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You Can Be a Great Designer and Be Completely Unknown

257 points by delaugust 1y ago

snappr021 1y ago
If people did not give credit where credit is due.
DudeOpotomus 1y ago
This is well written. It also seems to describe society at large, especially our current society. So many things work so well, they become invisible. After time, people dont even realize how much is working behind the scenes to make everything work well and they assume we dont need those things.
- setsewerd 1y ago
  It's the same logic that's behind the declining vaccination rates unfortunately. Things could get pretty bad if that trend doesn't reverse.
abtinf 1y ago
In fact, becoming known takes an enormous amount of energy dedicated toward that purpose.
- ilrwbwrkhv 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
    Uhh... having a LinkedIn takes like 10 minutes spent once. For most industries it's a pretty obvious investment to make yourself reachable by anyone who might be looking for you and to have an added data point of legitimacy (as in simply "is this a real human being emailing me") Your heuristic is extremely bad.
  - codr7 1y ago
    I use LinkedIn to find jobs; and to troll the self applauding, back patting influencer crowd for fun.
  - stavros 1y ago
    Of course you'd have to pay 700k if you're basically rejecting anyone who's ever been online. The candidate pool is, like, three people.
- mattgreenrocks 1y ago
  Yes. And time is zero sum. So you end up with people who see no issue with sinking lots of time into audience building. I’d rather do the thing than talk about it. Or, frankly, watch/listen/read others.
  - famahar 1y ago
    I read an interesting thread about this in relation to game dev. Development is ugly, so a lot of audience building and investor potential comes from creating visually appealing gameplay demos and mechanics. Often they are made separate from the core of the game. All that time spent making engaging content ends up compromising the development process and turning it into more of a show reel, rather than a fully functioning holistic game.
  - dagw 1y ago
    I’d rather do the thing than talk about it. That is fine if you're doing it for yourself, but rather unhelpful if you hope to make a living out of doing the thing. The people I know who make a living off their art are those who sink a lot of time into selling their art (and themselves). Those who sit and home and just make (often much better) art languish in obscurity.
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
I think that greatness of mind needs to be coupled with ambition, a certain level of arrogance and self-absorbtion, and a personality that doesn't make you a pariah. I suspect that combinations like that, are, indeed, as rare as hen's teeth. Many great talents probably couldn't be arsed to play the rat race game, and keep their domain humble, or they piss off other people so much, that they never get a break.
- handfuloflight 1y ago
  Why does it have to be arrogance and self absorption? Why not simply confidence and vision?
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    It certainly can be (I'm obviously not the expert on the traits), but arrogance (think Steve Jobs) means that there's less self-doubt, and less openness to outside counsel, which is normally a Very Bad Thing, but, if your own counsel [vision?] is very good, then maybe not so bad. In my time, I've worked with some top-shelf folks, who had many -but not enough- of the combination, to be mildly successful. Most of the best were extremely ... er ... confident. Some, it came across as rudeness, but others, would politely accept your counsel, and then instantly feed it to the shredder, without you ever knowing. I preferred the rude ones.
    - sublinear 1y ago
      > I preferred the rude ones. Seeking social cues to describe greatness is exactly what the grift preys on.
      - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
        Depends. I’d rather know, up front, that someone isn’t open to my PoV, so I don’t waste time, trying to give help, where it is not wanted.
mylons 1y ago
you can be a great <insert w/e here> and be completely unknown. there are a lot of niche opportunities out there. you could be helping michelin star restaurant owners with a new booking website that just charges customers on their reservation and literally be set for life after that interaction. the last anecdote is a true story. one of the original owners of Alinea (Chicago) did just that and the guy who developed the site is quite literally set for life if he doesn't do anything else but also has this incredible in within the fine dining world now.
- tptacek 1y ago
  I feel like the people in key roles at Tock were generally pretty high profile to begin with. Last time we talked in depth about Tock here on HN, Kokonas showed up.
motohagiography 1y ago
to me designers are the real architects of history, however, the cybertruck example as brash i disagree with for specific reasons. it is a perfect example of what it does without any deference to other design languages. instead of po-mo symbolism, it really is just the sufficient metal and glass to do the thing. an essential truck is unsentimental working capital. its not a duck, its an undecorated shed. i think the design will age very well because there's nothing to add to it.
- codr7 1y ago
  It's hands down the ugliest thing I've ever seen.
  - pcmaffey 1y ago
    I call it the trash compactor
  - BoingBoomTschak 1y ago
    But at least it's not boring. I'd even call it audacious. Most of today's SUVs, you wouldn't be able to guess the brand/model if you took the badges away.
    - philipallstar 1y ago
      It's true - they are all looking more and more similar.
    - codr7 1y ago
      True, the same mindset that lead Microsoft to create the Metro UI, which has similar appeal.
- analog31 1y ago
  I don't disagree with you about its utilitarian aesthetics, even if it seems ugly to me. But an amusing irony is that most customers probably won't ever use it as a truck.
- 1y ago
spamjavalin 1y ago
Remind me of the statement (I’m paraphrasing) ‘No one gets the credit for solving a problem that never happened’
- bluGill 1y ago
  This is why I hate the end of project awards. Someone always get great credit for staying late to save the project - but if they had done their job right in the first place the project wouldn't have needed saving.
  - lolive 1y ago
    The right way is never the shortest path. So the right way will still make people stay late.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
pelagic_sky 1y ago
As a designer, I know some absolutely amazing artists who just hunker down and produce phenomenal art/designs and I am not fluffing here. As a climber, I also know of climbers who are at the best in the world level, but don’t post sends on IG or muck about in socially promoting themselves. It’s great to know that there are extremely talented people doing their thing and it’s not driven by leaderboards or social clout.
cultofmetatron 1y ago
reminds me of this video I found the other day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcjdwSY2AzM&ab_channel=Veritasium https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcjdwSY2AzM&ab_channel=Verit... if I'm understanding correctly the implications of Emily Noether's work, its an absolute travesty that she isn't famous in the same breath as Einstein and Feynman. Yet this video was the first time I had even heard of her.
