A nostalgic bit of design history.

The dark age of design.

Flat design came in like a saviour which delivered us from the dark age that skeumorphism was. Don’t get me wrong, there were some really good examples but most were a nightmare of performance.

If you are new into the design field, let me tell you a story about this group of designers that survived that age.

They joke about the newer generations not knowing about the dreads of the skeuomorph world. Back when product design meant designing boxes for actual physical products and you were either a graphic designer or a web designer. Yes, that meant you needed to know the intricacies of code.

Back when un-pirated versions of Photoshop were either purchased by big companies or successful freelancers. When one wouldn’t open a newly installed version of PS without editing the .hosts file. When working on a mac meant spending hours and hours on osx86project to successfully install Snow Leopard on your PC.

When Macromedia was a thing and designing in Fireworks made you a real designer. When your IDE was Dreamweaver or Notepad. When Smashing Magazine was THE only community for reading and learning about anything web. — That first smashing book was what made my career. Also a few seconds before Envato was selling assets like png shadows and fancy separators.

Nostalgia is not about remembering neon buttons, weird shadows and clipart. It’s about the lost feeling of being free with your creativity. You were free to try and explore things back then, many of which created the practices of today.

Dribbble started as a medium where you were encouraged to fail. To show your weird ideas.

Only to evolve into a showcase website, because; as it turnes out, UI designers have really big egos. Who knew?! — How many of you remember Forrst? It died because of this.

Some continued along this line and today are the most followed and respected dribbble designers *cough*Cosmin Capitanu*cough*. Others changed titles with the times and are about to once again hit edit on LinkedIn to change UX with Product Designer.

Most are comfortable in an agency, studio or corporation and still punish and enslave pixels. They are there because those companies have learned to keep them happy with a flexible schedule, stocked kitchen a very good work-life balance and the ability to work away from the demonic battlefields of open space.

They’ve learnt to stay away from places with bad leadership, low budgets and toxic project managers. Some even started trying to build design utopias.
But all are afraid to be successful in fear of what it brings.

I cannot think of a more modern horror than a ghost-eyed, grinning person pretending to be entirely unchanged by enormous success and fame. — Amanda Petrusich

Money is a powerful incentive but no longer the only one. If spiced up with the freedom of thought and the flexibility of schedule, seniors will have their interest sparked and will be ready to offer their loyalty.

They’ll grab their favourite cane and ask to visit your site, checkout your cafeteria, make an inventory of your kitchen, sit in your chairs and interview half of your employees. And all this after asking Reddit and reading up on you on Glassdoor. Assessing the maturity and culture of your organization will be their top priority.

Everybody offers gym memberships, health insurance and a “competitive package”.

Seniors like to be courted, but the difference is turning the dreaded interview into a casual non-conflictual conversation. You’re grabbing a coffee with an old friend and are gossiping about how none of these lil’ones know what product design actually is.

The big question: What now?

What’s the next step in their career path. Rarely do they make up a team of similarly aged designers. As most are in their 20’s, it’s starting to feel a little awkward. And they still pause when asked why aren’t you in a position of leadership or shaping the field. Shouldn’t your Sketch (or tool of choice) license be expired for years now?

Creativity is a blue collar profession. — Stephen Gates

Not everyone wants to lead or is cut to be one. Nor does one want to teach. Why is this a problem?
One might not want to trade the art of design for that of meetings.

If you love what you do, you needn’t be forced to do something else. — This makes me think of The Intern

A career path is kind of like social rules. You are expected to do something at a point in your career just because others want it so.

Here’s the kicker: Having a diverse team, with diverse experience, age and points of view is what will produce the best products. Everyone learns from one another.

Final thought.

Having designers that remember what the box in the back of the TV is, are probably a good addition to your team.