
Why Can't Startups Find Designers? - sgdesign
http://thenextweb.com/dd/2012/03/31/why-cant-startups-find-designers/
======
dustingetz
_A related pitfall is insisting on hiring the absolute best designers. If your
startup is only a couple months old, what makes you think an established
designer will put their freelancing or agency career on hold to join you on
your wild adventure?_

same for engineers. roll through the YC startup list, probably half of them
are a business model and a rails app.

but you know what? it doesn't matter if they want to say they want the best
engineers in their job post. They will attract the type of people they need.
We've all heard "A hires A and B hires C", and, well, a twenty something
hacker probably isn't trying to attract someone _better_ than him, because,
then, why isn't the new hire the CTO?

Engineers and designers exist on a spectrum of value. The businesses that need
the best, run by the best, know how to attract the best. The ones that are
solving less hard technical problems (but maybe really interesting business
problems), they say they only hire the best, but they don't actually need the
very best, and this isn't a bad thing. This is all self-evident, and yet
people somehow continue to match themselves with the right opportunities, so
who the hell cares.

Let's all just stop writing about it, yeah?

------
ubuwaits
Another issue that I've personally run across is negotiating how much control
a (non-founding) designer has over the product.

In an early stage startup, it makes sense that one of the founders will run
the product side of the company. But really good designers often want to have
a good amount of control over the product, knowing that putting a glossy
coating on a product with bad UX is a losing proposition.

This often means getting more involved in product
research/strategy/prioritization process. This can be problematic, since non-
founding designers are often hired mostly for their UI design/front-end
implementation skills.

My feeling is that very good designers are ideally suited to taking a larger
role in running the product side of the company. If startups are willing to
offer this, I think they can lure more good designers to their company.

Personally, this is the position I'm in. I'm an experienced designer, looking
for an early stage startup to work with. Many founders I speak with are
hesitant when I say that I'm interested in working on the big picture vision
for the product. I'm still looking for the right fit in this regard.

~~~
wpietri
I agree with you entirely about the extent to which design is integral. I
don't think design and making are effectively separable activities in
software, especially at a startup.

But I think that doesn't mesh well with what a lot of people who identify as
designers see as their role. From your portfolio you clearly don't fit the
stereotype I'm describing, but a lot of self-identified designers (especially
those with an agency background) want a lot of power to control others, rather
than direct ability to create themselves. That is, they define "design" as
something separate from coding, shipping, supporting, and studying the usage
of a product.

That kind of hands-off approach to design won't work in a startup smaller that
a dozen people or so; there just isn't enough of it to do. And even if there
were, that sort of designer becomes a bottleneck, slowing iteration and
reducing effectiveness. That's especially bad at small startups, because, as
you say, at least one founder already believes they can do a lot of that work.

In your shoes, I'd look for a company where _everybody_ is involved in product
research, strategy, and prioritization. Sure, you'll do a lot of front end
implementation to begin with, because that's what a startup needs. But if you
also pick up some product tasks (e.g., organizing user tests, distilling site
data into useful feature guidance, solving business problems via feature
changes) I think you'll end up with the kind of involvement you want.

~~~
kylebrown
> _In your shoes, I'd look for a company where everybody is involved in
> product research, strategy, and prioritization._

Speaking as one member of a three-person startup which is struggling to
operate like this, I'm skeptical that such a company can work well. Three
opinionated co-founders is a crowd; I can't imagine that having more would
help. It might work in a case where there is a clear vision is which is shared
by all members, but then the product development would already be more-or-less
done.

There needs to be one founder or maybe two, who can lead the team by earning
their trust. Loyal team-members will work like dogs; without that
trust/loyalty (which again, needs to be bought or earned) you're herding cats.

