Buy my course and make 6 figures
Thoughts on design influencers, unlimited design studios and more.
Right before the pandemic I was at a design conference where one of the speakers wasn’t just a designer, he was a well-known “marketer of design” or an influencer I guess, and an excellent speaker. During his talk he showed the audience how he had created a workflow to create content (meaning tutorials and quick tips) and measure and optimize it across all social platforms. He was making a living out of making carrousels and wanted to share his knowledge so we all could do the same! His talk was by far the most popular talk of the conference. Everybody wanted to increase their following, become a reference, become a marketer.
The enthusiasm in the room gave me chills but I got it. Get popular, get people to follow you and then get better client work..? Wrong, get popular so you can get your audience to pay for your content.
Now fast forward 3 years. IG, Twitter, etc are flooded with designers with massive followings just posting tutorials. When you go to their websites they all sell a similar design course, or run an “unlimited design” subscription studio (sketchy term for retainer, anybody?) or a collection of white label templates for designers. These designers claim openly to be making a lot of money and guess what, they are all willing to teach you the ropes for a small fee.
It looks sketchy because it is, the moment you dive into the reviews or search for their names on twitter it’s all bad reviews. “Unlimited design subscriptions” or whatever they call it doesn’t work because time is finite, so you either have just a specific number of clients you can serve monthly OR have an infinite capacity of growth. It’s like running a car insurance business where all your customers are encouraged to crash everyday.
Same with anybody selling courses. Unless they are selling courses on “how to sell courses” their success should not be associated with their ability to design. Anyway, besides the inner workings of their business model or advertising, what all the enthusiasm in the room made me question was…
Wait, Who is my audience? Why did I get into this field and who do I want to work for?
Or in other words, when did so many designers decide their audience was just other designers? Could someone claim to be a successful designer if their business comes from selling design courses? I don’t think so. It’s literally like selling shovels during the gold rush and promoting your course on gold digging while you do none of it. Sure you will get money1 but is that why you entered this field in the first place? I understand there is some level of hustle associated with every job, we share our work to get visibility, to get eyes on it but that’s far from the final goal. Since the hustle and the job have become somehow intertwined over the years I wondered…
Am I a designer first and a marketer by need?
Or am I a “marketer” that just happened to identify design as a fertile ground to model my scheme around?
I consider myself a designer, a creator (not the modern meaning of the word, but the most classic one) and my job as such is to use design to improve lives. Through beauty and utility my goal is to transcend the world of design. We all love the validation that comes from our peers but that was never the goal, neither was to make LinkedIn and Instagram carousels for a living (aka sell shovels).
There will always be people willing to teach, some of them good, with great experience in the field, and some of them not so good with not a lot of work behind them to back them up. In a perfect world everybody would share their knowledge with others and we all together would make it easier to access the industry to newcomers, no doubt.
Just beware of those claiming to be successful at something they don’t even do. Learn from the people whose work you admire and don’t hesitate to reach out to them given the opportunity.
FWIW, The people who really made money on the California Gold Rush were merchants. Check this article here about it.