Week 08: Discuss your skills as a designer
What are your skills? What are the gaps?
Write a list of your current skills and a separate list outlining the skills that you want to acquire. This can include ways of working, thinking or an area of knowledge you wish to develop.
Create a ‘process model’ which summarises the skills you currently possess and the gaps you wish to fill.
This piece of work could be a diagram, a 3D statement that clearly communicates a thought process relevant to you at this moment (how you deal with weaker skill gaps and how you maximise your talents), a statement, a model, a tool.
Upload to the ideas wall a link to your blog demonstrating further reflection.
A list of my skillsets - Does it matter?
I started off by making a list of the skills I have and the gaps I currently have. I am probably approaching this vert differently having just turned 50, than I would have at any other stage in my life:
In my 20s I lacked experience and confidence,
In my 30s, having a young family, I was too exhausted to learn new skills,
In my 40s, I knew extending my skillset was incredibly important and tried to fit it in around growing my business
Now I have just turned 50, I have more time to refocus on filling in the holes that currently complement my skill set and I am aware there are some skills that don’t interest me, or I have the time to learn and I’m okay with that.
My current skills
Skillset - My list
I feel very fortunate to have been a graphic designer for 20+ years, but I have also seen an incredible amount of changes and would never be complacent in such a fast-paced industry environment.
When it came to thinking about my skillset, I realised there are loads of skills I feel confident about, but when I thought about it I started doubting myself! How well really do I know photoshop, when was the last time I learnt something new in Indesign, do I really know half of what Adobe illustrator does?
Desired/Required skills
My list - What I need to work on…
With my background, I normally gravitate towards the ‘design for print’ jobs where I feel confident.
Covid 2020 lockdown was a turning point where I realised I needed to expand my ‘digital skillset’ and I pivoted my layout design into creating basic websites and digital email campaigns.
I’d love to learn Adobe After Effects and make spinning logo stings! As most of my presentations to clients are now online it would be great to make them more interactive.
On a personal level, I am rubbish at delegating, and often work long hours as I want to complete the project (control freak) instead of handing it to another designer who would be equally capable. I’ve dipped my toe in recently at web design and quite enjoy it, but feel I’ve come late to the game as there is soooo much to learn.
Grading my skillset - my process
Research
I created a simple ‘process model’ and decided to grade my skill set from 1-100 depending on how confident I was with the subject. I realised this didn’t make much sense. What was I marking my skill on?
For example, although I have many years of experience using Indesign, but I probably use the half the tools, pages and layout options based on the similar routine of work I produce, and probably don’t know half of what the features do.
Researching process models.
I realised the stats of the process model reminded me of the Top Trumps card game I used to play as a kid and thought it would be fun for my piece of work to be based around the same principles.
I researched the most popular versions to see how they broke down the various categories to give them the Top Trumps rating.
Most Top Trump packs contain 30 cards but I settled for 7 examples.
I realised I needed to be more specific about what I was grading myself on.
For instance with Adobe Indesign:
Experience - How many years been using 86%
Knowledge - In-depth knowledge of programme 68%
Creativity - Ability to design with the tools available 77%
Speed - Can quickly produce to brief specifications 82%
How I concluded on my Total Rating - I added my individual stats up and divided by 4 to equal the Top Trumps Rating (Indesign = 78%).
Indesign was easy as I feel confident in this programme. This isn’t the case in all of my skillsets!
Workshop challenge wk 08 - Final piece
Top Trumps
I loved the Oblique Strategy set of cards Brian Eno had produced for promoting creativity, so I decided to work on my own based on the Top Trumps card game. This would break down my statistics on how familiar I was with each creative skill set and award an overall rating at the end. Please note I have made this the 2023 Edition - maybe I’ll revisit and update in 2025?!
Reflection:
I think the learning objective this week has been fascinating in how we address the gaps in our skillset. For instance, I’ve always been embarrassed by my childish doodles as opposed to the professional illustrative talents I’ve seen elsewhere. But this has never held me back, from communicating as a graphic designer, and I know my skillset is strong in other areas, and I’m fine with that!
I think it has been a great challenge this week, with how we address the gaps in our skillset. Should it bother us that we don’t know every creative programme? Are employers and clients being unrealistic in expecting designers to have a general knowledge in ALL areas of graphic design rather than a specialist skillset area in a specific few?