It may well be your dream job, but being a designer isn't always a bed of roses. Like any career it has its downside, whether it's coping with nightmare clients, trying to manage your time effectively, dealing with self-doubt or the inevitable chore of taking care of the business side of things.
Sooner or later you're going to run up against your own personal snag, so today we're asking: "What is the hardest thing about your job?" Tell us in the comments section below.
To kick you off, here are some leading designers with their answers and some useful insights and tips.
Tove Andersson
On a personal level I feel that finding enough time to spend with friends and family is the hardest part of my job. I love working as an art director and during these first years of my career will want to work hard to make my mark in the industry. That often includes working weekends and evenings. Another thing is that it's sometimes hard to judge morally which brands I feel good about working with. At the moment I draw the line at tobacco products, since I don't consume these myself.
Tove Andersson is an art director based in Stockholm.
Jeffrey Bowman
The hardest thing about my job is knowing when to stop. I think it's a very common trait throughout design that we do not know when to shut down the computer and stop working. The reality I find myself in is that once I leave my desk I'm still tethered to work through my phone, emails and social media. It's tough to stop and can affect, and has affected, my personal life. As a freelancer about to move into a full time creative director role at outdoor lifestyle brand Home of Millican, I'm going to have a different set of work perimeters, and I wonder if being a '9-5er' will give me a little more freedom or at the very least a cut off point… but I doubt it.
Jeffrey Bowman is a visual communicator and creative director at Home of Millican.
James Hollingworth
The hardest thing about out my job is implementing design changes to a website where I know through best practice and my own testing, that decision will potential cause problems to the user experience and put them off. As this happens now and then I tend to try and offer some options, such as multivariate testing and A/B testing, and suggest some useful articles to read. On occasions you have to agree to disagree.
James Hollingworth is a web designer and illustrator.
Ben Steers
Keeping the plates spinning. As creative director of a small agency, I wear a great many different hats. I spend a lot of time drumming up new business, meeting potential new clients and managing existing ones. I'm also responsible for our bigger contracts and I manage the creative team. When times get busy, it can be a real balancing act keeping everyone happy. There are long days and long nights, but I love it and wouldn't have it any other way.
Ben Steers is an illustrator and designer.
Johanna Basford
Hardest thing about my job is making time for self initiated projects. You can get so busy with client work that often those personal projects that can become a turning point in your practise are pushed to the side.
Johanna Basford is an illustrator and ink evangelist who prefers pens and pencils to pixels
Next page: more top designers tell you the hardest thing about their job
