You Are Not an Artist: A Candid Guide to the Business of Being a Designer

by Jon Robinson

Overview

It's becoming increasingly easier for anyone to be a "designer," or at least call themselves any combination of designerly-titles: Graphic designer, art director, commercial artist, visual communicator, content creator... The list goes on.

But there's one big thing about design that most people get wrong: It's not about making things look good. A designer's job is to focus on meaning, how it can be created and communicated. To understand how products are sold and marketed. To evaluate business problems and solve them with creative ideas and processes. Like the list of titles, this too goes on and on.

Sadly, the majority of design education has poorly positioned the role of the designer. Too few practitioners develop the necessary understanding that design is a business, not an art. Good news: All the things designers aren't being taught in the classroom can be found in this book. Things like: What makes design successful, rather than good. How to amass a body of knowledge, rather than a body of work. And why the design community should strive to be an army of thinkers, rather than makers.

Whether you're a student, you're five years into an agency job and still floundering to find confidence, ten years in and considering career reinvention, or feeling stale and burnt out from decades of poor collaboration and deadline fatigue, this can act as a companion throughout your journey. Plus, it's also for the design curious and the design adjacent, because the little details that make designers successful is knowledge that everyone can benefit from, as design touches all aspects of our everyday life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781667863177
Publisher:	BookBaby
Publication date:	11/15/2022
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Jon Robinson is not an artist. He's the Head of Design and Research at Pager, a virtual navigation platform supporting healthcare consumers. Before that, he did a bunch of other stuff: Freelanced, agency gigs, not-for-profits and in-house design teams, and built experiences for global brands as a tech consultant. Jon has a bachelor's degree in art history and graphic design from Illinois Wesleyan University, a graduate degree in creative technologies from Illinois State University, and a graduate degree in design thinking from Indiana University. He misplaced 2 out of 3 of those diplomas.

At heart, he's a polymath. In spirit, he's someone who would never actually use the word "polymath." He's lectured and spoken on everything from user experience to the convenience economy, from service design to his passion for anything published by Kurt Vonnegut. In addition to his general love for learning, Jon taught design for nearly a decade, most recently with the School of Art, Design, and Media at Lindenwood University and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. He co-authored 97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know from O'Reilly Media. Jon lives with his wife and two children in Missouri.

Table of Contents

Introduction 9

All the things they don't teach you in design school 16

You are not an artist 18

You'll never get worse at design 26

All designers start as copycats 31

Following fads is bad for business 39

The problem with design school 44

Self-education is a sound investment 52

Deadlines are a necessary evil 58

Love what you do, but don't fall in love with it 64

Design is a business skill 69

Don't sweat the critique 75

Ideas don't sell themselves 81

Your portfolio doesn't define you 88

Don't work for free 96

There's no fame in this game 103

Becoming the next design iteration of you 108

Surviving the freelance game 110

Always start with a sketch 122

Simplicity is a discipline 128

Worse than being called 'ugly' 135

More right than wrong 143

Stop asking for approval 148

Lorem ipsum is a joke 155

Design is a team sport 160

Mom, where do ideas come from? 169

Bring your passions to work with you 176

Keep everything in perspective 183

The future is human-centered 188

Be a learner, not a knower 194

Epilogue 201

Further Reading 204

Index 208

Acknowledgements 213

About the Author 215