Follow Your Passion — Then Follow Up on Your Passion.
Dreaming gives me hope.
Without fail, the stories of the innovative and the persistent captivate my attention. Regularly, I look to the stardom of success, those who have followed their passions and built empires out of what they love, and draw encouragement for myself in my endeavors.
Today, perhaps more than ever, it seems like the persistent dreamer is the one who ends up on top. “Work, work, and never waiver from your goal. You’ll get there.”
Perhaps.
The reality is, a surprising amount of our goals are achievable. If you’ve seen La-La Land,you’re hooked When Mia Dolan (Emma Stone) says, “People love what other people are passionate about.” This belief shows on platforms like Kickstarter, where an unbelievable 40% of projects get fully funded.
In the design world, dreams come in all shapes and sizes. I think that many creatives fall in love with achieving something that represents their intended meaning. Our work allows us to create ideas and thoughts, to build bridges, and even to share a connection with one another.
What’s even better, modern technology allows us to develop ourselves, to globalize our craft, to test concepts, and to have access to unlimited new information. However, that hasn’t come without a cost.
The problem today, especially for new designers, is that the availability of free information makes it possible to wildly pursue any passion that comes to mind. While dreamers and mold-breakers will be necessary for the advancement of every generation, the fundamentals of success remain the same. And they’re far more challenging to learn.
A successful career is like an iceberg, or an onion, or 5-layer dip.
Whichever cliché you may choose will suffice. They’re all bad.
Accordingly, the foundation for a successful career is education. It does not matter where the knowledge comes from so much as whether the student is committed to it. In our 5-layer dip example, though, education is only one layer. We know that we also have to add experience, persistence, relationships, and a sprinkling of luck. So far, nothing new here.
I propose that there is a secret-sauce element that makes or breaks the entire dish.
If following your passion led you to collect all the ingredients, following up on your passion will provide the structure that you need to achieve your goals.
The focus of traditional education — what you need to know before we move on.
Traditional education, like most elements of western society, is under tremendous pressure to change. The miracle of information accessibility has taken power from the thrones of its beholders and distributed among the thousands, and millions.
But it hasn’t provided structure for how to use it.
Today, the randomness of information produces the same kind of effect that Netflix and Amazon Prime Video produce in the living room. When you have six DVD’s on the shelf and you want to watch a movie, you pick one and you watch it. When you have one hundred and fifty thousand films and shows to choose from, you choose nothing.
One time, an anesthesiologist gave my mom (a surgeon) a stack of John Wayne VHS tapes for my brother and me to watch. In one particularly dreary spell of too-sick-to-go-to-school-ness, I tired of my regular rotation and finally acquiesced to the wild west…I watched each tape in succession with rapt attention. This has nothing at all to do with the story or the point of this article.
In like fashion, the accessibility of information can produce this same inaction, or “analysis paralysis.”
The benefit of traditional education is that, along with providing the foundations for your chosen field of study, most programs give the student a framework with which they can actualize what they have learned.
The downside of traditional education, however, is that it seems conclusive. Once the degree is signed, my learning feels complete.
Not. At. All.
As an example, we’ll take Ally and Steven, who have each recently completed their education. Ally is a physician who has just finished her residency. She has loved medicine since middle school and has unwaveringly walked the challenging path to where she is today. Steven, much like myself, is a designer. He has studied diligently, gotten experience in every way he could find, and has developed a fantastic portfolio. They’ll each go into the wild blue yonder with highly developed technical skills, devotion to the passion that they’ve pursued now for nearly half of their lives, and with beautiful dreams about what they can become.
Our friends are filled with hope, and they’re about to get slapped in the face. Repeatedly. For five years.
At the end of Ally’s medical residency, she is a licensed, technically proficient, passionate, and even kind, physician. She defies the stereotypes of self-absorbed doctors who command and do not listen. As much as is possible, her education and her passion have combined to produce in Ally the very model of a modern medical professional.
Now, she gets to enter the job market!
For the sake of simplicity, we’ll present the two most common paths available to Ally as a physician.
1) Ally can lease her soul to a hospital system, physicians group, or medical center for reasonable pay. She, who is statistically one of the most highly educated individuals in the galaxy, will be an employee. She will have margins and quotas and all the joys of answering to executives whose bonuses depend on her ability to generate revenue. Her B in introductory economics ten years ago will now be the guiding light for her success in the corporate world.
