Work

Replied to

Joshua Ariza Joshua Ariza

I ALWAYS tell new or young designers not to freelance.

Learn the business and process from someone first.

Work somewhere. Learn on their dime.

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I was always chasing freelance work on nights and weekends. That hunger helped because I never specialized early on. Any design or web project was “sure, I can do that.” I learned on the fly, built broad skills, and got great at managing clients.

Design done with defaults and prompts is already detected miles away. The difference between designers will be the discipline of continuing to do the work, without shortcuts.

The weirdest flex right now is “I one-shotted this with AI.”

Cool. So can a stranger who types a similar sentence.

One-shotting means the output required zero judgment. Zero editing. Zero taste. You skipped the entire part that makes it yours. The work is everything that happens after the first result.

Feeling guilty about not producing the same quantity of work after being a parent?

Remember that your priorities have changed, and that’s okay. Your value doesn’t depend on your output. Give yourself a break and focus on what you can do, not what you can’t.

Is incredible how few own their mistakes at work.

Everyone’s perfect and is everybody else’s fault. If that would be actually true, way more companies should be thriving.

Replied to

Orman Clark Orman Clark

what's the worst thing about being a designer?

That because of the visual nature of our work is common for many to think they can do it too, possibly better, as most think to have good taste. So they see it as paying labor hrs. Seeing designers as design software operators.

My wife always helps me to value my work. — You charge them that?! You’re almost doing it for free!

And when she’s asking a favor. — Aww come on, is so easy for you. It would not take long. 🙄

Joining Icalia Labs

3 min

I had a wild 2017, not exactly in a good way. Many sad events happened to my family in that year, thankfully our newborn helped us a lot. It gave us those moments of joy we needed.

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