Comments on: Talent Isn’t Everything

By: hansvon200

hansvon200 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

“Avoid gossip and talking ill of fellow coworkers, clients, and competing studios.” – bah Humbug. Great Gossip is a fabulous ice breaker and shows you care for the industry and are aware of the market. As long as it is juicy and funny. I don’t know, it seems like you forgot to add “Be an android.” – if this list is really what it takes, I don’t want to be a successful designer anymore. And surely not at Meta.

By: mcran2

mcran2 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

So often I encounter junior designers that want to be “idea people.” While I greatly respect the power of ideas, someone has to execute them. As an interactive producer I greatly value talent, but also greatly value the ability to execute ideas. A humble attitude mixed the tips mentioned in this article could serve any new designer very well in starting on the path to becoming a creative professional.

By: designerd

designerd — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Communication:
This has to be polished to a professional extent. Newbies need to practice clear communication in order to articulate their ideas to the clients at times. Clear and professional communication also helps in defining the exact goal of the UI exercise and helps to eliminate ambiguity. Junior designers need to practice writing professional emails and polish their talk as well.
Subset : Vocabulary:
Again from a professional perspective, designers need to learn the talk. Know and practice using UI jargons, read a lot for the same. Designers need to be armed with examples for every UI design they suggest as well. Clients, often from the business side, need to be given examples they know & UI’s they have seen, to understand things better.
My two cents.

By: kathy

kathy — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Nice article. Good advice for experienced, as well as beginning, designers.

By: ttorres

ttorres — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

It’s not enough to anticipate problems. You also have to explore solutions to those problems. Nobody likes the person who always points out what’s wrong with an idea or what could go wrong with a plan. But if you point out the problem and suggest some possible solutions, then you are being productive as opposed to just critical.

Otherwise, a good article.

By: regnard

regnard — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

“Alert managers when work falls out of the project scope.”

Easier said than done. But it’s really better to be upfront about project delays. Perhaps there are good recommendations on how to be the bearer of bad news?

By: cwodtke

cwodtke — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

When I managed a team of designers, I used to say, you HAVE to give me an estimate. And You HAVE to learn how to geg good as estimating the time it takes to do you work. And I want you to tell me 12-24 hours in advance when its’ gonna be late (even 2 hours is better than not at all). BUT you won’t get in trouble. But if the due date ever comes, and your work isn’t there and you didn’t warn me ahead of time. your ass is mine. All is forgiven, unless I get bad surprises.

As a manager my job was to protect and grow my designers as professionals. But that means knowing what’s up. If a project does get out of scope, better i knew that ahead of time– even if the designer might still make deadline– than find out from an angry client. More over, when a designer tells me these things, I can help them deal with it– advise how to handle growing scope, advise how to deal with floating deadlines. Something I can’t do if I don’t know what’s going on.

By: cwodtke

cwodtke — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

By: dglaze

dglaze — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

As someone who’s been managing designers for about 20 years, I can say “I half agree”. While it’s true that success for a young designer typically does include on the kinds of skills described in this article, it would be a mistake to undervalue talent in the mix. A junior designer who is organized, productive, detail-oriented, positive and communicative but not a particularly talented designer is often destined to find his or her career path shifting towards Production, running a studio, or becoming a Creative Services manager. All noble callings to be sure, and invaluable to the success of any design firm, but not necessarily the designer’s original goal.

I find points 1 (Work quickly. Produce a lot.) and 3 (Be versatile.) to be particularly problematic in this regard. These are great traits, to be sure, but pointless if the output is not good. Quickly produced reams of mediocre, off-target or un-executable work is far less valuable than a few well-conceived concepts. Ditto for versatility…being able to do mediocre work in different styles is a questionable skill at best.

By: rahelab

rahelab — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Talent isn’t *all* you need, but talent *is* definitely part of what you need to be great at design. Just as some will never be great dancers or musicians, some will never be great designers. It’s the talent that gets you to a certain point, and the work ethic that takes you the rest of the way. I’ve supervised my share of designers, and have seen the various mixes of high-talent/low-habits, low-talent/low-habits, and low-talent/high-habits, and high-talent/high-habits. The first two might are the same nightmare in the workplace – missed deadlines, sloppy deliverables, and eventually departmental dissent as coworker resentment rises. Of course, we all want to work with high-talent/high-habit designers, but I’ll take an average-talent/high-habit designer any day, particularly in a junior position where they have the opportunity to bust out and gain confidence.