🖋️ Personal Projects and How to Structure Them
As I’ve written in a previous article (linked here), it’s imperative to go above and beyond your school work in order to stand out from the pack and build your skills. The craft of design requires time and exposure to new challenges, and the reality is that the number of projects in a design education is usually not enough to master the skills at the level that’s required for industry.
I love this bit about creative work from Ira Glass (famous writer and host of the syndicated NPR show This American Life). His profession may be different from ours, but his wisdom here is invaluable:
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
The best way forward, then, is to assign yourself additional projects, new challenges that stretch your abilities and flex your creative muscles. Any new work will help develop your skills, but the right intentions and focuses will net you better results. So, what should you keep in mind as you go about this?
Identify Your Goals
All projects are not created equal, and not all projects will serve your portfolio in the same ways. Some projects are great opportunities for fabrication and prototyping. Others will lend themselves to form-finding through modelmaking or sketching. Others still will require organic surface modeling. Going into a project with a clear, specific goal will help you be intentional in filling in the gaps of your portfolio. Pick a goal and tailor the project to fulfilling that goal.
Ask yourself: what skills do I need to sharpen? What skills are not being showcased in my portfolio? What target users/aesthetics/product categories am I interested in and are missing?
Target an Achievable Result
You have to be realistic with these side projects. You’re much more likely to be successful with an elegant, smaller-scale project than you will with an overly ambitious, overly complicated one. If you’re considering designing an entire sports car, complete with class-A exterior surfacing, interior seats, a full infotainment system, and and and… Let me stop you right there. Do not let ambition get the best of you. Keep things as simple as possible. There’s plenty of room for complexity in your studio projects.
Ask yourself: am I biting off more than I can chew? Do I have the bandwidth for this amount of work? Where can I cut some corners and still get a portfolio-worthy project?
Give Yourself a Specific Deadline
One of the key considerations for fruitful side projects is setting a deadline. Framed differently: one of the key pitfalls is not setting a deadline and holding yourself accountable to it. Without a deadline, you’re likely to kick the can down the road, postponing completion and letting it drag on. Remember that creative projects are never truly completed, they’re only abandoned. A deadline is a useful tool for ensuring you get the most out of a project and move along to the next one.
In most cases, side protects should be brief. You want to give yourself enough time to do the project well, but not so much time that you lose momentum. This will help train you to work quickly, a skill that is broadly important in this industry and especially so for agency work. Of course, the amount of time you can dedicate to side projects will vary based on your course load, the time of year, social/family commitments, mental health and wellness, etc. Be forgiving of yourself and find balance — a missed deadline isn’t the end of the world! — but do your best to make your projects quick, regular in cadence, and respectful of your deadlines.
Ask yourself: how much time do I need to get this done? Are there any life events or major deadlines that might get in the way of completing this project by then?
Keep It Focused
Not every design project needs every step of the design process. Some projects require a lot of research to fully understand the problem space, but others are require virtually none. Let’s take for example a novel hammer design. Just how much research do you need for a hammer? It’s got a handle, it’s got a business end, and it’s got a claw for removing nails. What more is there to know, really? If your goal is to work on your CAD surfacing or photorealistic rendering skills, why waste any time and effort researching a problem that is well understood? Figure out what’s important for the project, keep it focused, and move it along.
Ask yourself: what is most important that I show for this project? What parts of the design process are least important for this project?
Pick a Direction and Get to Work!
Don’t wait around for the perfect idea. I see this all of the time — students know they want to work on a new project but don’t know what to design, so they toss ideas around in their mind for days and days. Before they know it, weeks have passed them by and they have nothing to show for it. Pick something you’re interested in (whether or not you’re the target user), don’t overthink it, and get to work!
It can be helpful to keep a running list of projects you’d like to work on, whether that’s in a notebook or in a notes app on your phone. As you think of ideas or product categories, quickly jot them down so you don’t lose them. Then, when it comes time to pick a direction, you can pick from a list rather than racking your brain for ideas.
Ask yourself: what product categories am I interested in? What seems like an interesting problem to solve? How can I showcase who I am through my design work?
Creating side projects, especially while you’ve got studio classes, gen eds, and maybe even a part-time job to keep up with can be daunting, but it’s rare that anyone regrets working on these kinds of side projects. I believe it’s the best thing you can do for your hard skills (outside of professional work). Be intentional about making this a regular practice, stay resilient in it, and before you know it, your portfolio will reflect that growth.