Coming from a student background and being thrust into your first real job in a collaborative design office is kind of like being thrown into the deep end of the swimming pool, but then tossed a life jacket by your work colleagues and reeled back in. The contrast between the solo work life of a student and that of the real life is massive. As a student you can understand the thinking in promoting solo achievement. Working on your own projects and ideas is always going to be beneficial because it means you can create your own identity around your portfolio by putting your own work in it, showing solely your skills and abilities. You could argue that it would just be confusing for a design firm looking at your portfolio to distinguish between your work and the work of others.
Working in a design office, however, must be a collaborative effort. Recently I was reading Behance, which is a wonderful collection of articles and tips on improving productivity in creativity and design, and came across a great tip aimed at the design professional. The problems observed are specifically aimed at those in a design management role but apply across the board from the very ‘top’ to the very ‘bottom’ of a design team. Personally I’ve found it difficult to banish my selfish attitude towards my work or claiming ownership over an idea, all products of an education encouraging me to work alone. Why is this the case? Are design firms not looking for precisely the type of person who is effective within a team, who can show they have experience working on ideas collaboratively? As students looking for an entry position we should treat the team collaboration and the dynamic that comes with it as a skill to be advertised to potential employers and, in my opinion, treated just as important as the ability to sketch well or use any number of software packages.
4 Comments
Indeed you are correct! In the firm I am working in, when we lay out ideas and present to each other, the beauty of the team is that they can see something beautiful and totally unexpected or unintended from a sketch that you just drawn out. sometimes, its just a half-assed, scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel idea, but the extra point of view reveals new un-treaded ground to work this idea INTO. It allows for a hive of insights and concepts.
Furthermore a colleague of mine went to a school where each and every single project he did through his 5 years of schooling was done as a team. So as a counter to your point I shall paraphrase his comments. He said that their are many people within his school who ride on the success of others (and this could be said for some design firms too) some get amazing portfolio pieces with much value in them, but their contribution doesn’t mirror the value that others will see in the piece. Even his final project was done in collaboration with others, and therefore not presentable as his own.
Though I agree with you on the whole, I believe it is most useful to present the other side of the potential downsides too, so we can gain a balanced point of view.
Good Post!
Very true Nick, good point. I suppose it comes down to balance and the ability of your employer to spot the difference between someone who is riding on the back of other peoples work and someone who genuinely embraces team work and plays a pro-active role in the design process.
Thanks for the comment, it providing the Yin to the Yang.
Hey really enjoy reading your blog. Very well written and informed also some good points and opinions aired (think I spot a couple quotes from me). Liking your little Sketch book, so thats what you’ve been scribbling these last few months!! Chris
Insightful! This makes me think that we have way too little collaboration on major assignments at uni. We do have a fair amount of group work in the tutorials, but never on stuff that matters. You are making a point when it comes to portfolios, but that should be possible to solve. You can often specify what is your work and what isn’t, can’t you?
Thanks for the Behance link, by the way. Interesting site!