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5 Soft Skills Every Designer Needs
Looking outside of the obvious technical skills
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Hard technical skills are very important for any designer to have. Things like typography, prototyping, user research, etc are areas that affect one’s design craft and way of thinking. Apps like Figma, Sketch, Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Principle, Framer, etc are all tools that help communicate and sell ideas.
However, these are skills that are often seen as being the most important. They’re commonly used as the distinguishing factor of what makes a great designer. Again, I think these are critical to have, but, there’s another piece to this that’s often overlooked; soft skills.
As designers, we work with humans to ultimately serve other humans. So, it’s essential for anyone to understand the human aspect of our work and the way we work. This is where the soft skill sets come in.
There are 5 soft skills you must master if you wish to elevate your design career.
1. Storytelling
The best brands and products are ones that are based around a cohesive narrative (usually the customer’s story or journey).
Why?
Because it creates an emotional response and pushes the intended audience to take action.
A recent rebrand of Robinhood by COLLINS really brought this idea home for me. Take a look at these LinkedIn posts below from Brian Collins (Co-Founder) talking about his team’s work:
“To invest is to imagine a brighter future — and take the first step towards it. When enough people take that step, new communities can form, more resources can be developed, and entire industries can shift to better meet the demands of people.”
