Managing a 5-8 ppl team does not leave you time to design. When you don't practice a craft, you should not expect to get better at it.
A frequent question I get when talking with senior designers: Will my growth as a designer stall if I start managing?
There is often a second question underneath that, which is:
Will I no longer be respected as a design leader if I can't keep up as a designer?
Thread below👇
Managing a 5-8 ppl team does not leave you time to design. When you don't practice a craft, you should not expect to get better at it.
What you *can* continue to grow (as both a design manager and a designer) is the following:
1) Your design eye
2) Your design voice
It means your taste is well-honed through extensive study of an area.
It means your sense for usability, simplicity and aesthetics is well-developed even at subtle or fine granularities.
As a designer, your work is limited by how good your eye is. Your eye can be way better than your work—for many junior designers it is—but the opposite is impossible.
1) Study the craft. Look at hundreds of examples.
2) Read or discuss critical commentary. Talk to the most obsessed people you know on the topic, and they'll help you understand what to look for.
3) Practice by designing.
Simply saying "This isn't good enough" is not helpful.
More from Life
"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."
We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.
Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)
It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.
Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
As a dean of a major academic institution, I could not have said this. But I will now. Requiring such statements in applications for appointments and promotions is an affront to academic freedom, and diminishes the true value of diversity, equity of inclusion by trivializing it. https://t.co/NfcI5VLODi
— Jeffrey Flier (@jflier) November 10, 2018
We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.
Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)
It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.
Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
