Being a Design Team Leader

Throughout my career I have come across some really great people that I consider mentors. These individuals all had one thing in common, amazing leadership skills. Being a great designer is not just about being able to problem solve or execute your concepts, you have to be able to educate your peers in areas they need assistance or guidance in as well as being willing to learn from them.

People that annoy me the most are the ones who have the “i’m the best designer” ego or “That’s beneath me” attitude and are unwilling to learn something from someone who is either new to the design world or those who are younger creatives. In my mind, these type of designers are not creative and they lack vision. They may have been creative at one point in their career, but the title started to outweigh their true value as designers.

Most creatives begin their careers in the rears.

At my first design job, several years ago, my organizational skills and design execution skills were terrible from a process perspective. The designs were there but being the only designer at the time made it incredibly hard for me to learn more efficient ways to plan out my designs. I was always scrambling at the last minute, not paying attention to the details, and always having to revise, revise and revise.

This made my passion for design begin to fade. It literally had me thinking that I was not cut out to be a designer. But I never gave up hope. I pushed on and stuck with it because I am not a quitter. I persisted to give it my best within the circumstances.

Mentorship + Process Oriented = Leader

Then something great happened. My first mentor was hired. He had a strong background in photography post-production, photo-manipulation and photo-realism. Immediately after meeting him I noticed that he had a wealth of knowledge and he realized that I needed training. He was a natural teacher, meaning he had a knack for spreading his knowledge in a way where it was easy to digest and to retain. He always prefaced every tutorial by helping me understand the importance of the process or methodology system and why it would help. I became a sponge and absorbed all that I could.

He taught me things that were so invaluable, like:

• How to color correct a photo using a calibration card
• Using quick mask in Photoshop effectively
• Creating a clipping mask and implementing them to a .jpg so that the image has no background
• Creating actions in Photoshop to batch automate tasks that were consistently the same
• How to take a drawing of a new concept product and make it look like a product photograph using textures and photo-realism techniques
• File structure and proper naming conventions
• Knowing when to use Photoshop filters appropriately and not to overuse them when they weren’t needed
• How to setup an InDesign book using libraries
• How to take a .csv file and build a template to automate pagination using Data Merge

The list could go on forever! I started to feel like an apprentice to him and it made me a stronger designer knowing that I had a support system. I finally had an environment to grow within. I finally started to regain my passion for the work I was doing. As time went on, I was more confident and started to become more efficient with using the above lessons in my newly upgraded process. I was becoming a valuable designer/employee.

I always wanted to learn new things any chance I had because of him. He showed me things he would find online that completely blew my mind. By now, sleepless nights were spent learning through YouTube videos and online articles via Smashing Magazine and Treehouse. I started to immerse myself and embrace this creative world of visual communication. Having this type of mental fortitude allowed me to teach myself things like HTML, CSS, JS, WordPress and become more savvy with web design techniques, trend styles, grid systems and UI & UX design patterns.

Being a teacher as well as a student and paying it forward.

My next mentor, a few years later, came into my life at exactly the right time. It was almost like I was meant to be on her team. It felt so right during the interview process for her that she hired me on the spot at my in-person interview. I was completely shocked. Everyone agreed that it was my next step in my path. This was a first for me and I had my first mentor to thank for my success. If it was not for him, I probably would be looking for a new career. This new position, in healthcare marketing was more web design focused and was right up my alley. I was able to merge my graphic art skills with my web design skills.

I made a promise to myself and my past mentor that I would pay it forward. That I would teach the same way I was taught and give my peers the same type of digestible and retainable tutorials and insight to the process that I believed in strongly. In by doing this I didn’t realize that others saw me as a leader. I didn’t see myself worthy of being a leader.

I definitely wanted the recognition of being valued as a leader, but I knew I was not ready during this time. While at MDnetSolutions, my mentor truly showed me how to be a leader, that it meant not only being a subject matter expert, it also meant always being aware of how people perceive you.

Here are a few things that I learned from her:

• Truly value your team’s strengths and know their weaknesses.
• Being a leader means having to make the tough decisions.
• Perception is in the eye of the beholder.
• How to communicate with other teams overseas in a more efficient way.
• Knowing when is the right time to present a new technology or revamp a process.
• How to effectively QA a website.
• How to write emails in a non-emotional way so there is no negativity.
• Think top level and stay out of the weeds.

It is because of MDnetSolutions and my mentor, I was able to learn exactly what I wanted to do with my skillset and what the next step in my career would be. It all was because my boss/mentor never let me do the bare minimum. She pushed me to the limit and challenged me everyday for the last three and a half years. It is because of her lessons that I have what it takes to be a design leader and I can say that with total confidence.

In the Present

I wrote this post primarily for myself. To younger creatives, keep an open mind to everyone you meet. You never know what kind of knowledge they can give you. My personal story is proof that when you have the willingness to learn and become a subject matter expert on whatever your passion is, what you can achieve is limitless. There are no boundaries when seeking self education, only obstacles along the way that act as trial and error periods to get you ready for the main event or next step in your career.

As I am transitioning to this new step in my career as a UX & Visual Design Lead at AnswerRocket.com, I look back and believe that everything up to this point has been strategically placed within my life and every obstacle was there on purpose or for a reason. I am extremely thankful for the opportunities that I have had and will continue to have in this field.

To my mentors, you know who you are, thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything that you have bestowed to me. I will always feel like I am part of your team forever because I take your lessons and thoughts with me wherever I go.