What Does It Mean to Be a Designer?
The existential question, an attempt to answer all over again
I’ve asked myself this question more times than I can count. What does it really mean to be a designer? Is it about satisfaction? About money? Prestige? Or is it just one of those things people fall into because it’s trendy or in demand? I don’t know the answer. Not in a way that feels final, anyway. But I do know how I ended up here, and maybe that says something.
I made a piece of video on it. Enjoy.
When I graduated in 2007, I had no clear idea what I wanted to do with my life. I studied graphic design, so the most obvious path was to join a branding agency or advertising firm, like most of my classmates. But something about that route didn’t click with me. I had always been more drawn to digital. Back in high school and university, I spent hours making websites with FrontPage, playing around with HTML, even designing interactive CD-ROMs using Macromedia Flash and Director. It wasn’t formal education, but it felt more natural than anything I ever learned about paper stock or printing techniques. Looking back, I guess I had already drifted toward what would later be called UX, even though no one called it that back then.
My first job was at Oracle, designing web-based e-learning tools. I was based in Indonesia, but the team was in the US. It was remote, but not in the current sense of the word—I still went into an office every day, just not with the people I worked with. The only design tool I used at the time was Adobe Illustrator. There was no Figma, no Sketch, no libraries or tokens or frameworks. Just a print-focused design tool that we forced into working for the web. It sounds funny now, but it got the job done.
The truth is, I didn’t have a deep motivation when I started. I just needed a job. I was more comfortable designing for screens than for paper, and that was enough of a reason to take the path I did. I didn’t have a grand plan, and I certainly didn’t see it as a lifelong calling. It was simply a way to make a living. And for a while, that was enough.
Even now, I wouldn’t say I’ve found some pure, burning passion in design. If I have any passion at all, it might be travel. I spend a lot of time writing about it, filming videos, planning trips. Maybe that’s the thing I actually care about. Maybe that’s why I’ve gravitated toward travel tech companies like Expedia and TripAdvisor. I’m still not sure. I just know that I think about travel more than I think about design.
When I’ve changed jobs over the years, it was never part of a grand career trajectory. It was usually about escaping a bad situation or chasing a better one. Better salary, better team, better manager, better environment. That’s how I moved from one place to another. I didn’t sit down with a five-year plan and try to climb the ladder step by step. I just went where things felt more tolerable. If I look back, most of my career moves were driven by opportunity, not ambition.
Even when I moved to Singapore in 2016, it wasn’t really about the work. It was about building a better life for my family. Sure, the jobs were better, the pay was better, but ultimately I moved because I wanted my kid to grow up in a place that felt more stable, more open, more livable. And if I’m being honest, the same reasoning applied every time I jumped to a new job. Sometimes I just needed to leave because I couldn’t take the burnout anymore. Sometimes I followed a manager I respected. Sometimes I just needed something different. In 2021, for example, I left Shopify and joined TripAdvisor partly because I missed working in travel, but mostly because I had burned out hard and met a new manager who made me feel hopeful again. That was enough of a reason.
So when people ask me, what does being a designer mean to you? My answer is: it doesn’t mean much, really. It’s a job. It’s something that made sense to do, given the time and circumstances. I’m not trying to change the world. I’m not building toward some master plan. I just want to make a living, stay sane, and maybe find time and space to do things I truly care about on the side. That’s about it.
If I were born in a different time, I might have done something else entirely. Maybe I would have been a painter. Maybe a machine operator in a factory. Who knows. In this era, design happened to be the thing that worked. So I went with it. There’s nothing heroic or poetic about it.
If you’re starting out and hoping to become a designer today, I’d say don’t get too philosophical about it. Don’t romanticize it. The industry will disappoint you sometimes. That’s guaranteed. But it can still give you what you need, even if it’s not what you thought you were looking for.
Thanks for reading. And if you’re curious, the video version of this reflection is here.