Are you an expert graphic designer?

Have you ever felt uncomfortable being referred to as an expert graphic designer or expert web designer?

Can I ask you why you felt that way?

I’ve seen it over and over, designers cringing at the title of expert because they don’t feel they deserve it.

In this week's episode of the Resourceful Designer podcast, I share a little secret with you. You are an expert.

Don’t believe me?

The Webster Dictionary defines Expert as follows:

An Expert is someone having, involving, or displaying special skill or knowledge derived from training or experience.

With this official definition in mind, let me ask you again. Are you an expert?

I hope you said yes.

I'm guilty myself.

I must admit. I used to be guilty of this as well. I felt uncomfortable when people would say something like...

“Hi Mark, so and so told me I should talk to you because you’re a web design expert”

or “Hi Mark, I need a logo for my business and I’m told you’re the expert”

It used to make me uncomfortable. But once I realized we're all experts in someone's eyes I started embracing it. Now if someone asks me if I’m an expert I proudly say yes, yes I am. Allow me to shower you with my expertise. OK, maybe I don't say that last part, but I don’t shy away from the title anymore.

Why does being called an expert bother designers?

I’ll tell you why. Because as designers we’re creative people, and being creative people we’re constantly learning to improve our skills and knowledge. But if we’re constantly learning to improve our skills and knowledge, and there’s always so much new to learn. how can we be experts? It doesn't make sense.

The fact of the matter is, we are experts to everyone not in our industry.

• To everyone who doesn’t understand the workings of a website. we are an expert.
• To everyone who doesn’t understand the intricacies of proper branding, we are an expert.
• To everyone who doesn’t understand the nuances of type manipulation and colour usage and page layout, we are an expert.

Because we have skills and knowledge they don’t possess we are experts in their eyes.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve been a designer for many years like I have, or if you’re just getting into this profession.

To everyone who relies on our skills and design knowledge, we are experts. So embrace it.

Trust me, you want it this way. How do you think your business would be doing if your clients didn’t see you as an expert at what you do. I don’t think I have to tell you the answer to that one, do I?

How do you feel when someone calls you an expert?

Let me know by leaving a comment for this episode.

Questions of the Week

Submit your question to be featured in a future episode of the podcast by visiting the feedback page.

This week’s question comes from Audrey

My name is Audrey and I'm from Sydney  I've been working as a graphic designer for 1 year. I'm an in house graphic designer for a fashion brand but I do freelance web design work outside of my daytime job. I have question about how you do web design. Do you show your client a wireframe or just a high fidelity mock up and do you code as well to build a website? Like html and css. Or do you work with a developer to build a website. Also lastly what's the difference between web design and UI&UX?

To find out what I told Audrey you’ll have to listen to the podcast.

Resource of the week Espresso

This week's resource is a web editor called Espresso by MacRabbit. I've been using Espresso since it first came out for all my HTML, PHP and CSS coding. I've created over 50 websites using this application. It's very well laid out and very simple to use. Here's the description from their website.

Espresso is for people who make delightful, innovative and fast websites — in an app to match. Espresso helps you write, code, design, build and publish with flair and efficiency. Sophisticated text features, amazing Live Preview with Browser Xray, CSSEdit tools, the Navigator, Dynamo auto-building, and Server Sync. Whether you're starting from scratch or tweaking a live site, Espresso has you covered.

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I want to help you.

Running a graphic design or web design business all by yourself isn't easy. If there are any struggles you face running your design business please reach out to me. I'll do my best to help you by addressing your issues in a future blog post or podcast episode here at Resourceful Designer. You can reach me at [email protected]