Design Mastery … fuggedaboutit

Is it rude to laugh at a compliment?

Today a mentee referred to me as a Master Designer. I’m still laughing.

It’s not that I don’t’ love compliments — who doesn’t. I find the idea of Mastery amusing. My years of experience have taught me pursuing Mastery leads to misery and eventually failure.

The drive toward Design mastery can turn destructive. We can’t control everything, particularly people, social behavior, ever-changing technology, and attempting this impossible feat only sets yourself up for failure.

Why? The desire for mastery is rigid. There is no flexibility in controlling, mastering knowledge, or a skill set. Curiosity, by contrast, is adaptable and dynamic. You search, find, accept what is, and move on from there.

Don’t get me wrong, time-on-task has real proven benefits. You realize you’re getting better as a designer when your designs are more polished when you start thinking about systems when you start caring about how someone interacts and lives with your design, and when it takes you an hour to do what used to take you all day.

These are obvious benefits but nothing has been Mastered.

Getting better as a designer means valuing curiosity more than mastery and embracing what you don’t know more than fearing it.

Today, I get excited about the opportunity to learn a new skill or work with a colleague who already has it. Getting better as a designer means valuing curiosity more than mastery and embracing what you don’t know more than fearing it. Curiosity is crucial in an industry where things change every few hours, days, or years.

I’ve learned to fall in love with what I don’t know. Growing as a designer starts when you understand that you don’t know much at all. And falling in love daily is a real work perk!

Start caring more about people than design

When I was a young designer I was good at creating with visual impact. Making sure everything was aligned and balanced. Making sure elegance met practicality. I still enjoy doing it. It’s why I love design.

But to be a better designer, a good designer, you need to graduate from the aesthetic. The aesthetic is the absolute smallest part of the design. Get bigger. To be a good designer you need to care about more than the cleverness of your ideas: You need to care about how those ideas affect people. You need to care about the people on the other side of the screen more than you care about what you’re putting on the screen.

Designers have chosen a profession that touches people’s lives. And that’s an amazing responsibility. Ultimately, the way you can tell you’re getting better as a designer is when you stop caring about the stuff you do, and start caring about the stuff they do.

Curiosity about others ignites the good. Trying to Master an ever-change skill, Fuggedaboutit!