Cream

Recently I have been approached by many aspiring designers wanting to get into software product design. Many have asked me the same questions:

“How do I get into product design if I don’t have any previous experience? Where do I start? What sort of work should I put into my portfolio?”

“Make shit up.” has always been my advice.

I don’t mean to encourage bullshitting about your previous experiences, but rather, find excuses to create. Find excuses to flex those creative muscles if your day job doesn’t give you permission. Find excuses to create only for yourself. Find excuses to take ownership of a side project. Find excuses to dedicate a couple of hours each day to practice your craft.

Most importantly, just find excuses to make shit.

I emphasise on the word shit because it’s about setting the bar low. Low enough that you don’t care about what you create, so long as you are creating.

“Holding yourself to some lofty standard when you are just starting out is like blowing a deathkiss to your chances of success.” — Julie Zhuo, Write in 2016

Ignore your fears on what others think and create what makes you happy. There is nothing wrong with creating mediocre. All great work requires learning & building on top of the mediocre. People will only remember your greatest work.

1. Make some shit

Sometimes it’s difficult to start something if you already have an audience in mind. My advice is to just start a few personal projects. Keen to learn more about development? Jump on to Code Academy and learn at your own pace. Keen to learn some hand lettering? Get some pens and start writing. Nobody expects your projects to change the world, it only needs to make you better. I’m a huge fan of personal projects, nothing intrigues me more than seeing someone pour their heart and soul into a piece of work only to satisfy their own creative cravings.

These projects, big or small, make up the intentions for a creative. Whenever I come across a candidate looking to join our design team, I’d request their personal website or portfolio to take a peek, because aside from what your CV tells me, what I am really interested is what scratches your creative itch.

It can be daunting to reveal a piece of yourself every time you put work out in the public. But not everyone out there are judgmental dickheads trying to tear your work apart. One single friendly comment from a total stranger is enough to ignore the fear in your head.

2. Share your shit

Share what you’ve learnt along the way with the world. Even if it’s not original, it’s your process that makes it unique & your story that’s worth telling. It never fails to warm my day when somebody tells me my Architecture to Product Design blog post resonated deeply with them. Their kind words have encouraged me to write more about what I’ve learnt on the way.

3. Curate your shit

Finally, learn how to curate your work. The reason this is step 3 is because without step 1 & 2, you will have little body of work to curate from. How do you know what’s your best work if you got nothing to compare it with? Only with a large body of work can you begin to pick & choose the relevant work to show potential employers.

Part of curating your work also serves as an exercise to better position yourself when looking for your next gig; what work should you curate to make you stand out amongst the sea of designers on the market today?

Get started

To help you get started, an simple exercise I often give students is:

Go to a popular website you’ve recently visited, i.e. Wikipedia. Think about why you’re there, what you’re trying to do, and design a better experience for yourself. As you design, document & write about your intentions around the design decisions. Write about the WHYs, not the WHATs.

To me, your intentions are much more interesting than the pixel-perfect mockups.

Over the past couple of years I have had many side projects: Some completed, some in progress and some long forgotten somewhere in my laptop. Some people think unfinished work = wasted work. I personally find it perfectly fine to leave it if that given project already served its purpose for scratching my creative itch. I would rather move on and find the next itch as long as I’ve learnt something valuable from it.

And that is why I think everyone should stay curious and just keep making shit. Keep creating and ignore the fear that it’s not good enough for the world to see. Keep finding excuses to create until you’re confident to curate your best work. Keep in mind that the cream will always rise to the top, so will you.