Anonymous asked: I've seen many designers/illustrators describing themselves as "visual problem solvers". Do you see yourself as such? What does a visual problem solver actually do? How does one define the problem(s), to begin with? Which process do they follow to find a solution? And, supposing more than one solution is possible, how does one determine which is the better one?

I'm curious because the term "Visual problem solving" is often, but very little is actually written about the process. Maybe it's simple as sliced pie for people which have an academic background, but the process may come across as a black box for others.

This might be thin-slicing things, or getting quabbly about definitions of words, but I don’t think we’re problem-solvers. I think problem solving typically deals with repairs. A surgeon is a problem-solver. Sometimes, we’re repairing, but other times we’re making something completely new. So we’re not always problem-solvers. I think, more often than not, we’re value-adders as opposed to problem-solvers.

With that in mind, I think every job has a set of requirements we aim to fulfill. With a design job, I think there’s three properties that mix in different amounts: strategizing, communicating and selling. A job may be mostly strategizing with a healthy dose of communicating with very little selling. Or any other combination those three characteristics.

Mix those three things in different quantities, and you get different end products, much the same way that mixing eggs, flour and milk together in different ways yields vastly different results. The variable quality of the amounts of these ingredients often makes comparing practices of design difficult, even though we share very similar tools and vocabularies. (And that usually many of us can tackle many kinds of projects.)

It’s similar with bakers. A baker baking bread is very different than one who makes cakes or soufflés. It’s tempting to group them together because they use similar tools and ingredients, but the aim for each is usually different. But, they’re still brethren. At the end of the day, they’re all covered in flour.