Lessons in my design career, from my mentors and design gurus. Their words help me to stay close to where I come from.
About the way of working, thinking, fear, determination, etc. I also publish articles on Medium for design knowledge sharing, welcome to read.
01
When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”
— r. buckminster fuller
A screenshot from slack's conversation
A conversation from the work channel. Mike, my former creative director at ibm, used this classical quote to warn designers that only relying on logic and research doesn't guarantee a good design. The creative process also involves intuition and a gut feeling.
Mike Abbink is the creator of the IBM PLEX typeface. It's fascinating to see how a type designer, with his broad knowledge, conducted the whole digital product design system – Carbon Design System.
02
Inspiration is for amateurs – the rest of us just show up and get to work.”
— chuck close
The episode of Christoph Niemann, from Netflix’s Abstract: The art of design
A great episode of Christoph Niemann, from Netflix’s Abstract: The art of design.
03
If you only see one solution to a problem, then you don’t really understand the problem.”
— john maeda
By the time you've arrived at the perfect solution, usually the problem has already changed.”
— jessie shefrin
04
A design project is a series of decisions.”
A screenshot from slack's conversation
Erika Hall, the author of “Just enough research”, talked at a design conference in 2016.
For me, this statement becomes so true under AI-driven circumstances. The designer's key role is "decision-making." AI expands the possibilities – good or worse. Design education should focus on this role's training. Where do they come from? Are there any shortcuts? Nope. Some of the exercises still need to undergo craftsmanship training by hand, detail-eye training, and design history knowledge.
05
Design system vs. Design history
Advice to young designers
This quote is given by Jesse Reed in a Design system related talk at Google in 2018.
I archived this screenshot in my desktop's folder for years. It is mainly to remind myself to spend time reading design history books. It's also good advice for all my design folks :)

Just like the example from Google's Material Design, it interweaves an array of design disciplines with development and does not approach it from a single disciplinary angle. It inherits the knowledge from design traditions, such as font, shape, colour, typography, etc.
06
Define what you do. Not what you are.”
— petr van blockland
A screenshot from slack's conversation
My professor Petr van Blockland presented in a Seminar at the moti museum in Breda, 2015.
There is nowhere else like the digital design field has created so many role titles in the past decade. You may hear the title of UX designer, service designer, product designer, system designer, and so on. In the March of 2025, Duolingo team declared that product experience (PX) is their new name. Maybe one day you will see AI designer, AI-agents designer, etc. 🤯 Is the naming/title important? It's probably because of the high competition in the job market that designers are in a panic if their efforts' scope can't be visible.

John Maeda, in his Design in Tech Report, distinguishes between three categories: "classical" designers, who create physical objects or products; "design-thinking" designers, who innovate by seeking deep insights into how customers interact with products and services; and "computational" designers, who use programming skills and data to satisfy millions or even billions of users instantaneously.

“Define what you do, not what you are.” – Focusing on your practice. I think this is a more elegant and simplifying way to identify ourselves.