Don’t live your life on paper
the sad story of living a model life
I was the perfect example of a model student. I never left school early, I always made my homework on time, I got red by only thinking about looking at a classmates desk, so I never cheated. I never drive too fast, I never drank alcohol, never did drugs and I was eighteen when I first had a boyfriend, who is still my boyfriend right now. To sum up, I’m pretty boring.
I always thought that living the live as papers wrote it, would make me happy, a good citizen and a good human at that. But turns out, when you always try to do good things, you still experience a lot of crap.
All because society think it’s the right thing to do, doesn’t make it the right thing for you. There isn’t a manual of life.
The life you are expected to live goes like this:
be born
get a degree
go for a good safe job
get married
buy a house
have kids
and the unfortunate: die
If you follow that path, you’re pretty safe at being a good human being in everyones eyes. But it’s not for everyone, it’s not a sure thing you’ll be content.
I got to the ‘get a degree’ part of the list above until I figured out this wasn’t for me. When I was still at school, I got a phone call from the company I worked during the holidays to ask if I wanted to work there full time. I did. So I had a job before I even graduated. Pretty awesome right?
Nope.
The weird thing was that it never felt awesome at all. When driving to the company to sign my contract, I even stopped at a parking lot on the road there, feeling completely miserable, thinking it didn’t feel right. I ended up convincing myself that this was the right thing to do. I should be thankful to even have a job before I even graduated.
When I finally started, I hated every minute of it. I sat at my desk, staring, pushing pixels where people told me to put them and it didn’t feel right at all. I didn’t feel good and it prevented me to be creative. Look at it as a writers block, but for designers. A designers block. Every day I woke up hating the fact that I had to go to work, every day I watched the clock until it was five. I felt like my life was being lived.
But I didn’t think anything of it, because I had to be thankful right? Thankful I even had a job? Thankful I had such a great opportunity developing in front of me? And sure, there were people who had it worse, so I should be thankful!
After three weeks it became too much. I talked with my boyfriend and we decided I would quit when my trial period was over. We just decided to move in together, so we could use the money for a few months until we were settled down.
Two months later, my bosses called me into the little conference room. They needed to let me go because they could no longer pay me. Or so they said. One of them was crying when they told me, but I sat there on the other end of the table smiling like a kid that just got the biggest ice cream ever. It was such a relief.
I never shed one single tear over getting fired. I felt relieved. It was the best thing that could happen to me at that moment. I was forced to start my business earlier than I planned, but the unknown motivated me more than ever. I started my business already as a side project so it was time to continue it full time. And so I did.
In the beginning of my freelance career I thought it was awesome that I knew all kinds of stuff. It’s what they teach you at school right? I knew how to write, photograph, develop websites, design stuff and communicate on social media. But later on, as I started working and found my way through the big and scary business landscape, I figured it made sense to focus more on one thing at a time. I’d rather be very very very good at one thing, than be mediocre at in all of them.
I now call myself a visual storyteller. I can code, I can write and can do social media management. But by heart, I’m a storyteller. A designer and photographer. It’s what I do best.
You’ll always be a student
It’s hard to find out who you are and what you’re meant to do with your life. And it’s easy to say that you can’t change who you are, it’s the easy way out. It’s hard to work on yourself and change things, change the way you react to things, be more patient.
I know, because I’ve been that person. I thought all the self-improvement books were just a scam. You are who you are and you can’t change that. But in fact, you can. I was blind to see I was able to change myself. You only are who you are right now. Every day you have a new start to become the person you would want to be. Sure, it’s easier to stay in your comfort zone, but it get’s pretty boring too.
“The two most important days in your life are
the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
― Mark Twain
So if you’re ever in doubt, don’t be the one who makes up excuses. He will never win. Be the one that makes shit happen. Learn how to improve things, don’t settle with what you already know.
Even after finishing school, you will always be a student, you will always be in school. School of life is a school too. To get better you can never stop learning. Not in real life, not in design.
Think outside the box
The thing you hear most about design besides Steve Jobs quotes is that you should think out of the box. But being a designer, I really believe it’s not about thinking out of the box, but about being creative inside the box.
You shouldn’t invent new things just for the sake of it. As an interface designer, your users usually aren’t the most tech savvy people. You can not make them think. The hamburger icon — don’t worry, I’m not going to talk a lot about it — but it’s the perfect icon for where we as designers went south. It looked like a great solution to something we thought was a problem, but in the end it really was not a solution, but rather thinking out of the box.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t innovate, but interfaces can only handle so much. The learning curve users are willing to go through is very small. If I download an app and I get a walkthrough for all different swipes that are possible, I just delete the app again. I don’t want to learn it, I just want it to work.
I like to compare interface design to building a house. It’s not about building a whole new house, but it’s about rethinking and reorganizing with the stuff you already have. It’s about a new coat of paint, rethinking the function of every room, throwing stuff out you don’t need or use and putting the focus on stuff that’s important to you.
Simplify is the answer to many questions.
Not only in design but in your day to day life too. For me minimalism is not just a design direction or trend. It’s a way of living your life. It’s finding the essence of things, digital and physical. It is crazy to realize how much stuff you have and gather in very little time. Stuff you get but didn’t want, stuff you don’t use, the just in case stuff. Most of the time, those things are even paid with money you could have saved.
For me things I own should be
1. useful and actually be used
2. are something that make me happier
In that way, design is the same. You can’t put stuff on a website you’re not going to use. You need to strip it down to the essence and find the key.
And while we’re at it comparing design to houses, I want to add that design, — like a house is never finished or done. Most designers and especially freelancers, think that when you finish a project it’s done, they lose excitement when it finally is live. But in reality, that’s when things get interesting. Real designers are glad to work on project after shipping it. Because in order for projects to work, you need to learn how users interact with them. And as I said before, you can never stop learning.
For designers that work project after project, finishing a project probably feels like being a school teacher. Once the year is done, you get a new group and you’re proud to have been part of the life of your previous class. You learned how you could improve things this new year and you’re ready to move on.
Working in an office however is a different thing. At least when you’re working on one product. I often hear people rambling on twitter about why dropbox needs so many designers, they just have one product. Well, I think product designers are not like teachers, but rather like parents or family. They work their whole life on one or two products. They help them grow, go through good and bad times and try to figure out what’s wrong even when the project launched or the child is all grown up.
The learning curve is different, but they have to know every detail very well, to be able to analyze how people will react.
Both are important. Both are needed and both care about what they do. As long as you do it with passion and immense joy, it’ll be a rewarding journey.
This story was part of a talk I gave at Valiocon on June 6th 2014 in San Diego.
Read part 1 and part 3.
