Pick your position.

Can you master Digital and Print Design?

For a few years now, my daughter has played for a soccer club who’s main focus has been the mastery of a select set of foot skills. Skills like the signature move of the legendary Maradona, or Marta’s stepovers.

Every time the girls got the ball, they had to do a skill before anything else. It was painful. They lost all the time, and turned over the ball constantly.

Now, after years of mastery, the girls routinely perform incredibly beautiful moves against two and three opponents. It is amazing to watch, and each girl has gained independence and confidence.

Mastery begets creativity.

They’ve grown as players, and it has also become obvious that the girls have developed preferences on field positions. Some like Offense, some D, though few enjoy goal. I haven’t taken stats…but it seems the team performs better when they get to play their favorite positions during their rotations. Positions which suit their personalities.

All of that makes me wonder.

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of designers at all skill-levels and talents. I’ve seen lazy, hard-working, instinctual and systematic designers and combinations of each. I’ve seen those who began as print designers and those who grew up digital, and those who have been splitting their time doing both.

All of that makes me wonder.

Can we build the legendary design Unicorn…by adding print skills to the digital designers, or vice-versa? Exercising those different sets of skills may be productive and desirable when the client base requires diversity, but the learning curve is higher, and work is slower (at least temporarily).

The hours spent with UX, dev, content, digital design, screen sizes and responsive sizing are similar to, but different from the hours spent on print production, long-form composition, paper and ink.

Expanding one’s repertoire is fantastic, healthy and instructive, but still…some players prefer either Offense or Defense. Spending time on the field at a specific position moves one towards mastery. Do we see better results from those who choose a position on the field?

All of that makes me wonder.