The GP should find a compatible co-founder. With three co-founders (in our
case at least), shipping a product is like stuffing three cats into one
wrapped gift box.

~~~
aapl
I'm a big fan of the model of teamwork where everyone is welcome to offer
their opinion on and spend a bit of time thinking about and working on any
aspect of the product, but there are fairly clearly defined responsibilities
regarding who has the final say on what goes to the final product. Or to put
it other way, everyone is involved in everything, but each thing has only one
person responsible for it.

------
wpietri
Two interesting issues I've come across:

1) A lot of designers work at an agency at one point or another. The
environment there encourages behavior very different than what startups need.
E.g., long cycles vs rapid iteration, "final" deliverables vs incremental
release, an emphasis on what clients want vs what users need, hopping from
project to project vs really digging in on one thing, ability to specialize vs
necessity of being an adequate generalist, high-church design vs getting one's
hands dirty, and being hip vs being passionate.

2) One gets to be a really good designer by designing a lot of different
things and keeping very current on trends. But startups require a long-term
focus on a single product, which takes people out of the design game. That's a
very hard sell.

At our startup we outsource individual pieces of design (e.g., logo creation,
color and layout selection, coming up with a new look for something). But that
ends up serving as raw material for the in-house activities. Most of the
design ends up being done by the product manager, the engineers, or both
collaboratively. That works for us because we do a lot of user testing and
iterate frequently, and also because we know when to hand some piece of visual
creation off to an expert.

~~~
ux_designer
This contributes to the problem the article illustrates. You outsource your
design, as you put it the "logos, color and layout selection, or a new look
for something," and then say that the PM and engineers wing the UI and UX?

So you outsource your design and art, and then don't even really have a
resource, outsourced or not, for user experience.

Also, it's quite a shame that you're associated designers with being "hip and
not passionate" and "specializing and not being an adequate generalist."

Imagine if your post was reversed, and described why design-based startups
can't find good programmers. All the pejorative "this vs. that" statements you
could write about a programmer and what their "environment encourages."

~~~
irahul
> Imagine if your post was reversed, and described why design-based startups
> can't find good programmers. All the pejorative "this vs. that" statements
> you could write about a programmer and what their "environment encourages."

I imagined it. And?

There are places where programmers are treated as commodity, and there are
places where programmers are prized possessions, and same holds for design,
business, sales or any other stream of work. If I feel that all I need is
someone to do a $25 logo because basically I don't give a shit about the logo
and code is what that matters, it's totally my prerogative. I am under no
obligation to appease random people's sense of entitlement.

If you run a design shop or are one of those "idea guys" who need a code
monkey to do the easy job of coding so that you can work on the hard parts,
would I do it? Fuck no. But that doesn't mean there aren't people who would do
it or you are wrong to have such expectations.

I don't know why people feel that the whole world owe them something, and
complain about being prosecuted when their perceived debt isn't paid.

------
andrewfelix
Bullshit. The article offers a couple of anecdotes to support the argument.
There are thousands of talented designers looking for work. The problem is a
lot of startups are unwilling to invest in good creative. Good designers cost
money. I'm a designer and get peppered with requests for work. However I get
offered peanuts. One startup looking to compete with Flow was only willing to
pay $1000 for a website design, another wanted a logo done for $60. If you're
a startup and you believe in your product, back yourself and back good
creative.

~~~
ryen
I think a big part of the problem is sites like 99designs and crowdspring that
de-value the creative and design process to pennies on the dollar. These sites
turn great artists into sweatshop workers.

------
dm8
As briefly mentioned in the article, all startups want "unicorn designers". A
person who is good at Visual Design, Front end skills, Interaction Design,
Content Strategy, Usability, A/B Testing etc. is very very rare. And
recruiting that peson for your startup is impossible unless your startup is
awesome like Dropbox or Instagram. It'd be better if founders look for any two
of the aforementioned skills and let the person grow in that role. There are
lot of designers in the valley but everyone is looking for "unicorn designers"

~~~
wyclif
Yep, very true and very insightful. But you can't tell these people to hire
someone with talent and help them grow into the role. Startups have imbibed
the unicorn philosophy that they must have a multitasking design "rockstar" or
"ninja" and they won't accept anything less. Then they wonder why the job has
been open for half a year and they can't find a designer that "fits."

