Every year, large batches of design students graduate and launch their careers in the market. Some of them land in proper places, which groom them professionally and set a solid career path for a successful future. Then there are designers who are not so lucky, who do not find the kind of professional approach they were looking for.
To help these designers cope with their career decisions, there has been much literal support through books, websites, and blogs, and even debates on issues like whether to be a freelancer, start with a smaller organization or a bigger enterprise, and where and how to start professional networking.
However, one aspect of professional indecisiveness which has been observed in many fresh designers, has not been discussed frequently: whether to be a jack of all trades and be a generalist designer with multiple skill sets, or to be a master of one specific field in a design career.
We will spin our article around this very topic and discuss its different aspects in detail.
The Root of the Argument
Designing nowadays is an extremely voluminous concept with hundreds of branches and sub-branches springing up from its core. When asking about your profession, even the most irrelevant minds would ask, “What kind of designer are you?” rather than being content with “I’m a designer.”
There are two kinds of trends seen in a designer’s professional life cycle. Some designers learn a specific skill and once their learning reaches a saturated level, they develop a curiosity to learn its associated skills as well.
On the other hand, some designers learn a number of design skills at the start of their career. As they move up the professional ladder, they tend to pare down the extra skills and focus on one specific skill for the rest of their professional life.
But what about newbie designers? There is bound to be some confusion as to which professional approach to opt for. Here is some food for thought.
The Benefits of Being a Generalist
When you are a “Jack of All Trades”, you are:
1. Highly Sellable
The biggest advantage of having multiple skill sets is that it makes your profile highly sellable in the market. When you enter the market with a diverse set of skills, there are chances that your different skills attract clients both individually and collectively, landing a good number of projects on your desk.
Moreover, there are a number of clients who prefer to have a ‘one-window solution’. Therefore, rather than getting only a part of a project, you may get the entire project based on your diversified skills, which will probably bring in bigger profit margins.
2. A Professional Chameleon
A chameleon has a natural mechanism of changing the color of its skin to blend in with its surroundings in order to deal with a situation. ‘Jack of all’ designers have the ability to be a professional chameleon and modify their profile to suit the needs of the project being offered. Having multiple skills enables them to play any card from their deck of skills and win a project.
3. More Productive
Being highly productive is the biggest concern of a designer from any field or sub-field. For designers, productivity not only means financial gains but is a matter of mental and moral satisfaction.
In the case of a design generalist, productivity almost never ends. Their multiple skills keep a steady flow of projects coming in, and they stay busy for most of their career.
What Could Go Wrong?
Being multi-skilled has its downsides, which include:
1. Too Much to Handle
As mentioned before, although professionals get projects in bulk, everyone has a maximum workload that they can handle. These designers will reach their full work capacity at a very early stage. This situation sometimes results in serious work burnout, leading to a chain of non-productive days.
2. No Exclusive Projects
Exclusive projects are every designer’s dream. These projects relate to a specific field of design, require much focus, are generally paid higher than usual projects, and are gems for a successful design portfolio. However, clients usually do not opt for a generalist designer mainly because they already have multiple projects and might not be able to focus and work exclusively on their project.
3. Weak Project Management
Project management is one of the few add-ons required for a smooth flow of design business. Although project management is itself a skill (good to learn for both types of designers being discussed in this article), a ‘jack of all trades’ type of designer, mostly due to the pile of tasks on their plate, often falls short in this respect.
Such designers amass design projects (with a variance in the scope of work) and usually end up messing everything up, ultimately eating into their own profit by spending money on outsourcing.
The Benefits of Being a Specialist
Now, let’s take a look at the advantages of being a specialist designer.
1. Depth of Experience
In any field of work, experience is the biggest feather in the cap of a professional. As a matter of fact, professional life is one of the few places where ‘being old’ is a compliment.
In the professional life of a specialist designer, working in the same field for years, experience becomes their greatest asset. When a client is reviewing profiles and portfolios of designers for a project, the ones with more experience readily catch their eye.
Moreover, when a designer works in the same field for a long time, they become fluent in it, making new tasks less challenging.
2. Streamlined Approach
Being a specialized designer helps in developing a streamlined approach in the workflow. As a specialist designer works on projects with the same or similar scope, new tasks easily get adjusted in their workflow, enabling them to stay focused without losing productivity.
3. Charge Higher
Whenever you add the title ‘specialist’ to your professional profile, it immediately makes a positive impact on others and adds significant value. This is the same case with a ‘master of one’ designer.
When you offer your services to a client by stating that you are a ‘specialist’ in a certain field, it automatically gives you a reason to charge higher than a generalist designer. Most clients do not argue on this and consider it justified to pay you handsomely for your expertise.
Master of One – Cons
Now, don’t get too carried away with being a ‘master of one’ because there are some disadvantages associated with it as well.
1. Lack of Alternatives
The most basic disadvantage of being a specialist is that you do not have a lot to offer your client.
For instance, if a client works with a web designer and they develop a very good professional chemistry, once the web designing task ends, the client might ask if you can provide further services like web development or CMS. If you cannot offer these additional skills, you end up disappointing the client.
Therefore, being a specialist designer may result in a relatively shorter business relationship with your clients.
2. Much Outsourcing
Designers who work in a single field of design sometimes get projects that require skills beyond their own. In such situations, these designers have to outsource part of their projects.
Although outsourcing facilitates them and fills in the aspects they lack, the profits get divided, sometimes quite unevenly. Additionally, with outsourcing, you lose control of the overall quality of the project, which affects your market reputation.
3. Lower Chances of Business Expansion
In the design business, like all other fields, business expansion is the ultimate goal. Particularly from the perspective of a freelancer, there is always a stage when they want to increase the circumference of their business to keep up with competitors.
However, with a specialized approach towards a design career, this may seem difficult.
For instance, if a person with multiple skills considers business expansion, they will most probably rely on their own skills to offer a variety of services to clients. On the contrary, when a specialist designer plans for business expansion, they would not be able to do it without external help.
Conclusion
I have tried my best to provide a balanced perspective on the choice between being a specialist or generalist from the perspective of a designer. This may give you some points to consider when deciding which approach suits you best.
Nevertheless, I also understand that every person has their own situation and circumstances that will influence their career approach preference.
