design home_work

Yesterday, I received a weekly email from an AIGA group that I am part of on LinkedIn. One of the highlighted discussions was, "Do passionate graphic designers produce better work than the unimpassioned?" started by Stephanie Orma (read the full discussion on LinkedIn here). I was a little taken back by the question, mainly because the answer is obvious.

Without passion you might be able to be a good designer, but without passion, it is hard to imagine someone being a great designer. It doesn't just apply to design, it takes at least some amount of passion to do anything well. Being passionate about your work pushes you to go the extra step, personally connects you to your work, and brings your work to a higher level of fidelity.

We have all had projects where we knew if we stopped now that all of the people involved, if it were clients or peers, would be happy with the results. But, we know that something could be better, that we can push it further, and make it be something that surpasses all expectations. Because of the passion for the work we do, we make the choice of working an extra hour, or even early into the next morning to bring it to that next level and bring personal satisfaction in the work we produce.

To be honest, it is easy sometimes to just glide along, if you are a good designer you can probably create decent work without too much effort most of the time. It's important to have passion to push you beyond decent. In the long run, the passion in your work shows, and it can bring recognition from your clients, the community, and your peers.

In the end, it's what makes you happy. At this point of time in my life, being passionate about design and clearly seeing it in my work brings me personal satisfaction.

Below are a few passionate comments I pulled from the discussion.

"YES. It's the passion for exploration, discovery, communication and invention that drives good designers. Great designers take that to the next level. It's like everything else, I guess." - Roland Murillo

"I can think of a million easier careers to make a better living at then being a designer/developer. So, it's all about the passion of wanting to work in this field." - Todd Bricker

"As someone who hires designers, I would prefer to work with passionate ones, not because I think they would necessarily produce better work (which, by the way, I think they do) but because they challenge me and often bring something to the table that I would not have even considered." - Rey Ledda