Many designers feels don’t love their job. Sometimes, they have to design fast. That’s OK. But the best design is not rushed. It’s thoughtful. It’s calculated. It’s not art for the sake of art. It’s slowly and surely adressing a need and a desire and delivering on it, learning from it, altering because of feedback and usage, and then starting the process all over again.

Cut off your ears! Learn to love your shell!

Your shell is your friend. Retreat into it to design. Emerge from it to present and listen. Never rush though. A blustering, out-of-breath designer has no fans, no friends. And you need people on your side. You won’t fix things overnight. But you might help in fixing things and solving problems over months. Quarters. Seasons. Dare I say, years?

Designers get to make things! Making things is fun. Designers have the best jobs in the world. If you’re walking around with a look...

All humans understand design. Trend. Editorial Voice. This is not rocket science. Design (which includes writing, art, creative work, etc.) is subjective. It’s art. Art is for Every one. And everyone deserves a right to an opinion. Especially the CEO. Even your CFO should be welcome to share his/her opinion. Colors? Fonts? Images? Layouts? Yes.

You. Yes, YOU! Designer. You. You don’t know everything.

Your job as a designer is to solve a problem. It’s to articulate visually. It’s to SUPPORT the business. You’re support staff just like the receptionist and the general counsel and the facilities manager. Making peace with that, that you’re a support function, will allow you to focus on what you should be worrying about and getting energised about and fretting about: DESIGNING. That’s your job.

Designers like to pop their headphones on and escape into work. Writers too. And artists...

The ultimate list for sites, apps and books recommended for any designer. You’ll find all sorts of useful information here which should help any designer whether it’s to do with web design or photography.

The list was originally put together by Dan Edwards in his Medium article.

Sometimes being verbose is necessary. Usually it isn’t. At times, I can be bad at this, you probably are too. My guess is this: Far more email would be read and responded to, if the message was made short, clear and concise.

Write as if your email client enforces character limits.

A good name is simple. But more than simple, a great name goes to the base of what the company does, both describing it and expanding on it.

Example: The process of naming Twitter by Noah Glass is described in Hatching Twitter, which was recently released. Regardless of how close to the truth it is, “twitter” describes it perfectly, as it is a short, irreverent/irrelevant sound. From this, the idea of birds emerge, making it even better.

A good name is a noun, and its use can be shortened to either make it into a verb or a noun.

Example: Breather is a network of rooms for work or rest, which at one point were called “Breather rooms,” but which since have been shortened by users to “Breathers,” as in “I just rented a Breather.” This makes word-of-mouth infinitely easier.

A good (domain) name passes the phone test.

Example: Re: (Fiverr.com)

Person 1: “Oh yeah I just used this service...