Communication is the most important skill as a designer

It happened to all of us, one day we decided to start a career in design and we started looking what skills we needed to become a great designer. Mostly, the first skills that we found were: learn design software like Illustrator and Photoshop and learn the design principles and theory. Also, if we look at design degrees, most of them follow the same approach, they’re very focused on learning the design principles and theory and learning software. Which is good, obviously is very important to learn design principles and how to use the software, but we forget to learn the most important skill as a designer, which is communication.

And sadly, I learnt this quite late. During my whole design studies I was very worried about mastering Illustrator, Photoshop and understanding all the design theory. Until the last year. On my last year, I had a professor for whom the most important thing was the presentations. The subject was Branding but the most important part of the project was the final presentation. We had to prepare a branding project per trimester, and at the end, we had 20 minutes to present the solution. During this presentation, we had to present the whole process that we went through until the final solution. And if we talked for more than 20 minutes we were punished.

As you can imagine, presenting a project that you’ve been working on during 3 months in only 20 minutes was a challenge. Plus, this professor payed a lot of attention to every moment, every word that we said, our body language, etc. And when we made a mistake, even if it was a small one he pointed out and we had a lower grade on the project. It didn’t matter if we made a great project, if the presentation was awful we didn’t pass it. So this was a very uncomfortable and difficult moment for me. I used to hate all the presentations days.

Now, when I look back I’m very grateful to this professor because thanks to him I learnt how to design great presentations and how to defend and present my design ideas in front of other people without being nervous. At least, without being too nervous that I can barely speak clearly (which was my case, I’m a very shy person). In fact, I would say that it was one of the most important subjects that I had in my design degree.

Then, finally I finished my degree and I thought that I was well prepared to present my projects in front of other people.

Until I started working at Bloomon. Here I learnt that obviously it’s very important the design of the presentation and how you speak but also it’s highly important what you say. And you will think: well, obviously, if you say a silly thing….

I don’t mean that. What I mean is that us as designers, we have our reasons to choose a specific colour, typography or even a specific UI and we can explain it very clearly and easily to other designers. We speak the same language and some things are obvious to us, so we don’t even need to mention them.

However, when you’re presenting your design ideas to stakeholders or colleagues that are not designers like product owners, CEO’s, salespeople… we have to give different reasons. We have to be objective and focus a lot on the numbers; how this design will increase the conversion and why. Also, we have to mention those obvious things for designers because maybe for them those are not that obvious.

I also realised that communication and the reasons that you give are very important when I was a freelancer. You have to convince your client that your decisions are the best for their company, even if they don’t like them. And it’s not easy. Especially, if you don’t know which reasons to mention them. However, when I was a freelancer was a bit easier for me because most of the times I communicated with my clients via email so it wasn’t so intimidating for me and also I had plenty of time to prepare my reply.

Now, I’m still working on my communication skills. I don’t have the level that I would like to have but I do think that is much better than when I started. And when I was studying I tended to avoid each opportunity that I had to speak in front of people because those situations made me feel uncomfortable. Now, is the other way around, I look for opportunities to speak in front of people, express my opinions and defend my decisions. But I also learnt the hard way that if I want to grow personally and professionally I have to get out of my comfort zone.