I've worked with a lot of talented designers over the years. People with incredible taste, strong technical skills and an instinct for making things beautiful.
But I've come to believe that what separates a good designer from a truly exceptional one isn't artistry alone.
It's how they think when the obvious solution doesn't work.
The best creatives I've worked with have a little engineer in them. They want to understand the system surrounding the problem. What is this actually trying to accomplish? Who needs to use it? What constraints are real? What happens downstream if we change this? Can the solution scale? And, maybe most importantly, are we solving the right problem in the first place?
That's very different from simply asking, "How should this look?"
In brand and design work, we're rarely creating something that exists in isolation. A logo has to function across hundreds of applications. A signage decision affects wayfinding, accessibility, fabrication and patient experience. A campaign idea has to survive different audiences, platforms, budgets and formats. Change one piece and something else often moves with it.
That's a system.
And great designers learn to see it.
I think that's also why I've always been drawn to creatives who aren't intimidated by problems they've never encountered before. They don't immediately say, "I don't know how to do that." They get curious. They take the problem apart. They look for connections, experiment, prototype, ask questions and occasionally invent something that wasn't part of the original assignment at all.
None of that diminishes artistry. Art gives design emotion, beauty, intuition and humanity. Engineering gives it structure, function and the ability to survive the real world.
We need both.
Because great design isn't simply about making something beautiful.
It's about understanding enough of the system to make something work beautifully.
About Leadership Notes
Leadership Notes is a collection of short reflections on creativity, leadership and how we think when the conditions around us change. Drawn from my experiences leading creative teams, raising a curious human and occasionally questioning my own assumptions, these aren't intended as instructions for how to lead. They're observations about the things I'm still thinking about, learning from and figuring out along the way.