- We've all heard the phrase, "Jack of all trades,
master of none." Right?
And I'm a firm believer in it.
I think that if we try and focus
on building up our skills equally,
we'll end up being just, kind of okay at most things,
and I'm sure that you wanna be more than
just a mediocre designer, right?
Becoming a specialist though
doesn't mean that you have to focus 100% of your efforts
on building just one skill,
there are other options available,
and I wanna talk to you in this video
about building a T and then V shaped skillset.
(upbeat music)
To start out with, I wanna do something
that is generally frowned upon in design resumes,
because it's cheesy and not very useful in that context.
But I wanna show you some graphs of my skills
and how they've developed over the years.
When I started out I was studying
a bunch of different things in design school,
and eventually I decided to focus in on graphic design.
Mainly on print.
I was doing ad campaigns, posters, brochures, branding,
that sort of thing.
But I also had skills in digital design
and a little bit of motion.
Within my first year of my career though,
I got more interested in web design
and eventually chose to focus on that,
and make that the center of a T shaped skillset.
Now with T shaped skillset is where you dig deep
on one thing, but you still have skills in other areas.
As I got further into my career,
I kept that focus on web design,
but I also started picking up a bunch of other skills
and widening the top of my T.
This skillset allowed me to become
a really great marketing designer,
because I had this focus on web design,
but I also had the skills to tackle
any other project that a marketing team might send my way.
In the past few years I've started to dig even deeper
on some of these secondary skills,
and I've ended up with a somewhat V shaped skillset.
What's important in this V shaped skillset,
is that the surrounding skills aren't just any old
brand skills I felt like learning,
they're things that I chose to learn
because they can support my main skill of web design.
The deeper I dig in these,
the better I get as a web designer.
The more I learn how to conduct quality user research
and tests, the better designs I can create,
the more informed by data they are,
the more I learn about code,
the better I can understand which design elements
I'm creating will add to the bill time and like,
extend the deadline possibly, so I can adjust based on that.
I'm also structuring my learning and development
in these supporting skills,
based on what I know will help with the main skills.
So, with code, for example.
There's obviously so much I could learn there.
I could learn to code iOS apps,
I could go for Ruby On Rails perhaps.
Got HTML, CSS, got Java Script.
That's perfect for what I need as a web designer.
So, that's what I chose to focus on.
I this came from a pretty generalized skillset,
to focusing on one area,
to then building skills to support that specialty
is a really common transition for designers to make
and go through in their career.
I think it's really important too that
we don't try and skip straight to this V shape.
Which I think is a great way to have a skillset, right?
You're specializing in something,
but you're learning in other areas to support that skill.
We can't jump straight to that though.
We need to go through the process
of having a general skillset, to figure out what we like,
to figure out what we're interested in, what we're good at.
Doing this can help you figure out
what your specialty should be.
And another thing that's important to realize is
that your specialty is allowed to change.
You can change what the stem of your T is,
whenever you'd like to.
Like I did with my switch from print to digital design.
But the main reason that I would recommend
picking a specialty is 'cause there's only so much
time in the day we have for learning.
And if we focus that learning we're gonna improve faster,
and we're gonna be able to bring more value as a designer,
either in a freelance capacity,
or working full time for an employer.
When it comes to choosing which skills to build
as part of your skillset, which I know is something
that a lot of you have questions about,
when I said I was gonna film this video.
I honestly think you need to follow your interests.
What do you wanna learn?
What do you wish you were better at?
Those are the skills you should focus on building.
There's really no right or wrong thing to learn,
but whatever you are learning,
I do recommend that you take the approach of asking yourself
how dabbling in this skill could help with the specialty
or the thing you want to be your specialty.
So, for example, all my examples are web design,
because I'm a web designer, so,
you're gonna have to live with that.
But say I've got a web design project where I feel like,
perhaps an illustration, or animation could work really well
in the header section,
that is my chance to practice those skills.
To dive a little into illustration, a little into animation,
and learn what I need to know about it,
in order to support this web design project
that I'm working on.
That's when digging in to surrounding skills
becomes your way of actually getting better
at the main skill.
You need to supplement your learning
and bring in some other skills there.
And the cool thing about this is that
it can change what type of designer you are.
If I, for example, chose to focus my surrounding skills
more on illustration and animation,
maybe I'd be better suited for super creative
brand-driven web projects,
instead of the more conversion-driven landing pages
that I specialize in now.
Like I said, there's no right or wrong answer
when it comes to deciding this,
and you're in control of it,
you can choose what you wanna learn
and what you wanna focus on,
and choose which unique set of skills you want to build up.
I really like this way of thinking about skillsets,
because it gives us permission
to not be great at everything.
We don't have to be the best at everything.
And with so many resources available to learn from,
this approach to skillsets really helps us
to focus our learning and to focus our attention
on what we should be spending our time on.
It does mean that you're actively choosing
to not be suitable for every single design project,
but I think that's okay.
Especially if you have built your skillset
in a way that follows your interests.
I, for example, am not suited to a design project
where I would be asked to design a logo.
To create a brand from scratch.
That's not what I specialize in,
it's also not what I enjoy doing.
So, I'm okay with not being an expert in that field.
Knowing what your skillset is,
knowing what value you can bring to a project,
can really help you in evaluating an opportunity
and determining if it is really the right one for you,
and if it's something that you would excel at.
I would love to hear in the comments,
what shape you think your skillset is in now.
And when you share that,
I'd also like to know where in your career you are too.
'cause I think that mine has only really switched
from being a T to being a V,
in the past maybe like, two years or so.
So, yeah, that would be interesting, let's chat about it.
Thanks for watching, I hope you found it useful
to get my thoughts on building up a design skillset.
Have a good week and I'll see you in the next video.
Bye.
(upbeat music)