The 6 Support Levels You Need as a Designer to Grow

The 6 Support Levels You Need as a Designer to Grow

Sep 20, 2022

When we think about where we are, and where we want to go one of the things that I always think about is, how are we going to do things in the way we design? And how do you want to grow as a designer?

For me I knew that I wanted to grow in so many different areas but one that stood out when I first got started was growing my knowledge in nomenclature. It just so happened that my rep at my favorite wholesaler wouldn't let me order flowers unless I gave him the variety name and I had to give the specific colour that I was going to use.

He handed me the Holland book and a bunch of materials from different growers. And he said, 'Great, I love that you want to go in the cooler and look around and order, but when you are ordering things, I want you to go specifically, take the book, and tell me which varieties.'

So I was forced to within the first year of doing floral design (and I've been at this for 34 years now) to have to learn how to do this, and how to make that possible. And ultimately to grow my knowledge of the product I was working with. 

This set me on the trajectory through my entire career, to always want to learn more, which was great because this expanded my knowledge not just on names but also which varieties worked better in certain situations, how I wanted to work with them, how to handle them and take care of them. And this desire to keep learning is one of the key areas of support that you need in order to grow both yourself as a designer and your business. You need to become an expert in your field and able to bring that knowledge and passion to who you serve. 

What are the other areas of support that we need?

1/ Inner Support: That is support from our family and friends that keeps us motivated and really boosts us up. We need this because that's inherent to us being especially as creatives to keep going.

2/ Learning Support: This is who is teaching you the 'how'. Who's teaching you how to be more creative, who's teaching you how to go about your creativity? That is where it's going to be important for you as it's really one of the first things we need to develop. We want to know how to design, we want to learn how to use this technique, how to go about implementing our design and growing. It's innate, as creatives that we want to learn how to grow.

3/ Accountability Support: Who is giving you that thing saying, 'Hey, are you at the place that you want to be? Do you want to push further?'  Generally for me this is often found within my group of designer friends where we challenge each other and hold each other accountable. We swap processes, ideas and feedback. Having this support in your life is really important for you so you don't stay stuck, so that we keep learning more things and continue to grow. When we don't have that accountability, we have a tendency to kind of stay stuck in the tried and true things that we do design wise, which isn't always good. If we want to continually grow and grow our audience and those people that are coming to us, and stay with the trends and things like that, we need that. We need that accountability. I don't know about you, but I see a lot of stagnant design out there. So challenge yourself to think how can I change that up? How do I make things different?

4/ Directional Support: This level of support is who is guiding you, who's advising you, who's coaching you to get to the next place? Do you have that? Because we all need it. I have had that at every stage throughout my career. I would actively seek that support out when it came to my designs and my creativity and how I wanted to grow. So for me, when I started working with Hitomi Gilliam that was when I found about about EMC. She was someone I looked up to and I wanted to make sure that I was keeping an eye on and that she would give me advice on here's where I think you could really start to grow in this area. When I got involved in EMC my business grew even faster than I had ever imagined. 

5/ Personal Support: So this is all around who is out there supporting you to live your best life. And this is where I have gotten coaching on throughout my career as well. Because I've needed coaching on just me as a person so that I will challenge myself to grow in all levels, not just creatively, but personally, you know, finding those things that come and you're like, 'Okay, I seem to get have get stuck here, or I seem to get overwhelmed at this. How can I change it?' 

6/ Team Support: This is vital when you're in business that you start to build a team that can help you can take some things off your plate so that you can focus on the bigger picture tasks that will move you forward. Now, this to me was super important when it came to my business, because I always wanted things taken off my plate on the business side so that I could end up working on the creative side. And I was always wanting to get back to my design table. So that is one of the main levels where you want support as well.

And no matter where you're at, you always need support. So take some time today to think about all these different areas of support and where you might need to bring someone in to help you. 

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