It's Not All About YOU.

When I first started learning graphic design and marketing in high school, I think I had a pretty simple idea of what the job was: You make things look good. You can do this using colour, typography, imagery, textures, blah blah blah.

But the longer I spend learning about design, the more I realize that making something look good is only a small part of the job. A huge part of design is having empathy.

I’d say putting yourself in the shoes of others is probably 60% of the job. Before you can decide what something should look like, you have to understand who you're making it for; who is the clientele? What deliverables do they require? What is their goal in using your services? What are they looking for, and why are they interested in your specific services? How will this be beneficial, and to whom? How will this help the client AND consumer?

Unless you've explicitly answered each of these questions before starting the brief, you're designing solely for yourself and your own visual pleasure; for 'creative lust' if you will.

Answering these questions applies even when you're designing for yourself. Empathy isn't exclusive to client work. It's a part of every design process because every design is made with someone in mind, even if that someone is you. If you're creating a passion project, you are the client. What are your goals? What do you want to get out of this project? How will it benefit you? Who are you trying to reach, and what do you want them to take away from it? Even when there isn't a paying client sitting on the other end of a zoom call, there is still a purpose behind the design.

Empathy is where I think design and marketing overlap so much.

Marketing is often reduced to selling a product or service and advertising, but good marketing requires you to understand the audience you're trying to reach. What do they care about? What problems do they have? What goals do they have that solving those problems might help them achieve? What piques their interest? How do you communicate with them in a way that is meaningful and memorable? You aren't marketing to yourself; you're trying to connect with a select ideal audience.

It's easy to design entirely around your own visual preferences. I like this font. I like these colours. I think this layout looks good. I understand what this icon means. But if I'm designing for someone else, none of those things matter very much if they don't work for that person.

And this is where accessibility becomes such an important part of design.

It's easy to forget how much information we take for granted when we're the person who created something. I know what my design says because I wrote it. I know where to look because I decided where everything goes. I know what an icon represents because I chose it.

The person experiencing it for the first time doesn't have any of that context.

What if they can't distinguish the colours I've chosen from one another? What if the text is difficult to read or is illegible? What if the hierarchy isn't clear? What if an icon that seems obvious to me isn't obvious to them? What if the way I've designed something assumes that everyone interacts with it in the same way that I do?

Good design is about considering how someone else will experience what you've made and empathizing with the experiences of others.

I honestly think that's one of the hardest parts of being a designer. You have to constantly remind yourself that your perspective isn't the only perspective that matters. Sometimes that means stepping into the shoes of your client. Sometimes it's the consumer. Sometimes it's your own shoes when you're creating something for yourself. And sometimes it's someone whose experience of your design is completely different from anything you anticipated.

You can make something that feels completely obvious to you and discover that nobody else understands it. You can think you've created the perfect colour palette and realize it doesn't have enough contrast. You can be convinced that your layout makes perfect sense until someone else looks at it and has absolutely no idea where they're supposed to look first.

And that's okay.

Being willing to discover that you're wrong fix things you may have overlooked is part of being a good designer.

Research, feedback, testing, accessibility, and simply listening to people all help you get outside of your own perspective. You can't always know exactly what someone else needs, but you can always make an effort to understand them.

The more I learn about design, the less I think the job is about making things pretty and the more I think it's about consideration.

Asking the questions that put you, as a designer, marketer, or creative, in the shoes of a client or consumer is just as much a part of design as choosing a typeface or building a colour palette.

Maybe that's why I think empathy makes up such a huge part of the job. The technical skills teach you how to make something, but empathy helps you figure out what you're making, who you're making it for, and why it needs to exist.

Design isn't just creativity. It's creativity with consideration.