Description

What's that one thing that turns a bad designer into a good one?

Music and links from this episode

1. No More Truth by ROZKOL
2. Sacred Motion by staRpauSe
3. End of the Line by H-LR

Line-by-line notes

1. INTRO
2. When you talk about what separates a great designer from a bad one
3. There’s lots of things that tend to come up
4. Passion
5. Intelligence
6. Talent
7. Location
8. Desire
9. But the biggest thing I think
10. And one that some people don’t appreciate
11. Is learning
12. And committing to a lifetime of learning
13. This is AADA and I’m Craig Burgess
14. PLAY MID SONG
15. Being a designer isn’t easy
16. It’s so important to keep up with so many things, and lots of these change A LOT
17. You’ve got to keep up with culture, to make sure the work you’re doing is relevant
18. You’ve got to keep up with the news and current events, to make sure you can ground your work in reality
19. And you’ve got to keep up with trends
20. Trends can be one the hardest to keep up with, and one of the most time consuming
21. Because trends are fickle
22. I’m not saying that designers should make trendy design
23. I’m the last person on earth to suggest that
24. But it’s important to understand current trends
25. To either implement them in your work
26. Or completely avoid them
27. So you can make your work look timeless but not old fashioned
28. There’s something else though that’s really important to a designer
29. And that’s technology
30. Technology changes so quickly
31. And designers need to keep up with it
32. It’s revolutionised and some may say democratised the world of design once before
33. With the introduction of the Macintosh
34. And I think we’re currently experiencing a similar thing again
35. With the rise of tablet devices
36. And the potential that a tablet device opens up for all kinds of design work
37. And rapid prototyping, just all sorts
38. But to make sure we keep up with all this stuff
39. We have to make sure we’re always learning
40. In another way, you could call it curiosity
41. Curiosity feeds a lot into this
42. And to be an amazing designer
43. Curiosity is really important
44. The best designers I know are perpetually curious about the world they live in
45. They don’t take anything at face value
46. They don’t see a news story and think that’s the full story
47. I think this is a thing of—and as much as I hate to say the term—being in marketing
48. Because we’re used to working for companies and—let’s face it—manipulating the public image of companies
49. We know and understand how easy it is to manipulate the public image of everything
50. That leads most designers to be generally cynical of most things they see
51. And that leads them to being curious to find out the truth
52. Also, when designers see a new style of work or a new website or a new thing they’ve never seen before
53. They want to know how to create it, and replicate it
54. Staying curious is so important, because if you don’t, you fall behind, and slowly become a worse designer
55. A designer’s journey is one that never ends
...