2) Ally can triple her [astronomical] debt and risk it for the biscuit. She can open a private practice (read: start a very expensive business), hire employees, develop a network of patients, and subject herself to ten-thousand pages of federal code that will tax her for every breath she takes, not to mention her business operations.
Ally, like so many physicians before her, has a fundamental problem. She is pursuing her passion, and she has done so with incredible tenacity. However, she must learn the hard way that she has to follow up on her passion. Her specialty, compared to the scope of factors that will determine her success, is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg that makes up her career.
Steven, like Ally, has diligently traveled the beaten path prescribed to him. As we learned earlier, he has experience, technical skills, and excellent grades. Beyond that, Steven is not your typical creative. He’s never late, and he’s well well-organized. Steven is beginning his search for quality design jobs and feels well-prepared.
In Steven’s case, there is a wide array of potential career paths. Whether he chooses to pursue freelance work, gets
In Steven’s case, there is a wide array of potential career paths. Whether he chooses to pursue freelance work, get a job at a creative agency, or become a designer for a business with its own creative department, Steven will enter into a world in which his education has left him woefully unprepared.
This world, which now affects both Steven and Ally in very similar ways, is called business. In almost every organization on the globe, the core measure of success is profitability. As such, employers, managers, and directors must ultimately devote the greater part of their attention to producing results that increase the profitability of their organization.
Nothing new under the sun here.
Here’s the parallel: Steven and Ally have both devoted their time to developing the technical skills they need to accomplish their immediate goals. For Ally, this is to care for and nurture the ill. For Steven, to draw people together and create understanding through visual communication. Without a doubt, their educations have prepared them well to accomplish these goals.
The ingredients, experience, education, relationships, and in their cases, even some good fortune are all in place. However, like so many others before them, Steven and Ally were not provided the structure necessary to combine the ingredients and create success in a world focused on the bottom line.
Is this how it should be? That’s not the scope of this article.
The driving force is the bottom line. There will be no facilities to care for patients if the books don’t line up. No products to advertise if the companies can’t keep their lights on. So if our friends don’t understand this structure into which they venture, they may be in for a rough ride.
Today, there may not be a one-size-fits-all solution. In an ideal world, schools will pair technical education with business education in a holistic program that facilitates success.
For now, Steven and Ally will have to discover their place in the system. If they’re wise, they’ll seek mentors who can guide and prepare them. Alternatively, they’ll find additional education that provides structure and helps to draw parallels between their technical skills and the business world which they must navigate.
Side note: staying optimistic
At this point, it may appear as if I’m asking Steven and Ally to subscribe to a cynical mindset about bringing their skills to the market. On the contrary, I believe that a well-rounded business skillset will allow them to follow their passions, get professional freedom, and achieve more than they would have otherwise, as I describe here.
At Designed Academy, we believe that designers have a place in the administrative structure of the organizations that they serve, and that they can experience fulfillment in their work through developing professional skills that serve them in their work environments.
When a designer can demonstrate that she understands the industry, knows what her employer wants, and has the technical skills necessary to get the job done, her upward mobility will grow exponentially.
So, here’s the challenge:
Long-term goal: design education needs to become holistic. In my own experience, the “Professional Development 400” class that I took before graduating did nothing to prepare me for the design world. The materials helped me to create a resume that would serve to apply as a financial analyst, not a designer. The class did not structure other materials in such a way that I could pair my technical skills with business understanding and experience success. In the future, I hope that colleges develop creative programs that prepare designers to succeed in the business world.
What to do today: Designer, know thyself. Today, it’s our responsibility to fill in the gaps we need to work and live productively. Fortunately, there are endless materials available to anyone who wishes to learn economics, communication, business, whatever. The problem, however, is that few places provide a guided learning experience beyond school. You may, of course, “spray and pray” — research and read as much as possible and hope to put the pieces together. It’s possible, but tiring.
For that reason, I’ve described two structured learning environments that Designed Academy offers exclusively to designers. You may choose to read about them if you wish.
Whichever path you choose, whichever passion you follow, you must follow-up. It’s not enough to learn only how to do what you love. To bring your skills to the market, you must be able to present yourself professionally, earn trust, and demonstrate your ability.
Check out our unique online course. Design Your Career is the only online course created to help designers get the professional skills they need to land their dream job. Through 20 video modules, you’ll learn about design in corporate environments, market research, job application strategies and more.
