Graphic Design is NOT a Competition!
Isn’t graphic design competitive? Those people sitting next to you in class are not your friends; they’re your competition. You’re competing against the IVY league kids…on and on it goes.” — Professors, teachers, family, friends, etc.
Let’s clear this up.
Competition, what does it mean? To me, it’s needing to run my race faster than anyone else. Run it on my own, thinking only for myself and all the while never looking back.
But how can I do this when the race is rigged?
All it takes for me to leave my desk and walk over to someone else was if they asked for help. “Heidi, can you help me with this?” Swoosh-bang-ow, an invisible ruler smacks my hand. It was the words my professor had ingrained in me. “This is a competition and you need to focus on you, only you! No one is stopping to help you. If people could get ahead of you they would, with no hesitation.”
I’m not naive; we’re all responsible for our abilities. Am I just to believe, that we’re not going to acknowledge the person who fell in this race? Am I really not allowed to help them up? While I’m at it, let me ask, should some of us also pretend that we didn’t get a head start?
Teams
I knew it was just an old wise tale when I had to take a class called Design Team. How can such a construct like competitiveness work in this class? Heads up, it doesn’t. Every group had trouble working together but mine. I had two alpha females in my group and we worked so well we could have been the next Charlie’s Angels of Design.
Why were we able to work so well? Well, because I had set the stage. I wasn’t going to start the first meeting off discussing concepts or who will do what. We started off getting to know each other. Opening up about our strengths and weaknesses in Design. What do we love doing? Showing one another our portfolios. Pretty much building trust.
Your Kindness is your Weakness
See the thing about competitive thinking in the field of design, is that people make you out to feel weak if you’re kind. The truth is most people want to work with kinder people; kindness equals success in the workplace and promotes creativity.
“The Zenger Folkman study tracked 51,836 leaders and noted that the most likable leaders who expressed warmth were also the most effective. “If you’re seen as low-warmth, you have something like a 1-in-2,000 chance to make the top quartile of effectiveness as a leader,” said Loran Nordgren, an associate professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School.”— Forbes, “Science Proves Kindness Is Your Competitive Advantage” by Jennifer Spaulding.
Diversity
Can diversity exist in a competitive space? Well if we define competitiveness the way I did from the start of this article then, no. Why? well, diversity requires someone to acknowledge that someone is missing in the space. If your only focus is on yourself, then how can you see the lack of diversity or the challenges different people face in the workplace due to their gender/ethnicity/age/preferences? You won’t and this is probably why so much of the problems in the workplace currently exist.
Sports vs. Graphic Design
Q: What about sports? They compete and all is well. Diversity exists in sports and great teamwork happens in sports but in the end, it’s all a competition.
A: Well yes, sports are all those things because everyone is lined up at the same starting point. They’re all judged on their abilities. When it comes to graphic design or artistic careers for that matter, there’s not the same lineup. Most of the time in graphic design it’s who you know and how much your willing to invest in yourself. You can get judged simple for having a free domain name vs. a paid one. Some designers don’t have the financial support to pay for the subscription programs. Therefore, they may need to travel to a computer just to complete a project. These factors can place them further back in the lineup, compared to the designers who are more well off.
The friend that asked me for help in class was asking if his grammar was okay. See he wasn’t born in America and I was. A simple advantage but an advantage nonetheless. Is it a fair race? Am I really better than him? No.
Overall
My Professor is incredible and although he brought the competitive mindset into my life, I don’t blame him. In his time it was normal to compete with everyone to survive. But today we need more kindness. We need to be aware of the diversity, the lack of help and the challenges our members are going through as they tackle visual design problems. Above all, we need to bridge the gap and make this race a fair, and just race. Where if we win, we win because we did it together.
