Guys, guys.. I know what you are thinking, another boring essay where the guy talks about basic things everyone knows but try to use buzzwords to offer solutions that do not make any sense.. Sincerely, I’m tired of those articles too and that’s why I want to give you a more personal version of why i became a designer, the mistakes i made and the challenges i currently battle that has held me back from achieving my potentials and may have played a major role in complicating my life as a designer.
No 1: “Reading books isn’t really my thing”
I would be lying to you if i said i now read books and start listing amazing book clubs and so on that i belong to because i am not typically the type of guy that loves books, i sincerely don’t fancy the idea of reading for long stretches and can’t stand the people that always go “oh, you should read this book, it will open your mind bla bla bla”
But here’s the thing, If you are hoping to grow as a designer, you will have to read books because not only are books the oldest means of passing down information coherently, it also gives you a much better understanding of different aspects of design that can be lost in 10-15 minutes youtube videos, also rather than waiting to meet a top class designer like Marty Numeiher(I probably destroyed his name), reading his books will give you a larger picture of his design and thought process, much much larger than even a one hour video of him at TheFutur academy would.
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If you are hoping to grow as a designer, you will have to read books".
No 2: I wanted to get everything for Freeeee!!!
Everyone loves free stuff right? I mean, i would love to get a tesla for free or have someone pay for my trip to see the Pyramids(I’m serious about this) but here’s the thing about free things, they take away something from you and you don’t get to see it till when you realized it’s been taken. The Nigerian saying “Awuf dey run belle (Free food will give you a running stomach)” is not a joke.
When you are used to getting everything for free, you use a cracked adobe suite, you want free books, you want to download from shutterstock for free, you want free courses etc, at the end of the day these things take away the value and as a result tend to make you not know what your value is and put you in this situation that you have all the resources but you don’t know what to do with them and even worse you have all the knowledge and skills but you are constantly under charging because you don’t know the value of what you know.
I don’t know about you but the first time i paid for a course on domestika i finished it within 2 days but i have a whole army of courses in webflow, product design, 3d designs, animations etc. But i don’t have the motivation to start them because i didn’t invest to get them.
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If every source of your value comes from free things, it would be hard to put a tag on the value of your work".
No 3: I was was accepting each and every gig
It would be Hypocrisy at its best if i tell you “don’t accept so so and so gigs or never accept below your price” but what I’m trying to say is that not being able to know when to walk away or say no to a project because “I need the money” will do alot more damage to your design journey in the long run.
It’s better to have a few gigs that pay well than accumulate alot of gigs which will most likely not pay you well and there might be that notion that “what if all the gigs are high paying ones?” then that is why you need to have a calender, to fit projects into it and communicate with your clients properly.
Now it’s was much tougher for me when I initially started designing but i could have avoided alot of clients that gave me headaches or undervalued my work (I sincerely didn’t know my value back then) and you are most likely going to remain in that constant cycle of cheap work and angry clients with tough deadlines unless you learn to say no firmly.
No 4: I never planned a work-life balance.
Raise your hand if you are a designer and have virtually zero social life.
Pls, let’s not start with “I’m an introvert”, we both know what I’m talking about. I personally love computers and it’s easy for me to spend lots of hours gaming and browsing the web and I never really viewed design as a work but rather as a well paying hobby. Spending so much time attending to work, designing projects, attending meetings and just either staring at the laptop and closing it, it’s easy to get soaked in by all of this and forget that people exist or create time to try new things, I still struggle with this and even my efforts to join the gym has been a sad journey(hopefully I will return) but i noticed that the more I interacted with the world and tried new things, the more i am able to combat depression and anxiety.
