Defining details
Why attention to detail can make or break your reputation as a designer
What makes a good designer?
I used to think that to be considered good at design—data or otherwise—you need to have a long list of impressive skills. The ability to come up with ten amazing layout ideas on the spot. To mix all the colours in the world and still make them look cool. To draw and to take stunning pictures. You know, all the intimidating stuff you see rockstar designers do.
But the more I practice the craft, the more I realise that attention to detail is the key to good design work. More than the flashy, intimidating stuff.
Picture this scenario. The client sends you back an infographic with some notes on the charts, and also a lot of little details to be changed: a missing comma here and there, a space issue in the title, a missing link, etc. As the chart is the most important visual element that will attract everyone’s attention, you polish it nicely and miss some of the adjacent tiny details. How do you think that makes you look in the client’s eyes?
Tiny details may seem trivial. Perhaps even beneath you if you’re a senior professional. You want to focus on the big things. Trust me, I get it. But those details can make or break the trust of your stakeholders. Years ago, I had a manager point out during my performance review that I’d forgotten to adjust the axis of one of the graphs in a slide deck. That happened once. Once. He didn’t care that I had volunteered to redesign his investor presentation to make it more impactful. He also didn’t care that I worked until 10 pm and went through multiple rounds of feedback to make it happen. All he remembered was that number on the y-axis.
Details matter more than you may think. Don’t neglect them.
What does that look like in practice? “Pay attention to detail” is not exactly an actionable piece of advice. I hear you. If you do need some tips, you could consider splitting your time into two modes of working:
Convergent: the creative moments when you problem-solve, sketch, and make stunning visuals.
Divergent: the detail-oriented moments when you triple check all the dots, links, lines, etc.
While you may prefer working in one mode more than the other, both of them are necessary. So have your creative fun, but also schedule an hour at the end of the day to polish the minuscule touches. You may find it helpful to not work in both modes at once—that seems to be a recipe for disaster on my end.
Thanks for reading today and good luck defining those details!
See you next week,
—Evelina
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