5 things you should think about before graduating from a design career.
By: Joaquín Alverde
Tags: Design, Portfolio, Mexico, Careers, UX

5 things you should think about before graduating from a design career.

I was about to start writing my UX portfolio. Still, I thought it would be nice to give the future generations some advice. I’ll share with you some thoughts I wish I had more clear before graduating as an Industrial Designer in Toluca. (Exactly, nobody knows where is Toluca 😂)

I can’t promise my writing is neat, but I hope these words can help you think twice before start looking for a job and sending a copy of your CV to all the Linked In job results in your area.

1. Be humble

Either you have a great talent, you think you are the best designer in town, or you had the best notes of your class, please, be humble.

I think that higher education in Mexico is not helping designers to make the right decisions when they graduate. It’s all about this savage mindset of starting your own business and becoming your boss just coming out of school!

Isn’t that too aggressive? Come on; you need some experience, you have to treat real people, accept real critique, and learn how to work in a team. There’s nothing more stressful than a know it all, believe me; I was that guy before I opened my eyes to empathy.

So, take a deep breath, listen, observe, and try not to judge at first sight. When I say be humble, I’m not trying to shut you down, but try not to act like the smartest person in the room, and develop your critical thinking before talking into any decision.

2. Practice, practice, practice, repeat.

You’re not going to be Micheal Jordan if you don’t train those design hoops. Really, grab any project, work for free, fail, fail again, be mad, happy, sad, those experiences are better having a lot of them before you graduate. I’m convinced that if you arrive at your first job with enough scars, you’ll be better handling personal and professional situations.

I remember some of my friends told me I was giving away my job for free, but what you are winning is a lot of soft skills, and they don’t teach you that at school. Convincing real people that you are doing a great job takes time; it’s not about how beautiful it is, or if your mom tells you it looks great. You have to be sure you are delivering the best product for the problem in front of you, and that my friends, only comes with years of practice and failures. Failing is good! Just be sure to learn from it.

3.Join the Internet University

During my college years, I had great teachers. But as soon my projects started giving me significant challenges that teachers couldn’t help me solve, the best tutor became the internet. He was there for me 24/7, teaching me at my pace and repeating the step I had trouble the times I needed.

Things move faster nowadays, the future requires knowledge you haven’t heard of. So, if you didn’t learn that in school, don’t worry, you may find your way through the big web. Don’t be scared and practice your self-study, that will take you to to a new level of understanding that you can solve almost everything.

Sometimes we undervalue the power of having access to an infinite world of knowledge. Well, at least it feels like. When we are young, we may be procrastinating too much before finishing something. Believe me, you can do anything if you find the correct tutorial. I even learned how to make a necktie! Haha.

4.Research

There are a million options out there, and every day it’s becoming more difficult to find your passion, everything is cooler than yesterday, and every second something new pops up. I think it’s overwhelming. But if you feel great doing something, you liked the nature of your projects, the outcomes, or anything that could feel like a heartbeat, then google the hell out of it.

Before graduating as an Industrial Designer, I was doing a lot of digital complements to my products, like apps to control the specs of the things I designed. I enjoy thinking about how things could be easier to use if you can access them through your phone, It was extra work, but that put me through my passion, user experience.

User experience became a whole new world for me, and let me tell you something, after googling enough times this concept to understand it, I finally find out what it was, and where it could take me. But I did my job, and I researched everything to know about the profile of people who do that in their professional life, the type of projects they were working on, and the companies they were leading. I began to build my design career. Curiosity is a great start to understand how things work, and if they work for you!

5. Be Patient

Great things come to those who wait, practice, fail and repeat. Don’t expect to land your dream job as a freshly graduate; instead, prepare your mind to learn and document everything you do. I wish someone mentored me about how to create an outstanding portfolio; it takes time to understand that finding your way to explain how you solve problems and make beautiful things is about perfecting your creative process.

I recommend you being patient because it’s easy to lost track when you end up doing something you’re not passionate about. Let me tell you something, all the things you do are building your way to things you love. It’s all about perspective.

I hope you can take something valuable from these thoughts even though they sound a little bit obvious; somehow, we end up losing track of things that we give for sure.

Be patient, keep developing your skills, find your passion, and believe in yourselves.

P.S. Take pictures of everything!