Or why I tend to think that finding myself a job name will become more and more difficult.
I haven’t been talking about my job that much over here in the past few months. Probably because ther’s a huge gap between what I prone as a designer, and the reality of my actual job. But as time passes by, I find myself wondering more and more about that position. Not in term of company, but more on a real “designy designer” side.
I’ve been asked several time this curious things lately: “What’s your job again?
To which I happily answered: “I’m an interactive art director”. An answer that doesn’t gave much information about what I really did as a job, but what I thought was a quick way to elude an akward conversation.
To my embrassment, many people just let the conversation go through with a blank stare, and a slight “errr… what does that mean? What do you really do?”. Which is the point I really didn’t wanted to get to. Because, unfortunately, my answer to that question is so confuse and huge, it seems I have no idea of what my job is myself.
As for many designers, I do much more than just plain old graphic design. Being multi-function today is a gift that can assure you a job everywhere. And if usually, designers choose the way of the motion design, 3D modeling or web development… I chose the way of the digital planning, copywriting (in french, of course), UX design and usability. Trying to focus my work on research and design thinking to nurture it and be sure it goes beyond my clients expectations in terms of design strategy. And I first, I thought it was good.
During the past 3 years, I’ve built method and processes, wrote more than a dozen of web strategy counselling guides for various clients – from huge banks to pharmaceutical laboratories, going through child television channels. Sometimes ending with an actual design product, sometimes not. And somehow, I made less and less actual graphic design work or art direction as I knew the term before. I did “stuff”. Stuff that bringed money back to the company, but stuff I was not supposed to do. At least, stuff clients didn’t think I was doing because that was not a designer’s job.
Hence the blank stare when I give my answer to people, even those familiar with the field. Because my job ’s name has little to do with what I do. Let’s say the art went the way of the dodos.
I still am an interactive designer of some sort – I’m designing global interactive experiences, from brand strategy to the latest little facebook share button. I don’t mind that no one can stick a label on my position (there’s really no french word for that job) in the end. What freaks me out is that I feel that I’m not alone in this. More and more creative people are getting through this “creative-planners-kindastuff” or “global UX design” thing right now. The job just doesn’t exist officially yet over here.
Maybe my reader from the US or other more “on time” countries will gladly enlighten me about a proper name, already used across the sea. Because for now, my resume sticks with an akward glitch on it. Any ideas please ?
