Creative Advent 2008: Kyle Meyer

The best piece of career advice I received came from my father before I was interested in design as a profession: “The value of an unexecuted idea is zero. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there.”

The Value of an Unexecuted Idea

A lot of folks talk about the website idea they have, the article they’ve been kicking around, or a design they haven’t finished. If you don’t make it a reality, where the public can see and interact with it, then your idea, design, or whatever has zero value. If you want to get noticed, experiment with your design and then make it public. Get feedback and improve upon your ideas, but don’t be afraid to make them real. Embrace your personal projects, your rebellious designs, and especially embrace criticism. It’s how we grow in the design profession, and you need to put yourself out there to receive it.

For me, this has meant building a few small web projects, which have turned out to be a great way for me to be a little more adventurous with my designs, and have also allowed me to meet some truly interesting people, many of which are doing the same thing. Without realizing those ideas, I definitely wouldn’t be where I am today.

Guest Author Bio

Kyle Meyer is the founder of Typesites.com, a weekly publication devoted to teaching typography to web designers through the review and critique of sites with interesting type, as well as Astheria.com, his personal blog where he discusses design and the design profession. His work has been featured both on and off the web, as an example of typographic minimalism on the web. Kyle resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he works as a user interface designer for Clockwork Active Media.