~~~
dm8
Exactly. And such job postings also create negative effect. I'm a
designer/engineer hybrid and some of my designer friends cringe when they see
"we want unicorn designer who can manage everything" postings. Because:

1.It shows founding team has no design experience, which means designer's
voice can be undermined (which is the major gripe for lot of designers)

2\. Founding team has no clue about what they want to do on product design

As saying goes, if you are not technical then god help you to hire rockstars
engineers on your startup. Same can be said, if your founding team lacks
design talent/experience then it will be hard for you to hire ninja designer.

Tip: Ask your designer friends to help you out with hiring other designers if
you lack design talent in founding team. From wording of your job posting to
portfolio reviews.

------
rythie
I think designers prefer to work on many sites a year, especially the good
ones and that's how they got so good. Having a full time job working on one
site, doesn't really suit that - for example how many times you can redesign
the website before you annoy the users? (Imagine being the designer for Gmail
for example)

Programmers are much more comfortable working on one project for a long time,
since it's actually easier and you get deeper into the coding problems.

~~~
sgdesign
On the contrary, it can be a lot more gratifying for a designer to be deeply
involved in a product's design and make a long-term vision come to life. Gmail
is not a good example since it's a fairly mature product, but I'm pretty sure
a designer will never run out of things to do at most startups.

------
ux_designer
I'm a 100% creative type. I used to be a visual designer, and now I focus on
UX design with visuals taking a secondary role. As just the type of designer
they are describing, Don Draper on Mad Men summed it up:

"[...]we’re the least important, most important thing there is.”

Traditionally, design (and user experience) is the last thing to be added, and
the first thing to be cut. If you have 2 founders, a business guy, and a
engineer, you can make a product. No design required. But a designer and a
business guy? They can make a prototype, but nothing functional.

And we live in a world (the startup, internet world) where function always
supersedes form. For every 1 site with good design and bad functionality,
there are 50 with bad design and good functionality.

It just so happens that a great many startups are started by technical people.
And typically, they can develop a working product, or very advanced prototype,
with no designer help at all. And when you add in the "inmates are running the
asylum" mentality, most technical founders and engineers don't notice/care if
their design (ux, ui, graphic arts) aren't superb because that's just
"lipstick and lace."

There are a lot of engineers and technical founders that realize this isn't
the case, but they are in the minority.

------
pg
I believe these guys are trying to help with that: <http://www.scoutzie.com/>

~~~
joseakle
Great, thanks. Have they thought about hiring themselves to make the site
friendlier to mobile browsers? If you know them, could you tell them please? I
already did, but i guess coming from you the signal would be stronger. I had a
hard time browsing on my phone.

------
rjurney
Startups need designer co-founders. Design is that essential. Instead startups
try to _hire_ a founder role. And that is a shitty deal few would take.

~~~
wpietri
You overstate your case quite a bit. There are a lot of products for which
great visual design or very-well tuned usability are, frankly, not necessary
for market success. Consider, for example, this very site. Some startups do
indeed need great design, though.

Even for those startups where design is crucial, I think I'd only go as far as
saying that the founding team needs someone with a strong design sense and
some specific design skill. But that person needs to be a lot more than a
designer.

Consider Chad Hurley, for example. YouTube beat out many competitors partly
because of a much more usable design. But Hurley was also CEO and head of
product, and he handed off the details of design early on to others. Even
years later he still reviewed all the new features before they went live, but
that's much more about his ability to evaluate design (and design's impact on
metrics, which YouTube used heavily) than it is about being a designer.

~~~
craftalia
Design evaluation and quantitative analysis based on analytics are part of
what designers do to validate design decisions (identifying bottlenecks in
task-driven applications, optimizing Ui and user flows to increase conversion
rates, etc). These techniques are part of a beta or post-launch iterative
design process.

