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Designing While Shipping
A lot of designers are good at pixels but struggle to ship something they’re proud of. This is because the skills it takes to be a designer are different skills from the ones that make you great at releasing a product. I assume you’re already familiar with design, so today I’d like to talk about the finer points of shipping as part of a team.
Milton Glaser has this great talk called Ten Things I Have Learned. He’s been around for a very long time, so his ten lessons are pretty great. One in particular is wonderfully true but misunderstood: “Some people are toxic, avoid them.”
The funny thing about this line is that everyone agrees at first. You immediately think of a troublesome co-worker, or manager, or someone you just don’t get along with. You think “Ain’t that the truth. There are definitely toxic people among us.”
But this isn’t what Glaser is saying. He’s not saying there are good people and evil people. Because if so, things would be so much easier!
See, the evil people would stand out, which would make my talk today pretty straight-forward. STEP ONE:
Find the evil person or persons in your group. STEP TWO:
Everybody run! Escape the evil people! STEP THREE:
Ship amazing designs that everyone loves because you got rid of the toxic people, yayyyyyyyyy!
