Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Zachary Richard Hill

When I was studying design in college I was absolutely obsessed with making things. “Making things” was literally written several times in my artist bio and I was absolutely infatuated with the end results of all of my making efforts, I was more fascinated with the results of a project and not the journey, rather than the process.

Having this mindset was easily one of the biggest mistakes I made as a young designer.

It took me experiencing a ton of failure and going through a ton of mistakes to realize that it wasn’t the results that made a designer great, it was the process they went through to create practical solutions to practical problems that made a designer great. I have discovered that the result(logo, website, app, painting etc.) is actually the by-product of the process.

Of course, the results are important, an identity system needs to be well executed and communicate the pillars of a brand. An app needs to have a well-designed user experience, and even most art, as subjective as it is, must rest on some aesthetic merits to garner positive attention. However what many of us overlook or even ignore when applauding or demonizing creative work is the process and thinking that goes behind it. I have seen too many instances of “well-crafted” logos that communicate absolutely nothing while the design firm Pentagram consistently gets attacked for creating “simple” logos that actually communicate the ideas and feelings of a brand. We consistently fall head over heels for a beautiful landing page UI on Dribbble that has no real basis in reality while we scoff at the boring minimal designs that give a quality user experience. Most of the critiques in the social media arenas fail to consider the process when expressing their anger and even hatred for a logo or a piece of art. They weren’t in the board rooms when the business goals were being discussed and they weren’t at the design critiques when the design decisions were being discussed; they are just pissed because a logo from Michael Bierut doesn’t look cool enough or very hard to execute.

Once again I feel I must qualify what I have written here by saying I am not completely immune to making things just for the sake of making cool looking things. I think there is a place for that(Dribbble, Instagram etc.) and I think making art and design for the sake of art and design has its role in pushing art, design, and creativity forward and further into our culture. However, as professional creatives and designers, we fail when we don’t leave that mentality on social media and outside of our professional projects or engagements.

Sixers fan know all about “The Process”

To me, this is where process comes in. I admit I have become a process junky. It took several misaligned projects and a few unhappy clients for me to become a process junky(aka I had to learn to love the process the hard way). I have been very lucky to learn from some of the most brilliant design minds in the world, and the one thing they all have in common is the process. Don’t get me wrong, there are still times when I am working as a designer or a strategist when I fail and I fail hard. But those failures are now nowhere near as severe because I have a process to fall back on. So does your favorite artist or designer, trust me, go find an interview or an article about them, the process will somehow get mentioned one way or another. For me, I am at my most comfortable as a creative when an engagement is closely aligned to our agency’s process and I start to get anxious if a project is starting to drift away from that process. I don’t know if that mentality is the most healthy for the psyche, but having a well laid out and transparent plan to fall back on when things aren’t going as perfect as I want them to sincerely helps me sleep a little better at night and worry a little less during the work hours.

Everything I have written so far leads me to the title of this article. I was inspired to write about the process because I am seeing so many of my colleagues on social media experiencing unbearable levels of stress and enduring so many terrible business situations because they are trying to sell the thing they make instead of the thinking and the process that goes into the making of the thing. The before mentioned Bierut admits he has no idea how to use the Adobe software yet he is one of the most celebrated designers in the world. This is due to his process and his thinking. The clients Pentagram works with buy the collective brain power and method of Pentagram, the end result is a bi-product. The funny thing is that we know this, we know this because we know that we can technically create most of what Pentagram produces. The mentality is no different from when someone says “I can make that” towards a Jackson Pollock painting. Someone once said that in an art history class I was in. My instructor defiantly and correctly replied, “Yes, but you didn’t.” You didn’t think of splattering a bunch of paint on a canvas and how it could communicate to a society, and you didn’t think of overlaying orange and yellow circles under or next to some typography that read “MasterCard”.

The glorification of making is simply put, a race to the bottom. Stop worrying about competing with makers on Fiverr, Upwork or any other cheap freelance site. Stop complaining about would be clients seeking low-cost products, to them that’s good business and part of me can empathize with that mentality. The solution is to get out of the “make first” sandbox altogether. Position yourself as a thinker, a facilitator, a dreamer, and a creative problem solver. Establish yourself in an environment where you are valued by much more than what you can produce on a tangible level. I love design, it’s a part of who I am, and I love making logos, illustrations, and interfaces; but my want to disrupt, question, solve, and construct and follow a process has been far greater factors towards any success I have been fortunate enough to experience in my still fledgling creative career.

What is stopping you from positioning yourself as a thinker or process owner and not a maker? Is it your portfolio? Your experience? The answer should be nothing, nothing should be stopping you from building a great creative process for yourself and then selling that process and thinking that is attached to it and letting the product be the bi-product of what you are selling. What I have found to be true and ironic in this case, is that the more a creative focuses on the process and the thinking, the better the tangible result is. Most of you reading obviously know this, yet most of you reading this will still obsess over what you are making and what others are making and how good it looks or doesn’t look. I again must humbly admit it wasn’t so obvious to me at one time, I only cared about what was made and not how it was being made; and I still think it’s okay to go on to Dribbble and Pinterest to check out all the cool new designs or works of art, I still do and I still think most creatives should still should do that, there is a ton of great work being made out there and we should all see it and even let it impact our work, even if only a little.

But there are two races going on in the modern creative economy, a race towards the bottom(Fiverr) and a race towards the top(Pentagram, IDEO) which race will you run? Going towards the top isn’t hard as you may think it is, it just needs your hard work, a sound process and the willingness to showcase that process and not a cool looking logo you just posted on Dribbble or Instagram.

Cheers

Zachary is a design & strategy director with Toi, a full service digital agency specializing in UX/UI and branding for the digital environment. He also co hosts and writes articles for Creative Honey, an online journal for the creative professional. He loves his soon to be wife, good typography, and pop culture.

Sell Process not Product was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Sell Process not Product

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