// 3 Key Prerequisites Required to Succeed as a Designer
// Apr 25th, 2008 & filed under Business, Design, LearningRecently I was emailed by a student of design, asking me to answer a couple of questions.
One of the questions was,
“What are the skills and attributes to succeed in your career [design]?”
What a probing question!
To be honest, I didn’t answer it immediately. I was busy, and I didn’t want to give half an answer.
When I eventually did reply, below is what I wrote. And, if I do say so myself, herein lies 3 key prerequisites for designers who really want to succeed:
-Note: I have not edited these answers for the post, so they’re not beefed up like I would have done if it was initially intended for an article.
1. A desire to learn and grow
When one arrives at the realisation that ‘design’ is basically communication, they must then continue to learn the principles which will aid them to communicate effectively, whether they have a tertiary education or not.
Understand the rules of typeface usage, colour, contrast, symmetry, Golden Ratio, alignment, etc, etc, how to apply them, and how to break them when necessary.
2. The ability to communicate
An integral part of a designers life, is communication with clients. Understanding the needs of the client, and being able to create exactly what they need (not necessarily what they think they want), is a skill indeed.
Possessing the ability to deal with the ‘I’ll know it when I see it’ crew, takes great patience and experience.
3. Innovation
Sure, you might get by without it, but what sort of existence does a designer have without (at least) the desire to be innovative?
Without innovation, there are no new boundaries. Without innovation, there is no proof of development. Without innovation, there is no progress.
Society is changing all the time. Today’s designers must learn to communicate in tomorrow’s language, and yet, much of the work of a designer still needs to achieve the ‘timeless’ factor too.
Build upon it…
What would you have answered? Please let me know. I may have missed something vital, so I’d love to hear from you in the comments.
Interesting and great choices, I would also add creativity in there.
Good choice too. And I’m quite agree with Jacob. Creativity is another value which a designer should have. One can have the best tool but in the end, it is all depends on the designer - creativity is what matters
Yeah, I agree guys. Creativity I suppose, is an imperative.
innovation is good. I usually call it “thinking outside of the box”
Jermayn - Yeah. The problem is, innovation often backfires when dealing with clients. They don’t recognise it as something good, until it becomes mainstream.