5 hard truths for young designers

by Tobias van Schneider
Published Jun 4, 2024

Stop reading right now if you’re looking for feel-good advice. This is not going to be that kind of article.

This is the kind of "bitter pill to swallow" advice my loving mother gave me when I was a teenager.

It’s the kind of advice my greatest mentors from the past would have given me. Mentors I call mentors for a reason, even if I didn’t like what they had to say in that moment. The words I didn’t want to hear, but needed to hear. Even today.

The best advice I've received in my career was from people who didn't care about my feelings, but cared about me becoming a better designer. After all, that’s what I wanted (and still want) to be.

If you’re not yet alarmed by this intro, keep reading ↓

1. Nobody owes you anything. You deserve nothing, you earn everything.

You’re young. You just finished studying (or not). You think you know everything. You think the world owes you: An interesting job. A great team. A high paying salary.

But in reality, nobody owes you anything. There are thousands of designers like you, millions even. And this isn’t meant to make you feel bad. It’s meant to make you feel motivated, to be and become better than those around you. Or just better than who you were yesterday. Respect is earned, not given.

Be humble and confident at the same time. Expect nothing, but take what you can and make the best out of what you have.

The beauty of climbing a mountain is to climb it, not to magically appear at the top.

2. Blaming others gets you nowhere.

It’s easy to blame your boss. It’s easy to blame your client. I did it, and you did it too. But sometimes we have to know where the line ends.

If your 10th client project happens to be a "client from hell" project, you may have to take a closer look at yourself, because the one thing they all had in common — Is you.

This isn’t about your ego. This isn’t about being hard on yourself and falling into a deep depression. Once again, knowing that the only person you can effectively blame is yourself, can empower you. This is about you advancing in your career and becoming better at what you do. Once you realize it all lies with you, YOU now have all the power you were giving to others before.

The only way to become better is by changing what is in your control, and most likely that is yourself. The way you work, the way you communicate. Blaming someone else closes one door and tends to help very little. Taking on responsibility opens a thousand more doors for yourself. And I say this, even at the chance that you have every right to blame someone else. Because even then, it's rarely helpful.

Blaming others is the easy way out. You can do it at any point in your life, but it's worse when you do it when you're young and inexperienced. It's a lovely escape, I do and did it too, but if you indulge in it for a little too much you'll get lost in it.

3. Nobody owes you feedback on your work

As designers we always think that it is our RIGHT to receive good feedback. We believe (perhaps due to formal schooling, or just lack of real-world experience) that we are entitled to receive constructive, well structured, helpful and ideally friendly feedback. We want it exactly the way it suits us. But the reality can't be further away.

If someone does give you great detailed feedback, then that is due to the goodwill and perhaps the communicative skill of the other person. But you can’t expect it in the same way as expecting others to say “bless you“ when you sneeze. They might do it, but they don’t have to. It’s their courtesy.

Get off your high horse. Work with what you got. If you want better feedback, ask better questions.

Good feedback is a luxury, not a right.

4. Your creative director isn’t your savior

The role of the creative director is to creatively guide you. They’re not there to do your work, even though they may be able to. You can’t expect a CD to tell you each and every single step of what to do, because that defeats the purpose entirely. That’s what you are here for.

Whatever you get from a creative director, is what you get. Take it. Some are better, many are worse. And most are just different from each other.

A great creative director knows when they see great work, but someone still has to produce the great work, and that’s you. You may wonder "Well why they don’t just do it themselves then?" — Well, here's a different question: If they could do it entirely themselves, what do they need you for?

Think of your CD more like a partner. They try to do their job, and you try to do yours. And in reality, if the work ends up being bad, it's the creative director who gets the blame for it. They're in it as much as you are, and likely even more.

The beauty of the creative director relationship is that YOU might be able to do the work, but the creative director is able to tell if its good work or if it isn't. You might be too inexperienced to tell the difference, but one day you will, and that's when you become the creative director. But it's a long journey to get there.

(and yes, there are also a lot of bad creative directors out there, the title alone means nothing)

5. You’re responsible for your own growth

There's this strange misconception that it is the role of the company or manager to be responsible for your growth. At some companies this might be true, but if it is, then I'd consider this a luxury and you're lucky to have someone who cares about your personal trajectory. But most of the time, this is not the case.

If you feel stagnant at your job, you don't have to wait around for your company or manager to do something about it. Take matters into your own hands. Take responsibility and grow. Decide what you want, and then take it (or pursue it). I know this is difficult because the chance of failure and rejection is high, but the alternative is doing nothing and then blaming other people for nothing happening (see #1 above).

I fell into this trap many times myself, hoping for a company to help me realize MY dreams... only to learn that absolutely nothing is going to happen if I'm not the one doing it.

You'll meet all kinds of wonderful people in your career. Take what you can, but keep your expectations low and move with purpose. Mentors change all the time, and sometimes you didn't even know that someone was a mentor until years later when you realize how much they helped you, without you even knowing.

In the end, it's all you

Perhaps that's the single takeaway from this essay. It's the advice I need to hear myself from time to time. It all starts with me, and it ends with me.

I had a lot of weird expectations as a young designer. I blamed my boss, I blamed my clients, my co-workers. I expected everything, but I offered nothing. I was just a kid with dreams and somehow I assumed everyone around me is just here to help me make my dreams become reality. Only until I learned, everyone is too busy with their own dreams. Just like them, I don't need permission and I don't need to wait around for others to help me achieve mine.