Title: What Makes a Good Designer
Context: Design is a discipline, not a specialty.
Synopsis: Are you an iPhone app designer? A WordPress designer? An email designer? If you answered yes to any of those questions, good luck staying employed. Mastery of a very narrow slice of design should not be confused with mastery of design. Sure, it’s OK to have areas of expertise or specific skills, but if you can boil down your ability to a single platform or proprietary technology you are, at the precise moment you write it on your resume, obsolete. Tying your fortune to the fortune of somebody else’s business model is pure folly. The skills that it takes to produce a talented designer in the macro sense could never be fully captured by narrowing your focus within such tight tolerances. A good designer needs skills (plural), not just skill.
Best Bit: “At its core design is about communication, and to be able to communicate effectively you must first acquaint yourself with your audience. You must understand your audience.”
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