To be a designer is to be completely fluid in your assumptions, beliefs, and work. It is to fit every style known to man, and simultaneously attempt to have your own style, but knowing that the client is always right. When I was young, my father was a magician, and I wanted to be exactly like him when I grew up, so I paid attention and remembered the rules that he taught me.
Number one is to always play your own game. For a magician this is important because it keeps everyone else from getting ahead of you. It gives you ownership and power and control. For a designer this is important. The design is your game. The company may have given you the guidelines, the parts that you have to work around and with to guarantee that the design will work, but ultimately, the field is yours. You have control over what you create and what you present to the client. It gives you ownership. It gives you power. It gives you control.

The next thing that I learned from my dad was “If a trick isn’t working for you, drop it.” While not technically a magician’s rule it comes in handy now. You can always come back to something if you can’t think of a way to present it at the moment, and if you can’t ever think of a way to present it in a way that makes sense, then it clearly is not an idea that works in context. It is perfectly ok to abandon an idea that does not work when submitted for critique. It is also perfectly fine to just shelve an idea or trick to come back to at a later date.

The last thing that I learned, which I have worked for many years to try and keep up with, is to “Be the smartest person in the room.” As a magician, you are the only one who knows all the ins and outs of the trick. Everything you say has to be backed up by either something else or by a witness that you have planted. As a designer, you have to be able to back ever statement, every choice, up with fact. You have to be able to either sound like you know exactly what you are talking about, even if it is only the preliminary research. You have to please everyone, from the business people to marketing to engineers. It is a constant juggling act.

I am good at my job. Over the years I have learned how to do research, I have learned how to interact with people from all walks of life, and I have learned how to write the rules to the game, even when I am not officially in charge. I have learned to drop ideas behind me when it turns out they now longer work, and to come up with new ones on the fly.

ƻ;Шie