Your point about Hurley having entrepreneurial skills above his particular
profession applies to technical founders as well (or any founder for that
matter), not just designers. Unless you think that just by having the skills
to do programming at early stages of a startup can alone make for a good
founder in the long run.

Even for products that don't have an UI at all there are many aspects of the
customer experience that will require conscious design efforts to give you a
competitive edge. A designer perspective can bring creative and fresh
solutions to many types of business challenges due to overlaps with Marketing
and business strategy. Integrating behavioral economics principles to your
business through design can have a huge impact on marketing and sales
regardless of what your product or service is about.

Design DOES mean business, and the fact that it is recognized more every day
is a prove of that. I would have Ives as my cofounder and not just because he
can design great products, but because he can design a great company. He also
has an amazing networking, I bet.

This myope perspective about design is probably the main reason why companies
and startups can't get experienced designers to join.

~~~
wpietri
I believe everybody at a startup should think and care a lot about design, so
I think we mostly agree.

I would like "designer" to mean what you say it means, but I think a
relatively small fraction of people who identify as designers can actually do
what you describe.

My point about Hurley wasn't that he had entrepreneurial skills on top of
design skills. My point was that even for a billion-dollar success for which
usability was a major success factor, it wasn't his visual design skills that
made the difference: it was that he valued usability and had the ability to
evaluate usability impacts. It is true that some designers have that, but one
does not have to be a designer to have those skills.

~~~
craftalia
I think you are right, we mostly agree on this. It is just the way you refer
to visual design and usability evaluation what was confusing me. They both
come with the design endeavor, but being able to evaluate its impact and to
execute based on this is not exclusive to designers. Thanks for the
clarification.

------
sgdesign
Here's the TL/DR:

If you want to increase your chances of finding a designer for your startup,
you should * Hang out on designer sites like <http://dribbble.com> or
<http://behance.com>, not just Hacker News.

* Stop looking for someone that can do logos, web design, UI design, and even code HTML/CSS and JavaScript on top of that.

* Consider hiring someone with less experience and letting them learn on the job.

* Don't limit your search to the US, there are tons of great designers abroad too.

* Look at hiring a freelancer if a full-time position is too hard to fill.

~~~
wisty
That sounds a lot like what we say about people who can't hire programmers.

That, and "pony up, you pay peanuts and get monkeys".

------
jiggy2011
I think "design" is a vague term here. What most people think of as design is
"making it pretty" or designing individual graphical elements such as logos
etc.

What a startup really needs is somebody who can make their app "feel"
right,;i.e be easy to use, accessible , press all the right emotional buttons
and have an attractive visual style that fits the app.

In my experience most of the people I have encountered in design, even in web
design are the former rather than the latter. We were looking for a designer
to redesign a website some time ago and had one highly recommended. I was
optimistic until I looked at her portfolio. Entirely Flash websites serving
upwards of 10MB to get the first page down, animation everywhere , all text
was images , "mystery meat" navigation , no SEO whatsoever etc etc.

Now no doubt she was a very talented and skilled artist, but obviously
somebody who held high end visuals as a priority above everything. I knew at
that point that I categorically could not work with someone like that. She
could probably have designed some nice logos, buttons and other things for us
but I could not hand direction of an entire website over to someone like that.

On the other hands, I can't draw for shit or even choose good colors but I
have been using computer applications for long enough to have some idea as to
what UI elements should be included, where they should be placed. How to
logically organize a UI etc but I wouldn't call myself a "designer" but I
think these are skills that are essential to web app designers.

------
verelo
I feel that the main issue is that "Designers" that are great at design, often
are pretty difficult to work into the dev processes of a bootstrapped startup,
without slowing things down. Therefore design gets prioritized lower than
features and this has an undesirable outcome for everyone.

A great designer (for an early stage company of 1-2 people) should be able to
turn a PSD into HTML/CSS and work with tools like smarty templates.

Its just my two cents, and the requirement certainly changes over time...but
in the early days, the most useful thing a startup could get us someone that
can easily integrate with the dev process.

------
shalmanese
For startups that are looking for designers, the Product Design Guild offers
sponsorship opportunities for our events
(<http://www.productdesignguild.com/#sponsorship>).

We think it's one of the easiest and most effective ways of putting your story
out in front of some of the most connected designers in the Bay Area. email me
at hang@bumblebeelabs.com if you're interested in sponsorship.

------
adrianhoward
The biggest problem I see with startups searching for designers is that many
fundamentally misunderstand what design is all about. They see the job of folk
with design/UX skills as simply making there product pretty. A nice logo, some
good icons, etc.

Design/UX, like development, is a far deeper domain than that. Design/UX, like
development, will significantly affect the business/product. Far too often I
see recruitment for roles that are exploiting only a small subset of a good
designers skill set - and those are naturally going to be hard positions to
fill.

There are strong parallels to the issues non-technical founders have
recruiting developers - when what they really need is a technical co-founder /
CTO type role.

------
astrofinch
This is considered good design? I'm having a bit of trouble reading it.

<http://maxvoltar.com/>

