You Are Not an Artist: A Candid Guide to the Business of Being a Designer
A book for designers, students, and educators. Available November 15, 2022.
“An insightful treatise on the differences between art and design. Drawing on practical experience from a career that spans design education, creative agencies, and leading in-house teams, Jon offers a unique perspective on how design works in different contexts. Whether you’re just starting out in your design career or have been on the journey for a while, this book will help you navigate many of the challenges you will face when design meets business.”
— Cordell Ratzlaff, User Experience Director at Google
About the book
Technology makes it easier than ever for anyone to be a designer, or at least call themselves one of any combination of titles: Graphic designer, art director, commercial artist, visual communicator, content creator.
The list goes on.
But design isn’t only about making things look good. A designer’s job is to focus on meaning, how it can be created and communicated. To understand how products are sold and marketed. To evaluate business problems and solve them with creative ideas and processes. Like the list of titles, this too goes on and on.
After reflecting on two decades in design, I realized the majority of design education and advice has poorly positioned the role of the designer. Too few designers develop the necessary understanding that design is a business, not an art.
“Robinson makes a bold statement about modern creativity and the role we ask it to play in society and culture. His teaching experience shines through sharp anecdotes that provide clarity about the function of design, and the duty of a designer. This book may become the rallying cry for the next generation of designers, creators, and humans.”
— James Bradley Campbell, Senior Director of Experience Design at Salesforce
Who it’s for
You Are Not an Artist is dedicated to the designer who not only wants to be good at design but also wants to understand what that really means. Whether you’re a student, you’re five years into an agency job and still floundering to find confidence, ten years in and considering career reinvention, or feeling stale and burnt out from decades of poor collaboration and deadline fatigue, this can act as a companion throughout your journey.
Especially if you’re navigating your design education alone.
But it’s also for the design curious and the design adjacent. If you run a business or organization and want to deepen how you use design or design thinking to create results, improve the way you work with designers, or even approach leadership, this book is for you. If your loved one is a designer and you feel far removed from what they do, this resource will help you better understand their world. If you want to get better at working with clients, there’s a lot of great advice here on building better relationships.
While this book may be written and marketed specifically to a design audience, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t written for a baker, or a financial advisor, or an entrepreneur. At its core, design is creative problem-solving, and there’s an endless need for skilled problem-solvers well outside the confines of design.
So if you’re a curious, analytical, strategic person who likes to break things down to understand them better; an individual who thrives on collaborating and solving problems with other people; or just someone who wants to feed yourself with lots of different knowledge, then you’ll find a lot of value here.
What makes design successful is knowledge everyone can benefit from, as design touches all aspects of everyday life. At the end of the day, we’re always learning and trying to be better at whatever it is we do.
Designers never really leave design school.
“You Are Not An Artist reads like the notes taken from a decade’s worth of mentoring conversations with someone who is at the same time tenured and practical, earnest and unabashed. I wish I’d had this reference when I was starting my career in design, but I’m not upset to have it now, as each passage is written in a way to be easily picked up and put into practice again when the need arises.”
— Danielle Hicks, Principal Designer, Athenahealth
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About the author
Jon Robinson is not an artist. He’s currently the Director of Product Design at Pager, a virtual healthcare company. Before that, he freelanced, worked for creative agencies, spent time at small not-for-profits and on in-house design teams, and built experiences for global brands as an experience strategy and design consultant. Jon has a bachelor’s degree in art history and graphic design from Illinois Wesleyan University, a graduate degree in creative technologies from Illinois State University, and a graduate degree in design thinking from Indiana University.
At heart, he’s a polymath. In spirit, he’s someone who would never actually use the word “polymath.” He’s lectured and spoken on everything from user experience to the convenience economy, from service design to his passion for anything published by Kurt Vonnegut.
In addition to his general love for learning, Jon taught design for nearly a decade, most recently with the School of Art, Design, and Media at Lindenwood University and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. He previously co-authored 97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know from O’Reilly Media.
