How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Close The Gap
I’m going to start this off with a quote from Ira Glass that I hope many people in my position (i.e. those trying to enter a creative field) are familiar with. It’s long. You can always skim, I guess.
All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. […] You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
That’s a solid sentiment, right? I forget where I first read it, and don’t normally go in for quotes, but I feel like Ira is describing something true. Anyone who makes anything can feel the agony of influence. That’s something to which I’ve found myself especially susceptible, and I’ve let it cage me in.
Normally, I work on BuzzFeed’s IT team. It’s a busy job that involves a lot of communication and troubleshooting, but it doesn’t require any creative output. I’m interested in design, and I’ve done freelance web design/development in the past, but because of the cage I could never bring myself to apply for jobs in those fields. And then I drunkenly let this all slip to Cap at a party that IT and Product Design had, and he was like “Why the hell are you not working for us? Come do a residency!”
So, out of the blue, I’ve had the unique and terrifying opportunity to be a part of the product design team. Unique because I have no professional experience as a designer, and have done very little to prove that I can be one. Terrifying because I am embarrassed of everything I have ever made, and whenever I have to show my work to anyone I want to apologize and leave.
Every step of the way these people shown me the value of doing work, and how to focus on that instead of constantly comparing my work to everyone else’s. I’ve had to fight my way through my own insecurity. It’s been a sudden and exciting period of growth for me, so I thought I’d write down some of the best things I’ve learned so far.
Standards are important.
Standards are probably more important than taste or instinct. At BuzzFeed we have a CSS framework called Solid that we uses as a starting point for site designs. We templatize things in Sketch so they’re ready for quick mockups. Solid’s visual treatment guidelines and ratios have been agreed upon by the product design team, so they keep critiques out of the weeds. It’s easier to give and get feedback when people don’t have to ask questions about symmetry, hierarchy, borders, and button proportions. They prevent you from having to think too hard about hierarchy and spacing while you’re working, too. Standards will set. You. Free.
Process is meaningful.
Anything that helps you break down the big, subjective problem you want to solve is meaningful, actually. The BuzzFeed design process is really a useful way to think about all kinds of problems, because it breaks the act of solving them down into shades of directness. First you define your problem at large, then you collect information about it and come up with possible solutions in a noncommittal way, then you pick through that information and those solutions, keeping what’s most relevant/useful. And your teammates help you along the way. (The whole process is laid out here if you’re interested.) No matter how big the problem is, the pressure isn’t on to solve it right away. You just have to make a space that everyone can get their heads into whenever they want to think about it. Google Docs are good for creating and sustaining that!
Every idea you throw away will come up in critique eventually.
Especially if you don’t bring it up. If you reject an idea, make sure you have a defensible reason for doing so. Don’t be afraid to come back to something you initially threw out, either! As a wise LA-based product designer once said: Time spent is not time wasted. Frustration and self doubt are not defensible reasons to throw something out, but you’re definitely going to feel those. You just have to understand them as part of the problem-solving process. You’re feeling frustration so that the people who eventually use your thing won’t have to.
The best visual designs take user experience into account.
When you are building a tool, good user flow means more than a nicely-gridded layout in the end. Good user flow represents time spatially, respects user habits and design patterns, and understands the power of color/emphasis to draw focus. It won’t be what you first arrive at, and you can’t always apply a formula to achieve it. User experience is one of the things that critiques can be most useful for! And also not, because other designers tend to see things a certain way. So make sure to talk to your actual users a lot!
Criticism is a healthy and good sign, even if it makes you feel sad.
Getting 23 criticisms and 1 compliment in a critique is a good thing. More critical feedback = more opportunities to identify and patch up the holes that are causing your boat to take on water. When you’re learning, especially if (as Ira Glass said above) you have taste, it can hurt to see everything needing immediate and sustained improvement so badly. When your teammates point out a misstep, even when they do it nicely and softly, while stroking your hair (no, nobody ever did that to me here), it suddenly seems so stupid and obvious. This is actually an important feeling that you should cherish, because it’s the feeling of active learning. You will not always get to feel this; to mix it with shame is a big waste of time and energy. So take notes, or, better yet, have someone else take notes for you!
I shared these takeaways in our year-end crit, and the team agreed that I’ll be learning many of these lessons (especially the one about taking criticism) forever. Even if I make bad stuff, I trust my methods and the people around me to correct for my inexperience. They don’t want me to be good, they want me to get better. They look at themselves and their products as works in progress, forever improving but never complete. And that, also, feels like the truth!
