuff those

who came before us already figured out. Test them, push against them,

but realise they’re not the same as assumptions. Though I’m sure we could

all be assuming that the rules are right … time for anarchy!!).

Now ExperimentExperiment.

Experiment with the medium you use, with the method you use,

with the the tools you use.

It’s incredible what can be hidden in even slightly different processes.

But they remain hidden without exploration, and for us exploration is

experimentation. To test is to look, and to look long enough is to start

to see and to understand.

We so easily get trapped into what is comfortable. We stick with the typefaces

we know best, with the grid systems we’re content with, with the software

and platforms that we’ve always used because … well, we’ve always used

them.

But if we can foster in ourselves a curious mind, we will start to always

ask the kind of questions that beg for us to find new results – “Why?”

and “what about?” and “what if?”

Not necessarily as a way to prove that you’ve been doing things wrong or

that someone else hasn’t got the right idea, but as a means to explore what

other options might be available.

Funnest is to experiment with alternatives to the things we take for granted.



We’re Insanely LuckyWe’re designers and developers, we can see the results of our challenged

assumptions in as little as a few hours.

This makes us lucky.

We can see the results of our experiments, those which challenge our

assumptions in days if it requires an audience, or maybe even minutes

if it’s our tastes that will guide us.

It’s in our nature to test a thousand different options before we consider

our creative work ready to ship. But even those options might come from

our assumptions of what will work and what we are capable of.

We have opportunity in every piece of work we do to challenge an

assumption.

Without realising it, I’ve treated this eBook as an experiment in challenging

assumptions.

I’ve used several writing styles throughout, with some essays holding

a conversational tone, while others have been heavy with imagery and

playful with words.

Doing so has helped me figure out what kind of writer I want to be.

And most of all, it’s been fun.

We shouldn’t challenge our assumptions solely for some sort of professional

development. We should challenge them because doing so is fun.

Know what you understand, then seek to challenge it.


JUST…


— J U S T … —

Nike is Right

Just Do It.

That slogan is genius.

It’s genius because so few of us will actually just do it. Whatever it is.

For us designers and developers, I think it is often skill development.

It could also be getting the work done, getting it out, getting all the

small, boring details finished.

Just do it.

It’s a genius little slogan because few will every do what’s actually needed.

Most of us are suckers. We do everything except the one action that validates

it all. We’ll buy the shoes, buy the heart rate monitor, map out our running

paths, figure out our eating habits, understand that if we start on date x,

then by date y we should be running a distance of z.

Most of us do all that stuff around running, but few of us actually put one

foot in front of the other.

We pretend that all the prep is important.

It isn’t.

It isn’t important until it’s put into practice. It doesn’t count until the act it all

supports is actually performed. And when it is, when you go for that first run,

you realise that all the prep doesn’t really do much for you except illustrate a

fake progress.

I’ve been there with running, with design, with front-end development,

with writing, with blogging, with podcasting, with eating healthy,

with reading, with learning, with buying a house, with a thousand

other little things.

I’m still there with most of them. I’ve done prep on what damn pen

I will buy when my business takes off and I can work for myself.

Here’s the killer point though – it doesn’t count. In fact it’s damaging.


— J U S T … —

It isn’t getting my ducks all in a row. It’s a waste of time.

Some of it can be idle fun. A way to unwind or a distraction when

it’s really needed (at least I can put my pen browsing on that last one,

but not the hundred other time-waster).

It’s not just the minutes of time that’s been wasted. It’s a compounded lost –

not only have I not spent the time on the problems right in front of me,

the ones worth solving, but I’ve lost what those solutions would have

lead to, both in terms of outcome and education.

I’ve not only lost time by being distracted instead of solving the problem,

I’ve lost the opportunity to solve the next problem faster and better.

And nothing is a worse distractor of time than prep. Because it feels

like progress, and because we’re learning we think it not only forgivable,

but a worthy way to spend our time.

Prep also suggests that with enough of it, perfection will be more easily

attained. We think that if we just keep reading enough that we will be

prepared for any eventuality, and that our work won’t be the usual cruft

that people produce on their first go out, but will be closer to perfect.

But has this ever really happened for you? No matter how much reading I do

on, say, SASS, nothing has ever taught me faster than getting in and breaking

things and trying to fix them. Some prep makes the journey a little smoother,

but it’s information that is mostly forgotten, only to be sought out again when

actually needed.


— J U S T … —

We All Know What To DoWe all know the next step we must take to do whatever it is we have in mind.

But we worry that it isn’t the right step. So we don’t take it.

And we end up taking no steps at all.

It’s only once we start building up momentum can we get anywhere,

and it’s far easier to change course when we’re moving than it is to take

off at all, so don’t worry about taking the wrong first step, take any.

So just do it. Just start.

The process on this one is pretty simple, and something I’ve spoken

about a lot lately –

Keep the next thing simple. Lay a brick, don’t build a house.

Show up regularly, every day if you can, same time, same place.

Know what you want to achieve in the long run, and plan for it.

Know why you want to get better.

It’s simple. But it’s hard.

Showing up for a few days isn’t where the challenge lies, it’s doing it

for a month, then six, then a year, then two.

But if you want to get better, if you want to improve, then showing

up everyday gets a whole lot easier.

If you’re not just going for an award, or money, or fame, but so you can

enjoy the opportunity to produce good work, then showing up daily will

eventually become habit.

(Awards, money, and popularity are all mostly fleeting, or at least the

high they give us is. They can be great motivators, but once you reach

them, or once you lose the opportunity for them, then what?)


— J U S T … —

It feels a little gross using such a heavily advertised marketing slogan as

the starting point of an article, but it works.

Just do it. Just show up. Just start.

The power is in the “Just”. It says forget everything else, the prep,

the research, the planning. Show up, start. That’s it.

By the time you’ve gotten the spark to want to get started doing something,

you probably know enough about what that something is to get started.

The worst thing we can do is feel that spark and then hold it off to the

side while we get ready.

We didn’t do that when we were kids, did we? Come summer we would be

out running around with those sparklers and pulling as much joy from them

as we could. Drawing pictures in the darkness, hoping that little burst of flame

wouldn’t run out before we did. We saw the spark and we ran and were

infinitely happy for it.

Why not do the same now? As soon as you see that spark, run around

with it and make your shapes, before it runs out (and it will, I promise).

When we’re kids we live with the fact that it’s going to run out, so we find

something else to do.

As people wanting to turn our work into our craft, we know that we have

to keep working once the spark is gone.

Don’t be the kid who gets their spark lit and then sits to the side waiting

for the weather to be perfect, waiting for your shoes to be perfectly tied,

reading about how the sparkler burns and why it burns and the history

of it burning.

Just do it. Just show up. Just start.

You should visit Retinart, my digital home where I explore what it means to be a designer, the power of creative thinking, and how craft plays a role in it all.

“Are you happy with it?” my wife just asked as I showed her this eBook.

I am. Well, I hope I will be. All I really want from it is to help someone.

So if you’ve found something in these thirteen thousand or so words

that has helped you, then I’m happy.

If you’d like to get in contact to give some feedback, ask a question,

or just have a chat about which ‘80s film trilogy was the best of the

bunch (who am I kidding, we both know it’s BTTF), then please feel

free to email me via [email protected].

You can follow me on twitter @retinart.

Please do share this eBook around if you have friends who could benefit

from something I might have written (or to poke fun at a silly idea of mine).

You can send them to www.retinart.net/newsletter where they can sign up

to the weekly Retinart newsletter, and get their own copy.

© ALEX CHARCHAR • 2015

The Effective Designer

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