To the young Nigerian designers | Journey of a Nigerian designer- E07
Hello reader, Happy Independence Day!!! Today is a great day for our dear country Nigeria because we’re turning 62. If you’re a designer like myself, I’m sure you spent the early hours of today working on some design work for a company. This is becoming a routine for me too. I guess the holidays for everyone actually means more work for us 😂. But that’s why design is so great right? We get to inform and educate people on what is going on in the world through our visuals. It’s a true gift we should not take for granted.
Today’s newsletter is all about encouraging ourselves as designers, especially those of us who aren’t naturally creative or didn’t study anything design or computer related at school. I studied Petroleum Engineering and I wasn’t good at drawing or sketching before I went into design so I can definitely understand this. The learning curve might seem longer to you and you might feel a bit behind when you compare your work with other designs out there. But I need you to understand one thing, all the great designers we look up to all started from being terrible at what they do. I look up to designers like Bolanle Banwo, Tunji Ogunoye, Abel Idume, Leye Ogunsanya, Joboson Chisa, and even some international designers like James Martin, Chris Do and Ran Segall. All these designers have cited that they were once bad at what they do and it has taken years for them to build skill in their craft. Here’s one by James Martin. If they can get better at it then we can do, it just takes time and effort.
I also recall listening to a Twitter Space where Chris Do mentioned that he has been designing for more than 20 years (although he has moved into becoming an entrepreneur at the Futur). This means that he has been designing for nearly my entire lifespan 😲. It would be unwise (and mentally unsafe) for us to compare ourselves to him or any designers with that level of experience. Rather, what we should do is learn from them and work towards attaining that level of skill. We still have time to grow. I’ve been designing for just about 3 years and with this understanding, I’m always excited to see how good I can become if I keep at it for 20+ years. I’m sure you’ll get pretty good at it too.
So designers, let’s roll up our sleeves, put in the work and push those pixels. In no time, we’ll be rockstar designers. Welcome to Q4 2022, Happy New Month and have a wonderful Independence Day celebration.
Design Resource of the Week
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And that’s what I want to talk about today. Have a great weekend and see you next Saturday in E08.
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