((( WIP )))
I saw this posted on Twitter the other day and was intrigued
I'm wondering what kind of career I should be aiming for. I'm already focusing on increasing my skills to help me do things that I like to do, but how can I strive for learning to do things that I'll be paid for?
I thought it might help to narrow down the things that I'm interested in to help me firgure out what kind of professions I can aim for so that I know exactly what skills I should be increasing/acquiring so that I'll eventually get paid for doing things I love.
I think there's sort of a hierarchy to my interests, and I think the top of it is:
Big-D Design seems to encapsulate many of the subsequent things I like doing.
Creativity with a purpose
I really enjoy designing. Whether it's understanding user needs, evaluating a process, making the most effective visual presentation of information, boiling things down, organizing things, eliminating things, separating things, and the list goes on.
The two pieces: Creativity and purpose are separately fun.
(They're also scary!)
The opportunity to create something new is extremely romantic for me. Figuring out the end-goal, fine-tuning the presentation, finding the edges, being challenged by the constraints, testing the result, iterating, re-purposing, discovering the secret sauce of a problem, and delighting the customer/user; all these things are invigorating to me!
To make a blank canvas less scary, you need
I need to visualize X so that we can figure out which Y does the most Z.
User stories, specific goals, questions that need answered, problems that need solved, processes that need improved. Having a direction to aim is what makes a blank canvas far less intimidating.
I've heard many creative people say that the worst thing that they could hear from a client is:
Just do whatever you want
Yikes. How about "No." Tell me what you need done, what the limits are, and when you need it by. Then I'd be happy to help design a solution for you. Without any of those, it's not just a blank canvas, but (to extend the art metaphor) a completely empty studio. No brushes, no oils, no watercolors, no charcoal, no pencils, no paper, no wall, no easel, no nothing. The client is effectively saying:
Go to the art store and pick out anything you want to do this for me.
How would one even do that? We don't know where you're hanging the result, who will see it, how well it's lit, what's around it, what the room's decor is like, what the mood of the space is, or how big it should be.