Think like an artist, design like an engineer

I believe that every cheesy article about design should contain at least one mention of Apple. Ideally, a quote or an anecdote about Steve Jobs. To maintain just the right levels of cheesiness, this article mentions Apple alongside another famous employee of the tech giant.

Hi there 👋 

Welcome to the second edition of the Design Decoded newsletter! As promised in the last issue, this time we're talking about mindset.

Thinking about what shapes designers' mindsets, it's hard not to consider education. Universities and academies, courses, and bootcamps, all play a significant role in shaping the way young designers think as they enter the industry.

Ten years ago, while finishing my second year at the Academy, I read an article that really struck a chord with me. It was an interview with Jonathan Ive, a former Chief Design Officer at Apple, conducted by the London Design Museum. During the conversation, he went on a bit of a rant about design education, calling it "tragic."

What bothered Johny was that “so many of the designers that we interview don't know how to make stuff. (…) you can spend four years of your life studying the design of three-dimensional objects and not make one. (…) It's great if the ultimate result was to be a graphic image, that's fine, but how on earth can you do that if what you're responsible for producing is a three-dimensional object?".

After ten years, this still resonates strongly with me. Johnny was talking about industrial design (which I was also studying at the time). But you could easily paraphrase it for UX:

“So many of the designers don't know how to make stuff. You can spend four years of your life studying Interaction Design and not make a single finished app or website. It's great if the ultimate result was to be a Dribbble shot, that's fine, but how on earth can you do that if what you're responsible for producing is an actually working product?".

You see where I’m going with this.

However, you might sometimes hear voices from the other side of the argument—that designers shouldn't dwell on technicalities as this can limit their thinking and creativity. That they should be more like artists, exploring and creating without constraints to achieve the best results.

But this logic proves to be largely flawed, as constraints help to boost rather than hinder creativity. It makes perfect sense: it's hard to come up with a clever idea on how to use a certain medium if you're not familiar with the medium itself.

Two years after reading the interview, I graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, considering myself both a designer and an artist. Today, I still strongly believe in an artistic mindset. In free, naive exploration. A non-linear process. Pure creativity.

But I also believe that understanding the limitations of implementation can only strengthen our creative power. When it comes to turning your wildest dreams and ideas into reality, the hands-on mindset of a craftsperson is a preferable one.

So what defines good craftsmanship for a UX designer? Many would instinctively point to Figma and other design tools. I'm going to argue that this is way off base. More about that in the next issue of this newsletter.

Cheers,
Mikolaj