Want to be successful? Try being boring.

Someone recently asked if I thought #GenerativeAI and technologies like #ChatGPT were going to make graphic designers obsolete. I told him there’s always opportunity hidden in change. So yes, for folks who run in fear of it or who focus on how the quality will never match what they can do, it will likely spell disaster for them. But those who run toward it and learn everything they can about it will likely find ways to use the technology to their advantage.?

After that encounter, I reflected on my own journey, and it occurred to me that I was describing myself 30 years ago as I was just getting started pursuing my own career as a designer. I thought I’d elaborate and share some specific details in hopes that it inspires others who are either just getting started or who are looking to pivot.

Lucky beginnings

The beginning of my career coincided with the birth of #desktoppublishing. The creative field was going through a digital transformation, and similar to the response ChatGPT is getting now in terms of how the quality isn't great and how humans can "do it better", people were quick to jump on the low quality of digital cameras, awful laser printer output, color inaccuracies, and bad typography. Compared to professional tools, desktop publishing hardware and software were laughable.

All true. They were.?

It was around that time when my uncle showed me an #Apple MacPlus running #Adobe #Illustrator 88, and I knew then exactly what I wanted to do—I was always interested in art and technology and those two worlds were colliding. Count me in. I was 19.

My father worked in Sales at ArtScroll Mesorah Publications , a premier English-language Judaica publisher, and he convinced them to offer me a job in the art department as a typesetter and production artist.

It was an incredible experience as I got to work on complex and important projects such as the first edition of the Schottenstein Talmud, Rabbi Berel Wein’s first history books, and so much more.

I was a sponge and learned the art of professional multi-lingual #typesetting. Beyond learning the art of setting type in English (which reads left to right), I learned to set type in Hebrew (which reads right to left) along with its complex set of vowels.?

A little bit of luck coming from the support of both my uncle and my father helped me get started in my career.

Pursuing my passion

It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows though. I wasn’t a great employee. I made mistakes just as most people starting out do. But I also couldn’t shake my passion for technology and I wasn't shy about letting others know it.

Don’t get me wrong—Artscroll had a high-end professional multi-lingual typesetting system—top shelf of its day. But typesetting machines were archaic: you had to memorize and enter codes to change fonts or settings, and you only saw what your layout looked like when you processed and develop film output in a darkroom.

On the Mac, there was a WYSIWYG display (what you see is what you get). You saw what your design was going to look like right on your screen without having to go through an expensive and time-consuming printing process.

True—setting advanced professional typography on the Mac simply wasn’t possible. Compared to the typesetting systems I used at Artscroll, the Mac was literally an expensive toy.?

But it was a toy with massive potential.

I constantly lamented to my boss, Rabbi Shea Brander, how we really needed to get a Mac. At the end of every day I would walk past the CEO’s office, and Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz, zt"l would ask me how the day went. I’d respond, “It was ok, but if I would have a Mac…” and he’d wave his hand and tell me to go home. I’m sure I was the most annoying kid.

After a year, I couldn't take it anymore and made the decision to leave to start my own design firm. As great as Artscroll was, I really needed to get my hands on a Mac and be a part of the revolution it was driving in the world of design.

Let the hard work begin.

Finding opportunity in the ho-hum

To make it in any business, you have to find your niche—your competitive advantage. But how do you actually DO that?

The answer may be non-intuitive: be boring.

In the creative arts, we all aspire to create classy and trendy logos, high-gloss brochures, and flashy events. Most designers lament "if I could just land that client who is willing to spend real budget so I can finally show off my true design skills, I'd be successful". Most dream of mimicking campaigns by corporate design legends Apple or Nike.

As my strength was in technology, I was drawn to the “boring” side of design. No designer wants to be boring, so there was every opportunity for me to disrupt and bring a fresh perspective. Leveraging my unique skillset, I found three “boring” areas where I could drive innovation and build my brand.

1. Typography

I'm not talking about the fun kind like type found in logos, headlines, or magazine covers. I'm talking the boring kind. Paragraph after paragraph of plain boring body copy.?

