Time is a funny thing

Time is a funny thing. I remember being a young teenager and my mom saying something like “once you get there you’ll see I’m right”. This was something she always used to say to me when I had some conviction and nothing could make me think otherwise.

I began my design journey at 15 years old. IRC was a big thing at the time and Photoshop had just been installed on my Windows Millennium. I was into Digital Art and for some reason I really liked it. I spent some time figuring out how to work with Photoshop and after a couple of months I was already applying some weird filters and doing horror photo manipulations and posting them on DeviantArt.

These were the kind of things happening at the time and IRC was the place where we could share and get opinions from more seasoned ‘digital artists’. I didn’t care about the recommendations, all I cared about was if it was pretty.

Eventually I quit doing digital art and moved into Flash and if you are a 90's teenager you know everything was about making as awesome as possible. All I could think of were spinning loaders, big impact animations and no care was given to text and the purpose of the website, it was all about Bang Bang Bang.

The early Flash era was nice but not for me, I did some nice stuff but I was more into doing layouts for websites and eventually started doing some web design and that was when the cockiness started. I knew how to work with the tools, I knew what was pretty or not and no one could tell me that it would or wouldn’t work, I was a smart ass like pretty much all 18 year old kids are.

Went to college did my degree and got some more theoretical concepts about design, art, media, coding and other stuff that I thought was useless. Got my first job at a local newspaper as a graphic designer / video editor / camera operator / reporter and I was still cocky, too proud and I knew all about design, typography and what was pretty or not, like all those 23 year old kids know.

I now have 30 years old and I barely think about what is pretty or not anymore. I’m a design consultant at an agency and when I talk about design with my clients I talk about solutions to business problems, I talk about users needs, I talk about performance and user experience and barely, almost never say “it’s pretty or it looks good or I like it”.

So what’s the lesson here? Bit obvious isn’t it? Time is a funny thing and if you feel like you know everything believe me, time will take care of that cockiness. My advice for you is, design is about solving problems, existing or not and it sure isn’t about pretty.

Note to my future self: Keep questioning your convictions.

Twitter @carlosjgsousa