Dear Junior Designer: Truths You Should Know
Dear Junior Designer, It’s me again, your biggest Superfan, Ruqayyah. Since I published the last Dear Junior Designer article, I’ve gotten amazing comments, and some people shared how it helped them and made them feel more assured and relaxed to know that someone knows how they feel and is trying to help them.
If you haven’t read it yet, read the article here.
Here’s a new piece highly impacted by a lot of happenings on Twitter. As always, I hope you read this article and take away something good from it.
Sitting down in my workspace reflecting on my journey and how far I’ve come. Counting my wins and losses and then realizing, I did it. I pushed myself and now I’m here. It wasn’t easy, trust me it was hard and I had to navigate this path on my own without much guidance.
My story is different from other people and I think I am 1 out of 10 people who had quite an easy start. I can’t say the same for newbies who are just entering the space and are finding it hard to navigate/find resources or people who share great content that’ll help them.
Until newbies learn to research, they’d keep getting exploited
There are lots of posers online who use newbies’ ignorance to exploit them. These people have positioned themselves as “knowers” and because they know newbies won’t do research, they use them for their own gain — Act like they’re helping but only drive them into a box of ignorance.
I understand that we can’t all have the same journey but there are some things you must have experienced that might help newbies in theirs. Instead of sugarcoating your story and making it seem like you had it easy, why not just tell it as it is? I know some people brand themselves with the “I had it easy” story but please I beg, let’s calm down. It’s unfair to pass out a half-baked story to newbies especially when they look to you as a source of motivation.
There is a lot of “noise” going around and it’s hard for newbies to block them. So here are some of the lies flying around that you can avoid easily.
- You’d Earn A 6 Figure Dollar Salary After Completing A Bootcamp
Earning such a huge salary is as unlikely as fitting a kangaroo through the eye of a needle and it is something Bootcamp owners use to sell their business. Oh yes, boot camps are profit-making machines to their owners, and what better way to lure unknowing newbies than attracting them with something they really want?
My advice, dish out quality work and trust your process. If you can deliver top-notch designs then the money would definitely come. You won’t earn the amount you want in the early stages of your career but you’d definitely earn something substantial. So don’t be scared to start small and work your way up provided the work you do matches your pay.
- Bootcamps Are All You Need And They Would Teach You Everything
As someone who has one year in the field and has gone through a Bootcamp, I can tell you that there’s nothing they’d teach you that you can’t find online. Bootcamps are a great place to practice working in a team though as you’d get to work with people from different backgrounds and you’d also get to team up with other participants from other tracks to put out a great case study.
Although boot camps have a lot of things to teach you, the knowledge you’d gain there isn’t all you need to know to grow and become an amazing designer. You’d need to do some unlearning and relearning. I for one can’t count how many times I’ve had to open a design book to learn new stuff; I’m currently reading Articulating Design Decisions and it's an amazing book that teaches how to properly communicate your designs so non-designers and designers can understand what our designs are trying to say without having to “explain” them.
One of the qualities of an amazing designer is the willingness to learn. Reminding yourself that you need to stay on top of industry trends to be world-class helps you remain humble and conscious of all your decisions.
I usually advise newbies to put everything they’ve learned from their boot camps into practice and they should also ask senior designers for “help” in setting them on the right track.
Also, when looking for a good Bootcamp, look for one that offers a community and an opportunity to work on real-life projects even if they’re open source.
- Design Influencers Know What They’re Talking About
That someone has K followers doesn’t mean that all they say is right and vice versa. As I said at the start of this article, these “influencers” prey on the ignorance of newbies and have used this to position themselves to look better. They act like they’re helping newbies but instead they’re just driving them into a wall.
Ignore all the “newbie designers should…”, “You are not a good designer if…”, and “You are not a product designer…” tweets that pop up every now and then.
Some of this “advice” might be coming from a good place but it only just makes you feel on edge and as if you still have lots to do/learn. Time without number we hear complaints about impostor syndrome and how newbies feel overwhelmed and to be honest, the think pieces flying here and there are not helping.
I’ve been called a Design Influencer because of the number of followers I have and if I’m being honest, I only gained that because of my interesting personality and because I do my best in helping the design community. So if you’re one of the people who has called me an influencer, well you just might be wrong.
- The Tools You Use Make You
Let me break it to you gently, the tools you use do not matter to your stakeholders except for where they expressly stated it. You might end up working in a company where most of your stakeholders are non-designers and all that matters to them is results.
It’s not the tools that make you a good designer but what you do with them. A design created with Adobe looks no different from one created in Figma or even Canva and. no one would know except you tell them.
You can learn one tool and master it instead of digging your hand into all tools and mastering none.
I started out with Adobe XD and used the knowledge of that to teach myself how to use Figma. Most design tools are similar, the knowledge you get from one can be passed on to the other. So please relax and learn the one that you can.
- As A Designer You Need To Do Everything
As a designer, you do not need to design every aspect of the project — I learned this the hard way. You can’t master all facets of design as it is so wide but what you can do is definitely outsource which is much better than putting all the weight on your shoulders. So please scratch out the idea that you need to be good at logo design, branding/packaging design, etc to be an amazing designer, all these skills are great add-ons to make you stand out from other designers.
- The Design Industry Is Saturated
Do not listen when people say the industry is getting saturated because it isn’t. Each day a company is seeking out an amazing designer to join their team and that is because they now see the importance of having a great user experience. So, please relax, the industry is going nowhere yet so long as new products are coming into existence and old ones are being improved.
- Your Designs Need To Look Like Dribbble Designs To Be Called Good
Designs in real life do not look like what you see on Dribbble. In the real world, you have to work with stakeholders and these stakeholders most times influence your designs. A product needs to also meet business requirements to be considered successful.
Most Dribbble designs are just aesthetically pleasing and would not work in a real life scenario. So if you’re comparing your designs to those on Dribbble, please stop; Those designs were created for the oooooussss, ahhhhhhhhs and nothing more.
Also remember Design is subjective and being able to communicate why we made certain design decisions to non-designers is one of the skills we need to have as designers.
Thank you for reading this article. I know that it might seem like you’re not doing enough, but I want you to keep your head up and keep it going. It is not going to be easy trust me but it’ll be worth it in the end. I wish you the best in your journey and I want you to remember that I’m always rooting for you.
If you’d like to see more of my work and connect with me, my contact information is below.
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From Ruqayyah With Love ❤️
