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.
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I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x
The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x
Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x
The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x
It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x
As someone\u2019s who\u2019s read the book, this review strikes me as tremendously unfair. It mostly faults Adler for not writing the book the reviewer wishes he had! https://t.co/pqpt5Ziivj
— Teresa M. Bejan (@tmbejan) January 12, 2021
The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x
Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x
The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x
It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x