With my background in typesetting, I knew what great type looked like, and so I pushed the Mac and the software beyond its limits. Most other designers at that time sent their type out to a provider to do (which was costly and took time), or they just used default settings that looked really bad.

I understood that graphic design was about communication, and if the audience couldn't read the message, the design didn't matter. I was king of readability and legibility. Compared to others, my type looked great, with fast turnaround and great prices.

I also had something to prove—that I could make the Mac set type that looked just as good as a professional typesetting machine.?That would eventually lead to me engaging with companies like Adobe to help them build such capabilities into their software.

Granted, my focus on typography wasn’t intentional—I was simply doing what I was already familiar with from my previous job—typesetting.

However, the next two "boring" things I chose to focus on were very intentional.

2. Repetitive projects

The core advantage of a computer is handling repetitive tasks. Find a process that you can clearly define, teach a computer to do it, and then sit back and reap the rewards.

In the world of design, there are some projects that are incredibly tedious as they require working with a lot of repetitive (and often boring) type, with lots of specialized formatting: catalogs, directories, journals, price lists, books, indexes, etc.

Today we're familiar with the concept of Paragraph Styles (or if you're a web designer, CSS). But back then, the concept of styles was new. I became a master at using styles, which allowed me to "teach" a computer what I wanted the formatted text to look like, and then had the computer do it for the entire publication.

Most designers shunned such projects because they were literally hours and hours of tedious boring work. If they did take on such projects, they would charge a lot and they would also demand very long turnaround times.

Since I was able to leverage the power of styles, I was able to take on such projects, charge less, and offer faster turnaround times than anyone else could.

Perhaps most important:

These projects became my bread and butter—the projects that paid my bills. Focusing on optimizing these projects to take the smallest amount of my time freed me up to spend time pursuing more lucrative projects and charging higher prices for work I wanted to take on. I could afford to say no to more projects, helping me focus on growing my business.

Which led me to my next boring opportunity...

3. Forms

Many of my clients were non-profits, who survived on direct mail fundraising campaigns. Whereas most designers focused on creating elaborate invitations, advertising, and brochures, I spent all my time focusing on one seemingly boring item: the response card.

Stuffed into every envelope was a response card intended to appeal to the donor to open their wallet and give. Most designers rarely gave it any thought, tossing a logo at the top with a few lines for people to fill out and mail back with a check or a credit card. Boring.

But fill out the credit card info wrong, and the non-profit couldn’t process the charge. The form on the card is a critical component of data collection. To a non-profit, an accurate mailing list is their lifeline. When someone is about to make a decision on how much to give, you can’t leave things to chance.

My goal was always to make the forms on these cards foolproof and to ensure they were easy to understand, easy to fill out, and easy to process once they were received.

My clients found that when they hired me, they made more money than when they hired my competitors. I was able to use the same approach to expand into camp and school admission forms, event ticketing, and more. Clients found that my attention to detail in "boring" form design saved them time and money.

As a bonus, when PDF-based forms were introduced, I was already in a position to help customers take advantage of that technology as well.?

Now it's your turn: find the boring

I’ve seen people compare Generative AI to products like the digital camera, the iPhone or Google. These were singular products that disrupted specific industries. But Generative AI is an underlying technology that has the power to disrupt ANY industry. This means ANYONE in any industry can disrupt something and uncover new opportunities. It’s not limited to people in any one given field.

So here's my advice: learn everything you can about Generative AI. Then go find something boring that Generative AI can reinvent.

Be the revolution.

Books referenced in this edition:

• Framers: Human Advantage in an Age of Technology and Turmoil by Kenneth Cukier , Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger , Francis de Véricourt
• The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
• Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice by Clayton M. Christensen, Karen Dillon , Taddy Hall , David Duncan

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Read. Learn. Share. is Curated Curiosity?. I regularly share quotes with brief commentary on LinkedIn from things I read, watch, and learn. This series takes us on a journey that goes deeper into top-of-mind topics and themes.