Growing Pains: What Being a Designer is Really All About

7 min readJan 14, 2019

I want to take a moment to reflect on my journey as a designer, and what it was like to struggle to recognize the professional aspect of the design industry.

Throughout my career as a designer, I’ve always had people from all directions telling me what I’m supposed to do, how I can be successful, and what the best pathway will be for my future. Everyone has an opinion about the right way to be a designer.

Except, it didn’t start until after I graduated college.

It’s funny how in school there is this strange misconception that all things design are meant to be guerilla warefare, humerous, impactful, monumental pieces of work. That it must be bold. It must be obnoxious. It must evoke immense reaction.

While all of these things, to some degree, may be true about design, in school it’s presented to students in a very misguided, art-hippy, kind of way. Free-spirited projects with no real-life context, no realistic deadlines or project briefs. Just a “choose your own adventure” style of work that really made design seem like a wide open playing field.

Let me tell you something right now, not everyone is the next Stefan Sagmeister, so you might as well put yourself in check right now.

The First Job

My first job out of college was extremely difficult. Not because I wasn’t qualified, I certainly knew my way around the Adobe programs, and I had a Pinterest board of design inspiration long enough to circle the globe a hundred times over, but because I wasn’t real-world prepared.

I’ve always been super passionate about what I do, and someone recognized that in me and offered me a job that launched my career. I set myself up for failure there from the start though, because my education didn’t teach me what I needed to in order to fulfill my duties as a designer for a REAL business, with REAL clients, and REAL organizational structure and hierarchy. I had to learn to play the game, and boy was I in for a ride.

I dove right in though, headstrong as ever and ready to demand that my way or the highway mentality I was instilled in college. After all, design is merely opinion, and you hired ME to do it, so you should listen to ME.

Absolutely, 100% false.

This was the first step to me understanding that my designs needed more purpose. My designs needed more intention. My designs needed more collaborative efforts. My designs needed more research.

My designs needed more than just me.

But I hadn’t quite pieced together this information yet. I would sit at my desk wondering why nobody would listen to me, and why every time I worked on something, it constantly had to be changed.

This is NORMAL. You are going to be challenged, you are going to be told no, you are going to be told to start-over. Don’t take it personally, as I always did, thinking a shot at my concept was a shot at my skills and abilities. I thought they didn’t respect me, I thought they didn’t think I was good enough, but what I failed to realize is that it had little to do with me as a person.

I’ll never forget the incredible people there, the talent they had, and the successes that I did have there, but I also want to recognize that they did not get the best of me, and I failed to see the need for more flexibility in my process and my thinking.

So I decided it was time to start looking for that validation elsewhere. There has to be a place that will listen to me, and value my opinion, I earned it!

My First Agency

And then it happened. I managed to put together a portfolio of work that convinced an agency I was a good designer, and I was offered my first agency job. Man. Was. I. Excited! The culture looked great, the workload was diverse, and bonus points for being closer to home.

Finally, people who understand me!

Unfortunately, this was not the case. I struggled, once again, to understand what it was like to have a real-world design job. I didn’t expect the structure of an agency to change so much, before I was working with an internal department, and I worked with the same few people on a day-to-day basis.

Agency life was much more than that, however. Each project had a different team of people, which meant more opinions, more direction, and more design-killing vibes…or so I thought.

I had much more freedom in this environment, though, to be more diverse with my designs, attributed to the variety of clientele. I was extremely satisfied with this but the fact is, I still refused to believe that if you didn’t have design creds, that you had any validity into what the final outcome of the project was. And I once again grew frustrated with the process.

I got scolded for being too vocal about my designs. I got warnings about being too headstrong with my approach. I was told that I don’t take feedback well. And thats really when it hit me.

I’m the type of person that will go out of their way to make sure someone else is succeeding. I always put others before me.

So to get feedback like that, once again, felt like a personal shot. How dare they misjudge my character like that! I was ready to fight for myself, but instead I took a different approach, I tried my best to take the advice to heart to prove them wrong by conforming.

Intrinsically though, I was still fighting the man, just inside my head instead of with my words. I was rather rebellious wherever I could be, because I was taught that my opinion was of the utmost importance and that designers should be on some kind of pedestal. I would always seek constructive criticism from my fellow designers, but would go out of my way to cut anyone else out of that feedback process. The less cooks in the kitchen the better, ya know?

I made some strong bonds with most of my, now, ex-teammates, at this agency, but I can certainly think of a few people who would have wished I came to my senses a lot sooner. It was a difficult way for me to learn, and to struggle, and I once again, realize I was not prepared for these situations.

Some Environments Are Toxic

It wasn’t all just misguided education, however. It became standard, at one point, for me to hear phrases like “Anyone can put pictures on a page” to “I have paint, I can just do it myself.” There was a lot of yelling from management, and any response other than absolute compliance was just another strike against you.

And I watched a lot of my colleagues suffer.

It was in those moments that I realized it was time for an environmental change. Time for me to surround myself with more constructive feedback. I wasn’t growing anymore, I was just being turned into some sort of program operator with no mind of her own.

I wasn’t prepared for toxicity.

I realized that, just as most of the instagram superstars will tell you, the life behind the picture is much less exhilarating. They really sold themselves well and I was fooled by faulty Glassdoor reviews and a misguided culture presence.

I want to note that I have first hand experienced people having truthful and valuable Glassdoor review’s removed from their website because the CEO managed to convince them it was some sort of hate crime. This happened at multiple jobs I’ve had in the past from reviews I have written and those colleagues of mine have written.
My advice would be to seek out people who actually work there, via LinkedIn or any other means, and pick their brains about what work life is like. And ask them for their honesty.

I want to recognize here, that there is also a culture surrounded by “my-way-or-the-highway”. I experienced this a lot. Which is why I struggled to understand why it couldn’t be my opinion that was followed. It was always people above me, and I realized then, that in the real-world, there are equally as many work environments that demand a specific method, or you just won’t fit it. The higher they were, the less likely they were to care about my vision.

So I packed my desk, and my relentless ego, and took it to my next opportunity.

Seeing the Pattern

Since then I’ve had a few more jobs, all agencies, all growing in size from the small-scale agency that first brought me on board. Each go-around I began to see a pattern, and the pattern wasn’t that everyone didn’t understand what design is all about, it’s that I wasn’t properly taught how to utilize my design knowledge in a real-world application.

Slowly I began seeking the opinions of others that had no involvement in my projects.

I began including other experts in the research I was doing, seeking advice and collaboration wherever I could.

I began to learn how other people did their jobs, so I could adapt my design thinking and behaviors to be more of a fit for their process, and intertwine the different departments.

I finally realized, that it is my job to understand everyone else.

It dawned on me much later than I’d like to admit, that design isn’t about the fun, whimsical senior project I did in college. It’s about making important information accessible to everyone and recognizing that people digest content differently.

Recognizing that everyone has a voice, and they just want to be heard, and finding a happy medium to be as inclusive as possible, without providing an absolutely atrocious experience, is how you can be the best designer for your organization.