Step away from the tools – Creating career paths beyond the craft

Most of us got into design because we love the doing of it.

The stories of how our interest arose can usually be traced back to childhood:

• We took things apart to see how they worked.

• We enjoyed making things.

• Or we were just good at drawing.

Then we discovered that design could be a profession – a career in which we could hone our craft.

It’s natural to want to get better. To pursue mastery. That’s fine.

To a point.

The early years

During our design education – and after graduation – we’re encouraged to develop and polish a portfolio.

Sure, it demonstrates thinking. But it’s also a showcase for hard skills, particularly proficiency with software packages and other tools.

I think that’s OK.

In the early stages of their career, a designer’s value is primarily in those hard skills. They spend hours of highly utilised time, usually at a screen, producing useful work at an affordable cost.

A few years in, hands-on designers become particularly valuable to an agency or consultancy. Their judgement has improved, as has their speed. They can now produce that useful work in a lot less time.

They probably transition from junior to midweight and then to senior fairly quickly. They’re on the steep part of their progression curve.

Then progress starts to slow. Things begin to level out.

The awkward transition

At this point, it’s easy for designers’ relationships with their employers to become strained.

Understandably, they want to continue progressing – with, of course, the corresponding promotions and pay increases.

For their bosses, this starts to get difficult.

A healthy pay increase for someone who has effectively only become very slightly better at the job they were already doing is hard to justify. In many cases, it’s impossible.

That doesn’t mean the designer isn’t valuable. They may be one of the most capable and dependable people in the company.

But the increase in their value from one year to the next has slowed – often significantly.

For their progression to continue, at least in terms of title and salary, something needs to change. They need to make a meaningfully greater contribution to their company.

Interestingly, this situation often coincides with designers reaching a particular life stage – perhaps saving for a deposit on a property or thinking about starting a family.

The potential for a falling out is clear.

The designer wants – perhaps needs – a promotion and more money. Their employer values them highly but is struggling to justify the next step.

This is not solely the designer’s problem to solve.

Agency leaders need to make these choices visible before good people reach this point – not simply encourage them to ‘keep developing’ without explaining what progression beyond ‘the craft’ might look like.

Broadly, I see three potential routes.

Route one: Management

Often, the natural next step is into some form of management.

Perhaps the designer starts by looking after smaller projects or taking a junior team member or two under their wing.

This frequently happens almost by accident – and nearly always without the right preparation.

Some people take to it easily. Others find it more difficult. Many start to feel detached from the ‘real work’ and find the additional administrative load a challenge.

In my case, I loved it.

I found that I preferred directing and steering project work to actually doing all of it myself. I also learnt that developing people was incredibly fulfilling.

But management isn’t for everyone, and it shouldn’t be treated as the inevitable next step after time served.

Route two: Specialist

More enlightened companies recognise that Individual Contributors (ICs) need a clear career path too.

They understand how valuable it can be to develop – and retain – people with a narrow and deep skillset. So they create a route through which those people can progress, gain recognition and earn more without having to become managers.

In general, I’ve found this easier in larger businesses. Their scale leaves more space in the line-up for specialist ‘skill players’.

In smaller agencies and consultancies, that path can be harder to provide.

Designers may be perfectly happy continuing to polish their skills, but understandably less happy with the lack of recognition and remuneration that can come with it.

Their progression stalls.

Where a specialist path is limited, leaders need to be honest about it – and find other ways to recognise the value these people create.

Route three: Leadership

Sometimes management leads to leadership. But not always.

It’s also easy for experienced designers to get stuck in management. Again, this suits some people, but others find it frustrating.

I appreciate I’m biased, but I’ve found there’s one thing that provides rocket fuel to the progression of almost anyone working within a creative agency or consultancy:

Helping to bring in new work.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:

New business is the lifeblood of every creative agency.

It might not be easy, but almost any other challenge at an agency can be managed if work is coming in. If it isn’t, everything gets harder.

To progress to a genuine leadership position, a designer needs to bring more value to their company than their design skills alone.

Put another way, I believe that anyone working in an agency or consultancy with the word ‘director’ in their job title must contribute in some way to the development of the company as well as the delivery of its work.

That doesn’t mean becoming a salesperson.

Commercial contribution comes in many forms. It might mean spotting an unmet need, expanding an existing client relationship, improving retention, protecting the margin on a project, contributing to proposals or creating the confidence that persuades a client to entrust the agency with a piece of work.

It means understanding how the company succeeds – and taking some direct responsibility for helping it do so.

I have personal experience of both sides of this.

First, I was the designer who started to help with new business, initially with winning additional work and follow-on projects from existing clients.

Later, when I was running my own design consultancy, promoting and rewarding the people who helped bring work in was easy. Their contribution was visible and measurable. They were the ones who rose to the top, sometimes very quickly.

Put it this way: which of these designers is more likely to get the promotion and pay increase when they bring this to their next annual review?

Designer A: “I got 2% better at SolidWorks last year.”

Designer B: “I was instrumental in winning a £250,000 project this year.”

I know that’s a little heavy-handed. It’s meant to be.

Craft, judgement and technical expertise are more valuable than that comparison suggests. But it illustrates my point.

Create opportunities before expecting results

The ability to make a commercial contribution doesn’t appear automatically with years of experience or a senior job title.

Leaders need to create opportunities for people to try the different routes – and prepare them properly.

Let a potential manager mentor someone before giving them a team.

Help a specialist define the expertise that will be valuable to your company and clients, not just fulfilling for them.

Invite a future leader into a credentials or proposal meeting. Give them responsibility for a client relationship or a follow-on opportunity. But provide guidance rather than simply expecting them to work it out as they go along.

Most importantly, begin these conversations early.

Don’t wait until a frustrated senior designer arrives at their annual review expecting a promotion you can’t justify. Make the possible paths – and what success looks like on each of them – clear well in advance.

Developing commercial confidence

When I first recognised that helping bring work into my consultancy could turbocharge my career, I also realised that I was completely unaware of how to do it.

I learned the hard way by making mistakes and persevering.

While I was leading my consultancy, I consciously invested in developing our people, including through informal, lunch-and-learn-style training sessions.

That investment became the most effective form of business development we found – by far.

Now that I work independently, I’ve taken that experience and material and turned it into a five-course training programme called Commercial Skills for Creatives.

It follows the typical process agencies go through to win work, equipping designers with the practical skills – and, equally importantly, the confidence – to make a direct contribution to revenue generation.

Your first step is deciding who this path is suited to. It won’t be everyone.

Some members of your team may be natural managers. Others will be best suited to a specialist path – and you should do everything you reasonably can to support them.

But I bet you already have a good idea of who your potential future leaders are: the people with both the aptitude and appetite to make a broader commercial contribution.

That combination shows up as curiosity about how your business works and an instinct for spotting opportunities – an entrepreneurial streak.

They’re the people to invest in – and reward.

What do you think? Should senior designers be expected to help win work – or should they be free to focus entirely on their craft?

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You can learn more about my Commercial Skills training programme here