The other day an ecademy member showed me an article about how creative workers (designers) should follow and learn from financial workers to become more business acute. The overall theme suggested that designers are creative but not natural business people and struggle with running a real business. They should get help from the specialists with a financial background to succeed.
There is much to learn from financial specialists and it would certainly help any business not just a creative one but IMHO it’ the financiers who should be learning from us (the designer). Here it comes, a very bold statement.
Designers make the best business men/women.
The idea of a designer dressed in baggy jeans and a t-shirt, drinking copulas amounts of coffee combined with quick microwave snacks whilst sitting on their Mac listening to music and creating brilliant but irrelevant pieces of work for personal purposes is still very real and vivid BUT there are also the alternative versions. Designers today come in many forms and they have moved up a step, capitalizing on technology, knowledge and ambition.
What other business sector do you know (including financial) who can use their professional background to generate a business idea, research it, conceptualise it, utilse modern technology, brand it, market it, sell it and make it a reality whilst keeping it all in house.
Todays designer takes on a varied selection of roles which intertwine with each other and expand into other sectors. This builds the experience that the designer needs to contend as a great business person. A designer can learn how to do the job of others but not just anyone can learn to be a designer.
Right now you may be saying “If you’re so good why aren’t you a millionaire?”
Well, I am, thanks very muchsmile I’m a gazzillionaire ( gazzilionaire???, maybe I do need financial help)
“okay why aren’t all designers millionaires?”
Businesses revolve around their assets, some have a shop, some a product, some have tools. A designer on the other hand has nothing just them self, the possibility of an idea and a cultured skill set.
People walk into shops without being invited, people buy products on a daily basis but who will pay for an idea. Forget buying it, can you sell it?
Why designers are the best business people but not necessarily millionaires, because they take hardest job. They make a sale out of pure trust, they sell you something thats not physical, they sell ideas which you don’t even know about, they sell the making of a business.
You may well now ask is that really a great person, one who chooses to sell something which doesn’t sell. It’s a good point and raises the question, “what makes a good business person, one whose a millionaire or one who does the impossible?”
Designers are good business people but you can’t define a good business person by their industry whether it be design, finance or anything else. The human character has too many variables to make a generic stereotype of anyone. The best business people are not designers or financial experts but people who do the impossible.
