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5 Tips For Finding Variety In A Design Role

by Beat Baudenbacher on 02/04/2020 | 4 Minute Read

Preserving creative drive can sometimes be easier said than done for commercial designers. While most of us enter the world of work as generalists with huge creative appetites, it is not all that difficult to get off track creatively because we want to stay on track professionally.

It goes like this-we have a broad start, and we know we have an aptitude for craft and creation, for project management and people, or ideas and words, but we aren’t more specialized than that. Then, we start doing well at something, and we’re given more of it to do. We build more capacity in that field, and they give us even more of it to do.

Before we know it, we’re spending day after day churning out the same specialized projects. It’s high-value work and can be well-rewarded, but somewhere along the line, we lose that sense of eclectic journeying and joyful discovery we had when we started.

So how do we get that back? How do we step off the work treadmill and run the kind of race that benefits us creatively as well as professionally? The way I see it, getting off the treadmill is easier than getting on. You only need to adjust your world view.

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Ask Questions

This seems obvious, but when we start to identify as specialists, admitting the things we don’t know can feel undermining and threatening. Variety is all about welcoming new, unfamiliar things into the fold, and you can’t find new and exciting elements within your role unless you open yourself up to what you don’t know and allow yourself to ask questions.

It’s as easy as having an engaging conversation to explore new ideas. What are your colleagues working on that you can learn from, or adapt to your own work? How does a new, unfamiliar process work? What would happen if you tried a familiar task differently? 

Empower yourself to do this, and you’ve already opened up new avenues and ideas that will spice up your creative process and bring a new freshness to your work life.

Open Up

An eclectic creative diet is essential to a varied creative experience and output. I like to encourage designers to become creative omnivores—to hunt and gather ideas for their work from everywhere, not just the design world. 

Go to the movies. See a play. Take in a concert. Eat amazing food. Listen to albums, and podcasts, or a conversation on public transport. Read books, ad copy, and even the backs of cereal boxes. Ask more questions, and think about the answers.

Let your curiosity guide you, and bring the things you learn about people, the world, and yourself back into your work. By plugging into a wider range of experiences and new knowledge in every aspect of your life, you’ll expand your creative language and find new routes into your work.

Flex Your Muscles

Once you bring the things you’ve learned and a creative new attitude to your work, it’s time to start applying them.

Try new ways of solving problems that push the boundaries of your specialism—if you’ve always used a particular process, try switching it up. If you saw something cool in a documentary or a great cinematic shot in a recent blockbuster, think about how you can translate that feeling into what you create.

If you’re not ready to bring a new approach to work, you can give yourself side and personal projects to test out new approaches, play around, and push the boundaries of where your skills can take you. Let trial and error be part of your creative process. 

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Go Deep

Bringing variety into your workflow doesn’t mean you have to leave specialism behind and revert to a more general approach. 

Variety looks like different things to many people. For some, it means jumping between a range of clients, a broader set of tasks, working with new team members, at different times of the day, or even in different places. For others, it’s a desire to be continuously engaged or surprised by the work they specialize in. 

You can find variety through specialization if that’s what satisfies you creatively. Going deep to develop one skill can be incredibly rewarding and requires plenty of curiosity. But the same rules apply: ask interesting questions of yourself and the people around you, explore new ways of looking at the work you do, and give yourself opportunities to take unconventional approaches.

Unplug

The thing we all have to realize is that the treadmill we feel stuck on is imaginary. We can step off and go for a run in the fresh air any time we want. We can unplug and take another approach. It starts, you won’t be surprised to find out, with a question—what can happen if I make a change?

Maybe it means leaving a current job that doesn’t offer any flexibility or simply adjusting our attitude about the one we already have. Maybe it means branching out outside of work and continuing our creative education in new ways. Who knows? 

To find out how to get on a creatively satisfying track, we have to ask ourselves big questions, test new ideas, and be willing to explore. We have to leave that treadmill behind and give ourselves a better, more varied view.