Weekly Marketing Reading: Ads, Social, Design and Content
Marketing is hard work. Accept it and move on.
How to Make Sure Your Designers Stay Ahead of the Curve
This article by HubSpot certainly hit home for us because Affinity Express is all about design. On our Marketing Team, we have two designers who are focused on the Affinity Express brand. They spend their days interpreting it to develop new and update existing collateral. This means their skills and perspective have to stay fresh or their work will decline over time.
There are five ways to help designers stay motivated and challenged.
1. Establish a Multidisciplinary Team with a Senior-Level Member. Rather than build the team based on skills needed to fill gaps, consider how having a senior-level person can influence and grow other members of the team. Keep in mind that the senior person also needs inspiration and should have an environment or outlet to interact with other senior designers in or outside of the company.
2. Encourage Team Skill Sharing and Coaching. Good designers tend to be self-motivated to improve but even those who are strong can benefit from a culture of active learning from peers. Spending time teaching skills; exploring tool usage, resources and helpful websites; reading books and articles and more are important to growth.
3. Set Aside Time for Personal Improvement. Beyond workshops and training sessions, there should be opportunities each week for designers to improve their personal skills by taking part in online classes, watching tutorial videos or researching what other designers are doing.
4. Send Them to Conferences. Invest in sending team members to conferences that are closely aligned with the type of work they currently do or hope to do in the near future. This is an excellent inspiration for designers and they can impart their new knowledge to the rest of your team.
