{"id":2376,"date":"2012-04-11T15:54:11","date_gmt":"2012-04-11T19:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/?p=2376"},"modified":"2012-04-11T16:13:17","modified_gmt":"2012-04-11T20:13:17","slug":"design-is-a-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/design-is-a-job\/","title":{"rendered":"Design Is a Job."},"content":{"rendered":"

M<\/span>y web design heroes were never the people who could churn out the sexiest pixels or craft the most bulletproof code. I guess it\u2019s because I\u2019d spent my first professional decade as an account manager (not a designer), mostly at run-of-the-mill web agencies where keeping the lights on was an achievement worthy of celebration. Issues of client management and project selection were never up for debate, despite my frequent protests. That’s why my heroes were the professionals, the ones who wrote about clients, contracts, communication. So when Nate and I started hatching the plan that would become Full Stop, our manifestos were written by people like Andy Rutledge, and Jason Fried, and David Sherwin.<\/p>\n

And Mike Monteiro.<\/p>\n

Mike\u2019s first book, \u201cDesign Is a Job<\/a>\u201d was released to the public yesterday. It\u2019s very good. It\u2019s funny and poignant and incisive. But more than that, it\u2019s important. With apologies to the other incredible A Book Apart<\/a> authors, I\u2019ll go on record as saying it\u2019s the most important book they\u2019ve released to date. Why?<\/p>\n

Many industry publications are task-focused \u201chow-to\u201d books\u2014how to code CSS3, how to use Illustrator, how to install ExpressionEngine\u2014and there\u2019s certainly a place for them. \u201cDesign Is a Job\u201d is a how-to book of a different kind. It\u2019s about how to sell your craft to a customer with precious little understanding of why they need it. It\u2019s about how to stand up for what you know is right when the easy (and often more lucrative) option is to roll over. It\u2019s about how to protect yourself in an industry where it\u2019s frighteningly easy to get fucked. It\u2019s about how to become an adult when others would just as soon stay children. It\u2019s empowering<\/em>. Reading \u201cDesign Is a Job\u201d is like reading a canonized compilation of the scribbles and notes Nate and I collected during the formation of our company. For us, it\u2019s validation. For others who haven\u2019t quite figured it out yet, it\u2019s nothing short of a call-to-arms.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also timeless. We work in a temporary industry; what’s fashionable or relevant today may be pass\u00e9 or outright false tomorrow. Most design publications\u2014especially of the web design variety\u2014are obsolete (or at least due for a new edition) after a few years. That’s where Mike’s book is different. It would’ve been good 20 years ago, and I’m confident it’ll still be good in another 20 years.<\/p>\n

Mike is a polarizing figure to be sure. Some people think he\u2019s a dick on Twitter (he is). Some think he\u2019s a marketer and self-promoter nonpareil, <\/em>the closest thing we have to a cult of personality within web design (he\u2019s that too). For my part, I’ve always looked up to him. I\u2019ve been lucky enough to get to know him a bit, and I now think of him as a kindred spirit, me in 15 years, something like that. After all, I\u2019m an inveterate asshole, and he’s the most successful asshole I know.<\/p>\n

Whatever you think of Mike, one thing is for sure: he\u2019s given us all a gift in \u201cDesign Is a Job.\u201d Well, he hasn\u2019t given us anything. You have to fucking pay him for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My web design heroes were never the people who could churn out the sexiest pixels or craft the most bulletproof code. I guess it\u2019s because I\u2019d spent my first professional decade as an account manager (not a designer), mostly at run-of-the-mill web agencies where keeping the lights on was an achievement worthy of celebration. Issues […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[35,50,33],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2376"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2376"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2390,"href":"https:\/\/fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2376\/revisions\/2390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}