Why aren’t we writing Concept Design?

Three years ago I started a journey to learn and work on UX Design, —yep, the one in software marketing, product, and brand—. When I first came into the world of startups, I was overwhelmed by the immense flow of information that surrounds it; I must have read a thousand articles about aesthetics, methodologies, processes, leadership, organization, time/task management and, why not, a few motivational ones as well.

It’s so much, sometimes it’s hard to tell an article worth reading apart from one that’s not —until the very end.

However, as I decided to pivot my career towards entertainment and started a Concept Design Master, I was overwhelmed by the whole contrary reason: I find next to nothing when I search for articles written by people that are already working in the field and have acquired all the experience needed to become successful —as cheesy as it may sound — . What are the industry leaders creating now? How are they innovating? Is there nothing to be improved? There surely is.

Now, a fun part may be that the term ‘Concept Design’ doesn’t seem to be a very popular one, I often find stuff about Concept Art but the design part seems rather far-fetched, even the career listings describe specializations such as character design, level design, color artist, or art director, among many others that don’t entail the global pre-conception of any given universe, and even so, when creating characters or props, how often are there concepts created for them? Actual well-researched concepts conceived before a pencil touches the paper? Is that a mystic position for people that needn’t apply?

How much has it been done intuitively and how much has it been the result of a well-thought process?

And what’s more, it concerns me greatly that the industry doesn’t seem to be sharing such information on the biggest channel there has been: the internet.

Of course, it’s great to find mesmerizing artworks and technical courses, but where are the methods? Where are the lessons hard learned? How did the leaders become leaders? How do they get sh*t done? What did they have to go through? What should we aspire to? Why aren’t you sharing your experience? Why aren’t you people writing?

The industry is changing, we might change our sharing capabilities as well.