One of the main conclusions? Technical skills aren’t everything — curiosity, drive, and external interests are also what makes a good designer.
Frog, a multinational design firm, is perhaps the most attractive company on the list of dream jobs for designers fresh out of college simply because of the nature of the work. In addition to pushing the design industry forward through cutting-edge, curiosity-driven projects, it also takes an interdisciplinary approach to design — meaning it hires designers that span digital, industrial and interactive design.
A few weeks ago, two product designers at Frog went to Reddit to offer advice to young designers. They took part in a Reddit AMA led by Inbal Etgar from the San Francisco office and Francois Nguyen from New York. There was some insight into what companies like Frog look for in their new talent, as well as a discussion of how young designers can prepare for their careers.
Inbal Etgar, creative director at Frog in San Francisco
“Often, young designers are so focused on their talents and hard skills that they overlook the role of positive attitude and grit in their success,” Etgar said in an email to Co.Design after the AMA. “In some ways, hard skills are easier to acquire than grit or positive attitudes because they are more subjective and a result of personal growth. It’s very common for young designers to get so caught up in hard skills that they lose the dream part of design, the ‘why’.”
We asked Etgar and Nguyen to take a look at some of the skills that designers need in practice today — hard and soft — and explain why these are so different from what designers think is most important.
Concepts are not everything – learn to edit your work
Editing is essential to all creative work, yet designers tend to be too short-sighted when it comes to holistic work. “There are two key issues: emotional attachment and not being able to see the big picture,” Nguyen said. He suggests adding self-reinforcing constraints, such as hard deadlines or limiting the number of slide pages in each presentation. Seeking objective advice from a professional is also helpful. As with any kind of editor, details that can’t be seen by those who spend all day with the material can be picked up at a glance by those who are new to it.
Nguyen is also a musician. He illustrates the last point with the story of his own painstaking efforts to create the album. He enlisted the help of a music producer friend. “He told me to cut the album from 15 songs to seven, fire my drummer (who is also my friend), hire two musicians from other places and re-record 90 percent of the existing material,” he wrote in an email. “I’ve spent years honing these songs, and now to take them away is like cutting off my own limbs. Even though it was against the core of my work, I did it anyway. It worked out well, much better than I could have done on my own.”
Francois Nguyen, creative director at Frog In New York
Mastering digital tools doesn’t make you a great designer
“In recent years, I have noticed a trend of design students and young designers using digital tools so much that they are abandoning physical tools and designing in physical Spaces,” Etgar wrote. “This often leads to design blind spots. CAD and rapid prototyping have quickly changed the way we iterate and develop solutions, but they are no substitute for manual design and prototyping.”
Especially in industrial design, understanding and solving problems in physical space is crucial, and a love of and connection with physical space is a must. As with most things, balance is key. “My advice is to blend digital manufacturing with traditional methods and take full advantage of both,” Etgar writes.
There is no conflict between working hard and enjoying life
In fact, co-workers at Frog — and not surprisingly in the industry — are used to Nguyen’s other identity: musician. Workers in creative fields often have multiple creative talents in addition to their own work. External interests can certainly be a way to relieve stress, but they can also inform your professional work, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously.
Cultivating other interests will undoubtedly make you a better designer, Nguyen and Etgar say. “For someone who has only studied design to find inspiration for it, all possible results come from the same source and are clearly derived,” Nguyen wrote. “Diversity of experiences always leads to diversity of practices, methodologies and perspectives that enrich and enhance design capabilities in healthy ways.”
In addition to external interests, it’s also important to make design something that excites you — because that’s what you spend most of your time doing. As Etgar says, good design is both personal and professional. “It comes from an attitude of wanting to do things the right way, and that requires a certain level of commitment. Sometimes it borders on obsession.” She wrote. “Every great designer I’ve met has suffered from this problem to some degree. Of course, I use the word “encounter” jokingly — we all embrace this part of our job because we love it.”
This article appears in Fast Company design by Meg Miller.
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