You read tons of design blogs, you listen to every podcast on design, you attend lectures, and read the latest books on design. You’re also probably up on dribbble trends and can talk intelligently on recent projects of some of the industry’s leading designers.

All of this is great, kudos to you for making sure you aren’t left behind. It’s not easy to stay in the loop. Design is a very rapidly changing field, and it’s very important that you are keeping up in all facets. If the opening few sentences describe you, you are already ahead of most, but these things I just listed all describe only one real activity-design consumption.

I don’t mean to belittle these things, not one bit. I think each one of us needs to do due diligence on doing these things, but my point is that there is another very important piece to being in the design world that many designers ignore, especially young designers and it’s a terrible missed opportunity.

Don’t Just Consume, You Need to Contribute

The way I see it, being a designer is like riding a tricycle. There are three wheels, each separately doing its own thing, but together doing the actual thing – I guess in this analogy carting us around.

The first wheel represents actually doing design work. This usually means client work, but could be other types of design related activities usually associated with paid work, but not necessarily. It’s the doing of the thing. It provides us with an income, but also the practice of the doing keeps us professionally relevant and potentially well-networked.

The second wheel represents consuming design information, be it blogs, podcasts, books, lectures, etc. This is the part of the tricycle needed to make sure we know what’s happening in our world to make sure what we are doing as a practicing designer is relevant. If we don’t do our part to keep this wheel spinning, our first wheel will also begin to falter.

The third wheel represents the proactive participation in the field. It’s the giving back. I can see why people might feel like the client work they are doing is their contribution, and it is in a way, but it isn’t really the same as what I’m talking about. It isn’t really targeted at improving the industry, though it might be setting a good example. What I’m talking about is contributing content, about sharing experiences and information that is aimed at your peers, at your industry, at sharing what you know for others to benefit from. This is the wheel most people skip, as maybe they prefer bicycles, but more than likely it’s because it hasn’t occurred to them to do yet or maybe they just simply don’t feel qualified and it’s very unfortunate. All of us have more than enough information, skills, experience, and knowledge than we know what to do with. It’s really a matter of making a conscious decision to actively share it.

Have you ever stopped to think about why we know the designers that we know? Let’s start here:

• Whose blogs to we frequent?
• Whose podcasts do we listen to?
• Whose lectures do we attend?
• Whose books do we buy?
• Whose projects do we follow?

Is it by accident that the same people we can list as some of the most known and influential people in the industry are also the people that run these blogs, record these podcasts, and write these books?

Probably not. These people are all mostly great designers in their own right, but we can easily overlook something very important about all these people… they have all given back to the industry by freely sharing their experiences and information. They are all riding the tricycle and it shows.

Though most do have an impressive client list, that isn’t why we know them. We know them because they teach. Not like in the traditional sense, they don’t necessarily all hold university positions, but they do freely share information that they have learned. They show us what they know in their blogs and tutorials. They share experiences we can learn from. They give us information that we can use to improve our skills and practices, to make us all better designers and that sets a better example than just creating a stellar client project.

We can all ooooh and awww over a beautifully crafted finished project, they deserve a high five, but the value of that project to the industry isn’t in the final execution, it’s in the experience of creating it, or better yet, the experiences that have led up to the creation of it. Many of our industry leaders share their stories, their case studies, and their techniques. They show us how they have achieved their successes often through carefully crafted writings and tutorials that are freely distributed for all of us to learn from.

It takes a lot of time and effort to share that information. Think about it for a second, how long do you think it takes to write a solid blog post, or record, edit and publish a podcast? These things are not just haphazard, the best of us really take a lot of pride in packaging up knowledge in a way that is friendly and accessible. This is a gift to all of us, and to our industry, though it is also serves another purpose, it establishes our leaders as leaders, as the experts. How do we know? Because they have clearly documented that they are the experts through this shared information.

Start Contributing Right Now

Whether you are an experienced designer, a new designer, or even a design student, it is time to begin contributing to the industry. No matter what your experience in design is, you should be sharing what you know. There will always be somebody out there with less experience or skills than you who can benefit from what you have to share.

To get started I recommend starting a simple WordPress blog. They are free, quick, and offer a bunch of nice templates to get you up and running right away. Avoid the mistake of wanting to over-design your blog, choose a theme that you can use right out of the box. You can always go back later and make changes or even design your own theme, but the most important thing is your content- don’t lose sight of that.

Once you’ve got your blog all set up, the only thing left to do is fill it with content. You might write articles about your experiences, discuss topics relevant to the industry, or maybe you want to share tutorials of skills and techniques you have been experimenting with. Set your goal to post at least once a week, ideally on the same day each week. This goal accomplishes two things. The first is that you now have a deadline to meet making you more likely to do the work and secondly, as you gain readers, it sets an expectation of when they can expect new content from you. It’s important to do this to build trust between you and your followers. Start a list somewhere that is easily accessible of ideas for posts so as you get them you can record them. That way, when you sit down to write, you can choose from your list. Pick whatever inspires you and write. In my experience, a good goal is between 1,000 - 2,000 words per post.

WordPress provides analytics to show you how many people are looking at your blog. It may take a while before you start getting traffic, don’t worry about this, it takes time, often a very long time. The most important thing is that you are consistently producing quality content. Eventually people will take notice.

In the meantime, you now have a great resource available to the world that you can include in all of your social media outlets. Adding a link to your blog in your profiles gives you credibility and demonstrates expertise. If you stick to it long enough, curate your content well enough, and provide genuinely useful information, this will set you apart from many of your peers, not to mention a great topic to discuss at any future job interviews. Many of your peers will ride in with client work and a good understanding of what’s out there, but you’ll be the on the tricycle. Who knows, maybe one day it’ll be your blog that I make sure to read each week.