Skills. Designers have a lot of them. Designers need a lot of them. Some of us are swept up in our endeavor to be better designers and deliberately choose to improve our sketching, learn some new piece of software, read up on that latest ‘design trend’. However, I put it to you that there is one thing above all these which determines a good designer.
Point of view.
I’m not saying that those other things are not important, they are, they’re vital. But after talking with one of the tutors of the Design Academy Eindhoven about what they encourage there. It was this: Point of view. They want to know what each student’s point of view on design is, whatever that may be. Maybe it’s bringing new life to old things (Baas) or striving to express the un-thought known (Fukasawa) or needlessly detailing a vacuum cleaner to look like a Ghostbuster Machine (Dyson).
Baas may not be the best sketcher, Fukasawa may not be the best trend spotter nor Dyson competent with the latest 3D software, But what they do have is point of view, and a lot of it. Everything they do, they do with their particular point of view in mind.
If you have point of view and not the skills required, you can do something about it. Train, collaborate, outsource.
If you have the skills and not the point of view then you can easily become a tool for someone else’s point of view.
So next time you decide to work on some of those design skills, consider this, work on your point of view. Define it. Test it. Contradict it. Change it. Perhaps you will discover the holy grail of design. Success.
What is your point of view?