Early in my career, I was like many other designers. I thought Apple was the second coming. I cared about typefaces too much, enough that it became a bit of a personal brand at parties. And in my work practice, I’m certain I was insufferable.

This is a big problem with design. We feel that we’re right, and we’re ostensibly hired for our expertise. But a few things are true:

• Other people can and do practice design.
• Actually designing something is 1% of the work. Basically no work.
• Other team members have their own motivations for how and why something ships.
• Snobbery isn’t a good look.
• Nobody tells designers any of this.

And so we go on thinking we’re the most important part of the organization, and we wonder why others simply don’t understand us.

Our field has never been good at mentorship or apprenticeship, and nobody is hiring junior designers anymore, so it’s only gotten worse. For those who remain, you’ll find the right information if you’re lucky and if you’re receptive to it, neither of which are guaranteed.

Because this stuff is really challenging! Nobody wants to hear that they built this whole cool worldview for years, and then they have to put it all aside to handle, god help us, workplace politics. I’d personally love nothing more than to be handed a quarter mil every year and given a fun sandbox to play in. Reality is harsher.

Which is not to say that design is irrelevant or not worth pursuing. It’s just different than we thought it would be.

The practice of design is threefold:

1. Research. You expected this reading a letter from me, right? Design is grounded in evidence that responds to customer needs.
2. Consensus. It’s extremely rare for design to have executive power. As a result, design lives & dies on the approval of others. Your persuasive abilities are critical to the work. In many ways they are the entire work.
3. Execution. Nobody ever shipped a comp to a customer. Design is holistic, too, involving performance, copy, behavior and appearance. Design works across disciplines and involves measurement, code, and writing.

Again, nobody tells you any of this! Which is wild, because it’s essential to any successful career. Then again, if there was any time for design to go through a “reckoning,” it would be now, wouldn’t it?