Do you want to get ahead? Here’s a rundown of the five mistakes junior designers make, and how to avoid them.
Landing your first junior designer role is an exciting time; you’ve put together an impressive design portfolio and it worked in your design job interview and now you’ve set foot on the ladder, and surely the only way is to do it. Be careful, however; you don’t want to alter your career prospects just when you are just starting out.
For a much smoother route to design success, here are five common mistakes you really want to avoid making.
What a junior designer should not do
01. Being too possessive
“We always tell people that we don’t want the designer to be possessive,” says Ben Jory, founder and creative director at Jory & Co . “We don’t want to hire people who say, ‘This is my idea and I want to own it.’ There is nothing worse than a Smigol-style designer. ”
When you work for a studio, it is not just an idea, it belongs to everyone, to work together.
02. Don’t listen
“It’s hard to work in a busy studio if you inform someone and they just didn’t listen to what you said,” says the director of Design Culture , Kristen Streten. “It’s incredibly frustrating as a manager at any point in the work process if you don’t take notes, listen to reports, and don’t ask questions.”
However, even if a question may seem obvious, it is better to verify than to do a task than to do it wrong, he says.
03. Hide errors.
Sloppy work doesn’t look good on your employers or your client. This can be hard to remember when working under pressure, but meeting a deadline doesn’t mean that quality is going out the window. However, everyone is human.
If you make a mistake that you can’t fix, tell someone right away so it can be fixed in time. They will most likely appreciate it.
04. Losing heart
“I remember that it was difficult for me not to receive more responsibilities. I was really ready to go, ”says Streten, recalling the beginning of her career.
“You feel so capable and so full of energy, but you have to understand that we have all been there, we have all been juniors in a company and we had to do these tasks. You will be surprised by what you learn while doing your homework. ”
05. Sharing
Be very careful what you post online. It’s one thing to retweet the studio’s latest project, it’s quite another to say something that might violate confidentiality, offend clients, or just make it look bad.
Always treat social media like a postcard traveling across your manager’s desk; suppose they can read everything in it, along with everyone else.