~~~
kirillzubovsky
At some point, when you're just as popular as him, you will get away with
having a personal page looking whichever way you want it to be. Also, it's
quote possible that he's just too busy doing other work and home page isn't a
priority.

------
sgdesign
I'm trying to help with this as well :) <http://folyo.me>

------
AznHisoka
Why is Hipmunk mentioned as an example of a site that is successful because of
design?

~~~
sgdesign
Because Hipmunk has been successful by mainly innovating on UI and UX in a
very competitive category with strong established players. Although they also
have some cool technology powering all this.

------
lukeholder
copy of my comments:

Honestly, the problem is not finding a designer, but a good designer. And that
leads to the larger problem: expectations are too high by those looking. They
are expecting apple quality polish on a small budget. Good design isn't cheap.
Good designers are hard to find because they are working on quality products,
not your dinky startup app with a budget of 50,000 a year for a designer.

I will also add that as a designer and front end developer, its not that I am
not interested in startups, it's that I either needs to be a larger part of
the ownership, or payed what I am worth.

~~~
sgdesign
Even startups with a sizable budget can have a hard time finding designers.
It's not just a question of money, but also knowing where to look and what
kind of profile to look for.

Of course, the same is true for developers, but I feel that due to the recent
focus on design's importance for startups, the problem might become even more
present for design than development.

------
abcd_f
> Hang out on design communities like Dribble

In related news, an article "Why Can't Startups Find Programmers" is
suggesting to hang out on programmer communities like Hawker News.

------
joshmlewis
I'm a designer and user experience guru and front-end dev, I want startups to
find me and I want (and have) to find good startups.

------
ChrisNorstrom
_The following is just how I personally work and see UX+UI+Graphic Design.
Mine is just 1 of many viewpoints._

It's complicated:

1) Grouping all designers together and assuming we're all good at design,
graphics, ui, ux, and info architecture is like grouping all programmers
together and assuming they're all good at php, C++, java, ruby, mysql, oracle,
javascript, visual basic, python, and perl. See what I mean. When you want a
designer, you need to understand WHICH type of designer do you want. The same
way you need to know what kind of programmer you need. In many elements of
design such as Typography, layout, logos, branding, color, information
architecture, visual graphics, user experience, and interface design. Finding
a designer that does ALL of these well is extremely difficult. And it may not
be a good idea to hire them either. Would you want to hire someone that has a
little experience in every commonly used programming language or someone who
specializes very well in just 2?

(All designers have a few necessary overlapping skills and often can work
together very well and smoothly if they stay out of each other's way)

\- UX Designer - In charge of what the user "FEELS" and what the user will get
out of the site. Sets up user experience guidelines, helps create, pull, or
finalize all features, user stories, usability studies, navigation maps, wire-
frames, prototypes, persona storyboards. If the UX designers does their job
wrong the user can "feel" confused about the site or doubt its legitimacy or
ability to solve the user's problem and within 5 seconds leave, never to
return. So emotion and feeling is extremely important. The UX designer crafts
the foundation of the site based on predicting what the target audience wants
and how they expect the site to help them achieve it.

