As Malcolm Gladwell set out to prove in his book,
Outliers, people are not born with talent contrary to popular belief.
Gladwell even questioned whether Mozart was truly a child prodigy. When you do the research, you find that the most
brilliant people are brilliant because they put in more hours of work than any
of their peers to become the best.
Moreover, lucky timing played a huge role in their success.
The internet and technology has made it more difficult for
many creative types to make a living. It seems everyone is an amateur writer,
photographer, or interior designer now, and many who used to get paid for these
professions now suffer too much competition from those that are willing to
provide the goods for free. The iPhone
makes it possible to take some really cool photos, and it’s tempting to think
that some of your photos are just as good as that of a professional. The difference is that a professional’s
photos are consistently good. Even when
the lighting is bad, the space they’re photographing is the size of a closet, or
there is a bad glare bouncing off a mirror, they have the skills needed to
address those issues quickly and easily.
But most people simply don’t know what they don’t know, and they don’t understand
how complicated something is until they’ve been hired for a job and it’s going sideways
fast.
Design websites, blogs, and You Tube have all made a ton of
information available. The playing field
has been leveled, and that’s great if you’re a creative who wants to redecorate
your house or take some cool photos for friends. Yet having the tools is not the same thing as
knowing what to do with the tools. I’m a
huge fan of the TV show “The Big Bang Theory.”
In one episode, Sheldon “learns” how to swim by watching tutorials on
the internet. You can’t learn how to
swim without doing it. And you can’t become
an amazing swimmer without a coach, competitions, and many hours of practice. Similarly, it takes some form of education
and/or an apprenticeship to understand proportion, rhythm, symmetry, asymmetry,
color theory, composition, transitions, building codes, constructability - all
the things one needs to know to be a good designer. It takes studying and working under the
supervision of experienced mentors for numerous years. This is why I advise creative young people to
work for someone else for at least 5-10 years before working for themselves. It takes working on hundreds of projects,
because there’s something to be learned from every single project. And it takes making mistakes – the very
quickest way to learn a lesson - and knowing when you've made mistakes, so they won't be repeated.
It’s true that good design, like good art whatever that is,
is somewhat subjective. And even the
experts don’t make a slam dunk 100% of the time. But experts will be consistently good and
efficient.
