The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Industrial Designers: Tuesday
This post continues our week long series, where by I will publish one of the seven habits on each day of the week. Here is the link to Monday’s post if you missed it.
Fly by VinnyPrime
2) Proactive, passionate, motivated and truly loves what he/she does
I can’t emphasize enough of the value of a proactive designer in any team or organization. More so than in any other profession, design deals with a lot of unknown, and a proactive designer, always passionate and eager, is a boon any project as you can be sure that he/she will have ensured that the best design solution has been sorted out and worked through to the end.
Furthermore, believe you me, that the majority of design work is not the glitz and glamour of the so-called genius concept or sketch, awards and the sexy rendered coffee book images. A lot of it is managing piles of issues, tiring nights, and sometimes just down right dirty work. The pro-active and motivated design is a positive influence in the team, chewing through the work like a paper shredder.
There will be times where there are jobs nobody wants to do, but it has to be done. For example, after the team pulls an all nighter, someone needs to reposition a logo. Or everybody wants to jump on that sexy mobile phone project for a high profile client, instead of that latch design for a back room server. The pro-active designer takes on the job, and treats it as a learning experience, and that through these hard knocks he/she will become a better designer.
edit: I think there is one more attribute that I forgot to put into the mix, that should be in there, as it sums it all up. An effective designer has to truly love what he/she does. When there is love, the proactive information searching and motivation comes naturally. The problem with many designers, especially with the senior designers, is that they are all jaded after too many late nights and design constraints and forget what they loved about design in the first place. If this is the case, then its time to stop, take stock of your work and life, and perhaps decide to move to a different design environment.
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I do hope you enjoyed Tuesday’s entry; do check out Wednesday’s post after you are done with this?
DT
August 29, 2007 at 12:14 amHi Drew,
Yes it sort of like a “who moved my cheese” but in reality, its always better to be moving, being stagnant is a killer of creativity!
drewkora
August 28, 2007 at 11:50 pmBeing proactive is uber-important. I’ve found that it’s how you get the opportunities to do really unique, cool work. The downside is that being proactive also means giving a lot of time and energy to something that might have otherwise been kept simple or not been your project in the first place. But yeah, I’d rather be busy with a lot of cool projects than get bored jsut designing for the status quo.
DT
August 28, 2007 at 8:24 pmHi saiko,
Thanks so much! It’s great to hear of such feedback and do stay tuned!
saiko
August 28, 2007 at 8:06 pmthis is a great topic you have started,
so far i totally agree with you.
awaiting to see the next installments.