Doing a design project in the Early 20’s vs Late 20’s

Hey,

Welcome to SoleCents, The weekly episodic thought dump by Prathamesh Thombre. Here you're going to read into my thoughts, insights and observations from the design space. I try my best to maintain a format and keep it concise; this should take you between 3 and 5 minutes.

And yes, just as we are; this is an ever evolving initiative. So all kinds of feedback is appreciated, feel free to write to me and help shape this 😁

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Let’s get into this weeks topic -

Doing a design project in the early 20’s vs Late 20’s. What changed and what stayed ?

For all you design folks out there, this edition is mostly rendered from my experience of the design industry and the career path that I have chosen for myself. If that is something that gets you curious, do stick around 😉

I’ve been actively doing personal projects throughout design school and even after ; like most of you I am assuming.

The reasons for doing these projects continued to evolve or let’s say mature over time. This evolution can only be observed in retrospect. So today, a decade from entering design school and being exposed to the world of design, I am going to try and elaborate on how I saw my own expectations from my own projects changing over time.

I'm going to categorise these projects into 2 kinds for easier understanding ; I tried to find better words but honestly, this is what it is and in this case I chose to not make it sound more interesting than what it is haha 😉.

So yes the two kinds are as follows -

1. Nonmonetary.
2. Monetary.

>> Nonmonetary Projects.

This is the oldest existing kind of personal projects that have been existing in my life. I started thinking of doing personal projects on the side from my design school curriculum, my first internships, my first jobs all for the same reasons.

• To apply the knowledge I have been gaining through my daily life, be it education or at a job.
• To explore different product segments, industries and briefs.
• To challenge myself when I feel like I need it. ( this happens more subconsciously for me, and I am glad that it does )
• To learn new skills. This overtime has widened to go beyond the world of hard design skills. For example, what you are reading today is a personal project that branches from this reason of learning and strengthening a new skill, writing.

These type of projects are supremely important in my opinion The time and effort put into this kind of personal projects that, have intangible returns is what leads to you being able to demand the second kind of projects form your life, the monetised kind ; We will get to this eventually.

As I continue to grow in the professional design space, my interest for my non-monetised personal project shifts more and more towards complimentary skills that I believe will help me in a more holistic manner to build a more wholesome work experience in future. Lately it has been more of writing, publishing, and photography. All this I believe help me to express myself as a creative outside of being a designer. I choose this for myself because I don’t wish to continue being only a designer in the near future, I want more , I want different. And this is my current roadmap to enabling that.

When I pause and look back today, I observe a shift that I find very interesting. As I saw more of one space, the design space, I also observed what this space was surrounded by and how ‘design’ was only one part of a system that exists on the market, and it has multiple verticals. Being in places that enabled me to observe this helped me to naturally identify what are the parallel skills that I can and would like to build on. As opposed to in the earlier days when this effort was confined to one industry or one sub category of products. But, the 4 pointers that you read earlier in this write up, those 4 key points continue to stay at the foundation of ‘ why ‘ I would even think of taking time aside to do work that is not part of my job.

>> Monetary Projects.

Now before elaborating on this, I am assuming that all of you who are going to take from this are in full legal bounds of doing projects that you can charge money for.

Having said that, I remember I started doing paid gigs very early on, and surprisingly enough, my first clients were all overseas. This was back when I had no idea how to identify the value I brought in as a designer to a client or a project, I didn’t know how to quantify that value, and I surely did not know how to price that value. It was all like ‘ yeah for sure I design shoes ! ‘ . Makes me smile when I think back of all that naivety. Though I realised not so long ago that none of the things I mentioned above could be taught to me, without me having lived the experiences myself. I used all the opportunities that came my way to do freelance projects, between design school, while awaiting internship approvals, and between shifting jobs even. No chill right ? Haha, well I’m glad that it was fun work in the end.

My reasons for doing these paid projects were -

• To expand my body of work.
• To get exposure to talking with clients and developers.
• To learn how to present my skillset and value across cultural and geographical borders.

These kind of interactions were super essential in contributing to my soft skillset ; I did not realise that while it was happening of course. But looking back, the learning curve that these projects brought were always exponential. As I grew in my career, and slowly started realising the growing value of my time and headspace, I reduced the frequency of doing freelance projects. As I could be doing more of skill building through personal projects when I did not see a potential client or project giving me enough learning and return.

And over time now, there is a conscious shift in my outlook towards freelance consulting. Now I do not feel interesting in taking up projects that just give me opportunities to design products. Remember the part where I said ‘ Yeah for sure I design shoes ! ‘ ; yeah that part is way back in the past. And only designing new products does not interest me as much as it used to.

Now when I think of or look at a project that can give me a financial and learning based return, I think of the following reasons for which I could see myself doing it -

• The project requires a full scope of product and brand related consultation. i.e I get to work on brand identity, brand design, product strategy and eventually product design, following on with art direction for marketing.
• I seek for a 360º end to end avenue to be able to provide value in more ways than just being a product designer.
• There is a potential to own equity in the project, brand or business. This is because I see myself in the position of thinking about long term wealth and value creation ; and the only kind of partnerships that interest me now are the long term kind. And also because I believe that working in this manner will eventually someday open doors for me to tap into other fields outside and around product design.

And rephrasing what I said before, the time and effort that I put into unpaid personal projects over many years was what lead to me being able learn what is the manner in which I like to work, and how I want to pave a thought out path that I would want to follow for my growth.

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I do not need to stress more on the importance of putting time into exploring your true passions and desires. And that beneath the surface of your projects being personal passion projects or paid freelance projects, they’re all just learnings and experiences in the end. And be it learnings or experiences , good or bad ; the more they are , the merrier

Though what you do with the experiences and learnings is important.

As a bonus I will write down what I do in a sequential manner after each such experience -

• Document.
• Reflect.
• Introspect.
• Future goal setting.

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What are your thoughts on this topic? Let me know in the comments or in the dm’s!

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It’s #solecents , the weekly episodic thought dump 🚀