Diversify or Niche?
So you’ve reached a point in your career or maybe you have suddenly found a new interest in graphic design. You’ve followed a few Insta accounts and maybe taken a course or two. The experts have it sussed, you should spread yourself as wide as possible in order to catch as many clients as you can before you get past 30 and turn into a husk. Or maybe you must niche up, focus on one small portion of design and become the best in the world at it.
Both of these ‘solutions’ are a fallacy and are dangerously small, 0.01% experiences.
Niche
The Creative Director who is compelling you to hone one of your skills is the one, ten/twenty years ago who was like you, looking for work. Unsure about how to progress and likely (despite their new creed) took whatever work was available. Maybe even worked gulp for free to bolster their portfolio. Choice, unfortunately is a luxury afforded to those who have had years of experience of not being able to make one.
It is indeed important to find your focus but that comes with experience of creating work and finding out what you do/don’t like. This process can take years. Nurturing a niche that perhaps turned out to be something you’re not interested in is well, a waste of your time. Whilst you assume you’ve cracked what you’re going to do for the rest of your life, other designers will be dipping their proverbial feet in many pools. And through testing your skills in different areas of design, so comes the critical ability to be able to solve a multitude of design related problems.
I would argue turning away good work that you’re capable of creating in order to fulfil some sense of laser accurate superiority in a single discipline is (from a young designers perspective) incredibly foolish. It is the equivalent of learning French for five years, then going to work in Spain. The skill is useful, incredibly useful, but if you change your mind about France one day you are toast.
VS.
Diversify
There’s an old idiom that goes ‘Curiosity, it killed the Cat‘
As a designer, you are likely to be naturally inquisitive. We are all, at heart, problem solvers. So when faced with an issue it is usually an itch we need to scratch. When starting a job in design you’re likely to want to involve yourself in everything. Web, identity, motion graphics, large format, illustration and so on. Eager to get stuck into a project that realistically you won’t have any expertise in, your involvement in the project will falter. Probably.
This isn’t to dishearten you. But as you go through agency work, as in house designer or freelancer you will probably expose yourself to lots of different design disciplines and thats a good thing. I am an advocate of designer cutting their teeth on various projects. It allows you to find out what you like, what fits and rather quickly what doesn’t.
The problem with designers is, we have taste. So when we see a project and think ‘wow that looks incredible’ we instantaneously want to get to that level despite it being way beyond our scope. We try to replicate what looks good, we jump from animation to typography, layout to compositing and because we recognise great work we frustrate ourselves when we don’t get the desired, perfect result.
In those moments we are stretching ourselves too thin, we haven’t developed the skills that the other designer has. They may have spent a decade getting to the mastery of that discipline, the same one you can see, imagine, but can’t emulate.
Your ability to do lots will score clients or a job, but no one will ever look for you if what they’re after is a bonafide expert.
So, you’re screwed. Both options set you up to fail. Right?
Wrong.
You will see a lot of advice on instagram, Linkedin, books. Everywhere.
Advice is simply a story about an individuals good fortune.
There is no right or wrong answer. It’s a simple equation of direction and time. If your ideal job even straight out of the gate it to work for a major brand, on a singular discipline then 100%, go for the niche. But don’t expect day one for them to come knocking. You will have to do the grunt work, you will have to get the coffees in, you will have to shadow and ask questions and learn and put in those 60 hour weeks. Because learning a niche is going to take a long time, mastering it and building on it that can take decades. More times than you’ll like that goal will have to take a timeout whilst you pay your bills.
If you’re completely unsure about where you want to start in design, great most people dont have a clue. I certainly didn’t. But attacking everything head on won’t get you the best briefs because someone else will have spent more time, more effort on that particular client or type of skill. If you’re ok with being good but not the best at everything. You want to get involved because all design interest you then taking the lead will take time, it will take failures and frustrations and head scratching and 2am light bulb moments because your focus will be all over the place. But sometimes creativity is unfocused, it’s messy and simple and chaotic.
What I’d like you to take from this, as a designer finding their way, is that the advice you receive from agency owners, creative directors etc. are no doubt filled with good will. But are also likely to be peppered with bias that comes with thinking the choices they made weren’t a product of hard work, difficult decisions and a sprinkling of dumb luck.
A career in design can be a really great thing. Don’t let someone lead you down a path that has already been written. Exploration, decision making, failure and most of all producing great work will come. The one factor is time. Decide how you want to spend your time.
One route or lots of them. One goal or multiples objectives. Your choice, not a right or wrong one among them.
Just stay curious.