What do you want to be when you grow up?

Designers of all sorts, be they information architects or interaction designers, have a excessive amount of personal identity […]


Designers of all sorts, be they information architects or interaction designers, have a excessive amount of personal identity embedded in their profession. This makes it very hard for them to grow. I’ve talked about it before… I’m hoping this diagram might shed some light.

Career paths in design seem to fall into a pretty stable path for all the “makers of stuff” professions. You are a n00b, a raw bit of talent, and some company picks you up cheap and gets to teaching you. What they teach you isn’t usually to revolutionary, but it provides a good foundation.

Now you get to be a Journeyman. Many young designers call me up asking what they should do next, because they are leaving their company. The answer is typically “go inhouse” to consultants and “go outhouse… er, join a consulting firm” if they are in house. There are things you can only learn by being one place or the other; even somewhere as diverse as Yahoo can’t teach you consulting tricks, and no matter how many companies you think you’ve seen into you don’t know them until you’ve walked a mile in their excel sheets.

So after awhile you get pretty high up the org, and you think, now what? Do I have to become a … gasp… manager? If you are lucky the company might offer you two choices, manager or senior practitioner (master, in this chart). And now the cycle is complete, right? You can stay in your spot, or twitch back and forth between the two for the rest of your life, right?

Don’t be afraid, little sufferer of ADD…. there is hope. Get the f*ck out of the boxes!


Designers get stuck because they are scared of losing their identity, and IA’s are certainly among them. How many folks stood up at five minute madness and declared, “I am a IA, and these are my people!” Giving it up means loss of who you are, and who you love, right?

Well, the good news is it ain’t so. Lou Rosenfeld, the publisher. Frank Ramirez, the children’s book creator. Christina Wodtke, entrepreneur (hey, all of us are in publishing. Well, ya can take the girl out of IA, but…) all will be at the next summit, with our “peeps.”

And that’s the point. You are you. You know what you know. If I chucked it all tomorrow and became a food writer, well I would certainly organize my articles intelligently.

Don’t fear growth. A sapling is a tree, as are old-growth redwoods, and they know it at their core.


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  1. 3

    Great article, but what about people trying to enter the industry?

    I worked full-time and taught myself ‘web design’ in my spare time. At what level do you become a competent web designer? and at what point can you apply for your first position. I find there are a lot of employers fading the position of web designer. My current role can be described as 80% customer service assistant and the remaining joyous 20% coding of emails. Its a start but there’s is no future in sight as I’m older than my colleagues and lower in the company hierarchy.

    Oh what to do?

  2. 4
    Lawrence Krubner

    Giving it up means loss of who you are, and who you love, right? Well, the good news is it ain’t so.

    Even it is so, it might still be worth it, yes? Losing everything might still be worth personal growth? It depends how broad your understanding of personal growth is, doesn’t it? For instance, a profound religious experience might cause one to give up everything one has had so far. So might those impulses that cause a desire to switch away from careerism and toward public service, or toward the building of an alternate social reality.

  3. 5

    Thanks for sharing that thought. It’s great to see everyone take what they’ve learned and bring it to completely new ventures. I think the past couple of years I was trying to see if IA really was my identity…and amazingly enough I did survive shedding some of it. So now I am the consultant, children’s book author, babysitting volunteer, bible study leader, community volunteer, wannabee gourmet cook, tourism advisor for friends/family in the area, library developer for non-profit preschools and churches, the list is actually longer but I’ve learned to separate my identity and just “be” whatever I am wherever I am needed. It’s been very refreshing to bring all these experiences in new venues and there has been many great opportunities to learn. Step out of the box and embrace transformation!

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