128 - Ego

What this episode covers

Ego is the enemy of any design project. Subscribe: ITUNES | ANDROID | STITCHER | RSS FEED Music and links from this episode Why I Can't Sleep With The Door Ajar by We Is Shore Dedicated Nothing (Bonus Track) by Kai Engel Mutations by Small Colin Line-by-line notes If we consider the task of making a website There’s several stages a project goes through Most of those stages are black and white, especially actually building a website But when design gets involved The ego starts to get in the way This is AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess MUSIC When you build something Like a wall for example There’s no black and white to that A wall either works It stays stood up for years and functions as a wall Or it doesn’t The wall falls down It’s very clean when the wall isn’t working, or doing its job There’s no emotional intricacies to deal with here Design is the exact polar opposite of this When you’re talking to somebody and telling them their logo will be green This can elicit a whole range of responses you can’t begin to even comprehend Ranging from things that make sense like My customer base won’t like the colour green To strange things like Green reminds me of grass and the countryside, and I don’t like that No matter how hard we try to stop it from being so Design is an emotional thing It isn’t as simple as a wall that either stands up or doesn’t Or a website that either works or not Design isn’t black and white, and it works on a thousand levels Most of all, design is subjective And that causes problems for everybody With subjectivity comes a much more insidious thing: ego The graveyard of failed design projects is full of gravestones that declare Ego was the problem And ego comes from everywhere It comes from the client thinking they know better than the professional designer they hired It comes from the marketing company thinking they know better than everybody else And worst of all, it comes from the designer thinking that they know better than everybody else in the world A designer with an ego is a useless designer That’s a fact A designer who sees their work as precious pieces of art that have been perfectly crafted isn’t a real designer Design is not art Design can be pretty, it can affect people’s emotions and decisions, but it’s not art Art is designed to affect an emotion Design is to communicate a message Art serves the artist Design serves the client or the purpose intended Design doesn’t serve the designer  And when a designer thinks it does, things go wrong really quickly Don’t get me wrong Designers should be passionate about doing a good job OF COURSE they should But that’s a fundamental difference Passion is not ego Passion is doing things with conviction And an ego usually negatively impacts anything it gets involved with I’m going to finish off with a depressing thing about design It’s not depressing if you already know it But it might be depressing if you’ve never considered it Good design Really good design Gets out of its own way Good design doesn’t get noticed Because its done it’s job The only people who notice good design is designers And design isn’t for designers MUSIC This was AADA and I’m Craig Burgess Music featured in this episode was Why I Can't Sleep With The Door Ajar by We Is Shore Dedicated Nothing (Bonus Track) by Kai Engel Mutations by Small Colin For a line by line rundown of this episode go over to askadesigneranythingdotcom/ep128 I’m back tomorrow Support Ask a Designer Anything Ask a Designer Anything Website Twitter (@craigburgess) Ask a Designer Anything on Facebook Leave me a review on iTunes