Six bad habits you need as a designer

Before I became a designer I always wondered why designing is so different from other careers. The kind of stuff they do, their working hours, their thought process, crazy ideas, and whatnot. They were the ones who stand out from the rest. I was so obsessed with them, like imagine a life where you can do all the crazy wild stuff you want to. Wouldn’t it be so cool!

After having become a designer, I now realize why and how we are so different. Not everyone is a born designer. Among the various things that we designers should do, we need to build our character. Recently I acknowledged some things that most of the designers do consciously or unconsciously. Looking at my personal experiences, my friends, other co-designers, and hearing from big names, here are some of the necessities every designer should do on daily basis.

01 Binging YouTube

This might sound something which parents are always against, but this is the best way to learn any random thing that piques our curiosity as a designer. We don’t even have to get any reason to get started here. And also we can get any questions answered just in seconds. YouTube can be the best virtual teacher for the smallest of questions or doubts.

There are so many amazing YouTube channels like Thefutur, Piximperfect, Flux, Zimri Mayfield, etc. which are giving out great content related to design from which we can learn a lot absolutely for free.

02 Judging Yourself

The very first judgment of our work should be our own. Judging our work the same way we would judge someone else’s work, and treating it as our own competition, is a simple strategy that will take us really far in the long run.

This will not only make us find and fix the smallest of faults in our design before anyone else could even notice it, but also will help us grow more rapidly.

03 Trying & Doing crazy stuff

There are so many out of the blue things which we have seen we designers do, like- getting hair colored, buying an unnecessary product just because of good packaging, classes happening out in the open, and a lot of other cool stuff.

We are the only ones who have the guts to try stuff which normal people wouldn’t ever do so and pull this off so confidently. And just to add up here, we go crazy in our work the most.

04 Violating Rules

There are no rules made for designers. We’re the misfits; have you ever seen a designer studying inside 4 walls or having a fixed design process to follow? There is nothing that restricts us.

We are the people who make rules and break them the next moment. In designing, if we obey the rules the orthodox way we will stay stuck in the past; but as we evolve as designers, we break the rules without actually breaking them, finding ingenious ways around the staus-quo!

05 Giving up

There are times when we designers have a creative block or we don’t get a proper job or we are not treated well in the society or our work is being looked down by people or we are underpaid or we experience circumstances that make us feel dull, devastated, and frustrated.

But we take a break and come back with double the power, we never give up on ourselves.

06 Fear of rejection

No one has the same taste, in the same way not everyone can like someone’s work. We are open to all sorts of reviews all the time. We designers will learn from them and better ourselves every moment.

The yin yang symbol — the concept of dualism, tells us how there is always bad in the good, and more importantly, that there is good in the bad. Rejection is just a mere part of the process, and we as designers especially know how to deal with that.

If you have always been doing these, you are a true designer at heart. If not, start implementing them right away.

What do you think about this?

By the way, I had to tell you something interesting about Turtlewig. We provide an online tool for freelancers to handoff files, collect payments, and increase productivity. In essence, we’ve streamlined the client-freelancer interface so that you spend your time on your design work, and not on managing your clients!
Join the waitlist now at www.turtlewig.com, to get access to our private beta and a personal onboarding process.

Signing off Naisha Gupta.

Let’s Grow Together. Cya soon!