\- UI Designer - In charge of "HOW" the user interacts with the site. Sets up
user interface guidelines, eye flows, layouts, button and input controls,
control over all visual elements and what they do and how they interact with
the user and a lot of overlapping responsibilities with the UX designer.

\- Graphics Designer - In charge of what the user "SEES". Branding, logos,
company colors, typography and custom fonts, sets up color & visual guidelines
(buttons, logos, etc...), frequently works with photos and vector
illustrations, often photographers.

See how different designers can be? In general you want to start with the UX
guy, then the UI and Graphics Designer. You can have all 3 in the room but I
personally believe the UX designer should ALWAYS be the first in.

2) Chasing the mythical designer + coder + know-it-all. Some of us can do
design very well and a bit of front end coding. Design (visual) and
programming (logical + mathematical) are so different. All the good
programmers I've seen are terrible with visual design and all the great
graphics designers I know are bad programmers. This is for a reason. It's very
rare that someone has acquired both talents.

3) Don't make your designer do ALL of your front end coding. Because that just
wastes everyone's time and assumes your designer is an efficient javascrip /
jquery / css + xhtml coder. I personally love to start with css+xhtml THEN
photoshop if needed. But as soon as I hit heavy javascript coding I start
sinking. I would love to be able to get my design done and pass it on to
someone who can code up the javascript quicker and better than I can. In a
startup environment where speed and iteration are crucial this is really
important. Everyone specializes in something and does that something very well
and very quickly. Rather than having only a few people try to do everything
they're not good at and end up doing a mediocre job that took three times as
long as it should have.

4) Your broad requirements make us feel insecure. I'm a user interface + user
experience + information architecture type of designer. Color, graphics,
logos, custom fonts are NOT my strength and I cannot in any way compete with
graphics artists who specialize in areas. I can do front end coding but only
to an extent. I can make really easy to use sites but I can't give them that
color + icons + logo + custom fonts + graphics themeing that a graphics artist
can. Likewise the web is showered with websites made by graphics artists who
aren't good at ux + ui + info architecture. These websites look pretty, have
great icons, colors, & buttons but the layouts and site architecture are
horrendous which leads to the user experience being horrendous as well. So
when you ask for a designer that can "make everything pretty" I immediately
skip the job offer because I don't want to disappoint you. When a visual
designer sees the job opening they'll send you their portfolio of pretty
websites that have improper eye flow, and terrible ux and you'll decline
hiring them. Had you taken out that "graphics designer" must-have-requirement
I would have gladly spent hours chatting with you in person (never online) on
the direction you can take.

5) Hire me (UX + UI + Info Architecture) BEFORE you've hired a general
graphics designer (icons + colors + logo + custom fonts). Otherwise It's
useless. It's like hiring a painter before you've got your drywall put up.

Long Story Short, many startups don't know what kind of designer they need. If
they hire a UX+UI designer they need to do that at the very beginning, then
after they've got their beta product/service tried and tested they should go
for a really nice graphics designer to help them with branding and look and
feel. If you do it the other way around you just end up wasting time, and
cause a lot of frustration for both designers because they have to RE-do all
their work when ironing out design conflicts.

A UX designer is someone that you need to hire at the very beginning. You
would sit down with them for Hours and hours over the course of MANY days (so
pick someone you can stand) with huge sheets of paper and will start drafting
out what it is the site MUST do and what it must NOT do. Finalize requirements
and features, list content required, intents, user stories, and a million
other things. There will be a lot of compromises having to be made, and there
will be a lot of back and forth decision making. You will talk with your UX
designer more than any of the others.

A UI designer is focused on the users, not you. They'll be off doing usability
and predictability studies and designing the interface that the users will be
using to solve the problems that the UX designer outlined.

