ISSUE 18
Dear Students,
I still remember critique days when I was an undergraduate.
There was a student in my class who was an incredible illustrator. And at every critique, something interesting happened.
We would quietly wait to put our work on the wall until after his.
No one wanted their project hanging next to his.
And no one wanted to follow him, either.
We laughed about it, but beneath the laughter was something many of us were feeling.
Comparison.
And with it, that little voice wondering if maybe we weren't good enough.
We weren't looking at our own work and asking how we could improve it.
We were measuring it against someone else's strength.
Our professor noticed.
And he gave us advice I've never forgotten:
Don't compare yourself to other designers.
At the time, I thought he was just trying to make us feel better.
Years later, I realized he was teaching us something much bigger.
Someone Will Always Be Better at Something
Someone will always be a better illustrator than you.
Someone else will be an incredible photographer.
Someone will know motion graphics inside and out.
Someone will build websites you couldn’t begin to build.
And you know what?
You don’t have to be great at all of it.
Graphic design is an incredibly broad profession. None of us are expected to excel at everything.
Your job isn’t to collect every possible design skill until you’re better than everyone around you.
Your job is to figure out what you’re good at, keep getting better at it, and understand where those strengths can take you.
Find Your Strengths
That classmate really was an incredible illustrator.
I wasn’t.
But over time, I discovered I had different strengths.
I loved layout.
Branding.
Packaging.
Teaching.
Helping people understand complex ideas.
Those strengths became part of the career I built.
If I had spent all my energy trying to become the illustrator that he was, I would have had far less time to discover what I was good at.
The same is true for you.
Your greatest contribution probably won’t come from trying to match someone else’s strengths.
It will come from developing your own.
Comparison Has Changed, but the Problem Hasn't
When I was in college, comparison happened during critiques.
Today, you can do it all day long without leaving your couch.
Open social media, and there they are:
Perfect portfolios.
Award-winning projects.
Beautiful mockups.
Huge followings.
Thousands of likes.
What you don't see nearly as often is everything that came before the post.
The bad concepts.
The rejected ideas.
The client who hated version one.
And version two.
And version seven.
The project that didn't work.
The years it took that designer to get as good as they are now.
You're looking at the finished work without seeing everything it took to get there.
And then you're using it as evidence that you're somehow behind.
You're not learning anything from that comparison.
You're just making yourself miserable.
Let Inspiration Replace Comparison
There is absolutely nothing wrong with admiring great work.
I encourage it.
Study designers you admire.
Ask why their work is successful.
Look at how they solve problems.
Pay attention to their process.
Learn from them.
But there is a big difference between saying:
“I want to learn from this.”
and
“Why can't I be as good as this?”
One helps you grow.
The other keeps you focused on someone else's path.
Final Thoughts
My professor wasn't telling us to lower our expectations.
He wasn't telling us to stop admiring talented designers.
He was reminding us to pay attention to our own growth.
The designer standing next to you has different experiences, strengths, and a different path.
So do you.
Learn from other designers.
Be inspired by them.
Cheer them on.
Then get back to your own work.
Because the goal was never to become the best illustrator in the room.
The goal was to become the best designer I could become.
Those aren't always the same thing.
In design truth,
Maggie