A Graphics Designer can telecommute more, and can be left alone, send you
mockups and seek feedback and a/b testing from users. They'll take everything
from the UX and UI designer and add emotional appeal using color, lines,
graphics, imagery, and photography, typography, logos, & icons.

All 3 are very important. If just ->1<\- of these designers does their job
wrong your website will be off (which may or may not hurt you). Look at
craigslist, it's visual design is horrendous but it's ease of use thanks to a
decent UI made up for it. Unforunately there's lots of spam and other problems
that is killing' it's user experience.

~~~
craftalia
This silo-ed paradigm is one of the bigger issues the UX community keeps
embracing and promoting. By exception of some applications design (branding
and corporate identity), I think this silo-ed approach that UX offers is
hurting the product design/development process.

The more silos and "roles" you add to a any process, the more efforts need to
go into coordination (meetings) and documentation to keep things consistent
and flowing. This impacts time-to-market and increases overall project cost.
Also, it doesn't allow to react to changes effectively (if at all).

A designer should be educated in all the different disciplines involved in
digital product design. Look at Architecture, Fashion or Industrial Design:
they spend years getting training across multiple disciplines (aesthetics,
semiotics, ergonomics, design theory, research, history of arts, project
management, budgeting, etc) including technical disciplines as it applies to
their careers (structural analysis, materials, construction techniques,
functional and tangible prototyping, technical drafting, and other).

~~~
ChrisNorstrom
Everything you said is absolutely correct in theory but realistically flawed.
Every designer wants to be disciplined and master all those roles, but that
takes decades of experience. And to expect that type of person to come work
for your startup is like expecting to seduce a senior programmer from Google
to come join your startup.

To achieve those God-like design skills that include everything from being a
good artist (which everyone is NOT) to creating good logos and understanding
branding and identity (which is difficult to master) to front end coding
including css+xhtml+javascript+jquery is ludicrous. You might as well ask that
your designer do the back-end of the site, incorporate your company, and
handle your taxes and bookkeeping. At some point people have to realize that
we can't do it all. Designers that CAN do it all, are freelancing and getting
paid a ton of more money doing interesting and different things every month
/OR/ starting their own companies with their skills and getting paid a crap
load more with 100% complete creative control and freedom. Why would they want
to commit themselves to working at the same company working on the same
problems?

Being "educated" in all disciplines is possible. I can correctly choose fonts,
logos, icons and graphics. But I'm not specialized in producing those from
scratch. To be specialized in that is a whole other career path that takes
years to learn and master. Digital Art.

So yes I do eventually wish to become the senior designer that you described.
And in 10-20 years I'm sure I'll acheive that level of understanding. But
that's the problem. It'll take 10-20 years.

------
guynamedloren
> _If you’re looking for a designer who can come up with your identity, design
> your site, create UIs with great user experience for your web and mobile
> apps, and on top of that code his or her work in HTML/CSS (and why not throw
> in Javascript in the mix!), then I’m sorry to inform you that you’re hunting
> unicorns._

I can do all of that. And I can do it all _really_ well. I don't normally toot
my own horn, but this all just seems like part of the job. These are skills
that I've acquired over 13 years (I'm only 23), and apparently the combination
is more desirable/rare than I thought.

Here's the thing, though: I don't consider myself a 'designer'. I think the
title is too limiting, because it doesn't encompass other skills (like
coding). And while I would never call myself a 'designer', I could probably
outperform 99% of the designers I've come across.

Some recent work:

<http://grubwithus.com> (if anything is ugly/weird here, we're heavily A/B
testing right now)

<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/grubwithus/id492155022?mt=8>

[http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/11/grubwithus-goes-mobile-
with...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/11/grubwithus-goes-mobile-with-a-
really-pretty-iphone-app/)

~~~
wpietri
Since your horn-tooting post will rightly get downvoted into illegibility, I
wanted to extract the bit that I thought a useful contribution to the
discussion:

> Here's the thing, though: I don't consider myself a 'designer'. I think the
> title is too limiting, because it doesn't encompass other skills (like
> coding).