- esafak 1y ago
  Physicists know her. Einstein was a public intellectual, Noether was not.
- MoonGhost 1y ago
  There are many great scientists you've never heard about. Soviet side of the world was almost as big as western. Yet they got only a very few nobel prices. It was absurd when western derivative got, but not the original work.
  - rablackburn 1y ago
    Do you have any recommendations for where we could read more about the soviet originals/western derivatives? I’ve never heard that before (born after the collapse) and that sounds like a fascinating story.
    - bluGill 1y ago
      https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/73052/technomagica-progression-fantasy-litrpg https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/73052/technomagica-progres... - it is a fiction story so it might or might not be to your taste. The story is a soviet (or just after the fall) scientists it reborn in a fantasy/magic world - like most such stories there is constant comparisons to the old world, but the old world is the soviet one not the western one. It probably isn't a comprehensive list, but it is a good overview of who the soviets saw as important.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  Einstein's discovery explained a centuries old mystery that people, including every major mind of the time, were completely and fundamentally on the wrong track towards. All without being able to find any academic position that would have him - he was working as a low ranking patent inspector at the time. And that discovery completely reshaped physics, which many at the time thought had been mostly 'solved' and was down to a measuring game. I think a parallel would be if some random guy, outside of academia, completely and cleanly solved the dark energy/matter mystery in his spare time, with a revolutionary way of thinking, and it completely reshaped our understanding of not only the cosmos but of physics itself. Becoming well known for advanced works in science requires a once in many centuries type level of achievement - which is what Einstein was. Feynman is a great example of this. He was undoubtedly one of the greatest physicists of all time and made many important contributions to science, yet he would probably be relatively unknown if not for his excessive public outreach and his exceptional ability to explain complex concepts in an extremely intuitive and clear fashion. A talent which he put to extensive use.
spiritplumber 1y ago
This was my experience in the "maker movement" in the 2010s. You may know me from OpenRov, RobotsAnywhere/CellBots, and the NAVCOM AI autopilot. But you probably don't. Who got attention? People who spent 20% of their time making and 80% self-promoting.
forrestthewoods 1y ago
I’ll go a step further. If someone is well known it’s more likely than not that they’re a charlatan. Not always of course. But if someone gives 6+ conference talks a year it’s like 80%+ chance they’re a dingleberry. The world is full of amazingly talented and hard working people. Almost all of them are not on social media.
eddieh 1y ago
You can be a great X and be completely unknown Where X is any vocation, skill, talent, etc…
wanderingmind 1y ago
One of the reasons I love listening to 99% Invisible podcast[1]. Not just a great designer is unknown, but the hallmark of a great design is that its almost invisible unless you look for it. [1] https://99percentinvisible.org/ https://99percentinvisible.org/
rglover 1y ago
This is the paradox of the post social media world. I see a lot of mid-tier talent—in all sorts of disciplines/industries—being elevated, while what I personally consider the "greats" get a fraction of the attention (e.g., this designer who I love and have bought stuff from but seems to be a relative unknown [1]). The book "Do the Work" explained it well: "The amateur tweets. The pro works." People who fit into the Shell Silverstein "I'm so good I don't have to brag" bucket aren't as visible because they're working, not talking about working. Something fairly consistent I've observed: the popular people you see tweeting and on every podcast are likely not very good at what they're popular for. Sometimes there's overlap, but it's the exception, not the rule. [1] https://xtian.design/ https://xtian.design/
- pixl97 1y ago
  I mean advertising is advertising. You could have the best program in the world but if no one knows about it chances are you're not going to get rich. Now I'm not much for salespeople in general, but I do understand their purpose.
  - tough 1y ago
    This is more true for indie hackers or solo team founders i guess, if you're just a designer in a big corp, you don't usually handle marketing beyond trying to build/design a marketeable product, devrel and other positions are more marketing like
  - godelski 1y ago
    Honestly, that seems like a solvable problem. Certainly not easy, certainly tremendously difficult, but I'm not sure it is impossible nor that we can't make strides in that direction. We're fundamentally talking about a search algorithm, with specific criteria. I doubt there would be good money in creating this, but certainly it would create a lot of value and benefit many just from the fact that if we channel limited resources to those more likely to create better things, then we all benefit. I'd imagine that even a poorly defined metric would be an improvement upon the current one: visibility. I'm sure any new metric will also be hacked but we're grossly misaligned right now and so even a poorly aligned system could be better. The bar is just really low.
codr7 1y ago
Fame quickly becomes an obstacle to progress, it's the last thing I need in my life.
ilaksh 1y ago
People just don't know the difference between popularity and merit. Similarly, they don't know the difference between someone who is successful or good at what they do versus one who makes a lot of money.
bdangubic 1y ago
works for SWEs too - I've had the pleasure working with a bunch of amazing SWEs in my almost 3 decades in the industry, 9 out of top 10 if I rank them do not have a Github account or blog or post sht on "X" or wherever... Just do amazing sht at work and go home to their families :)
- listenallyall 1y ago
  Absolutely. And there are plenty of occupations where even a Michael Jordan level talent would go totally unknown and unappreciated. Accountant. Plumber. Chemist. Many more.
  - ghaff 1y ago
    And contrarywise fairly mid-level professional athletes in a lot of sports are known at some level by a lot of people. Likely actors too. I assume if you look at Wikipedia you’ll find a lot more articles about journeyman actors than you’ll find about CEOs of major companies.
econ 1y ago
It's easy. You just compare your thing to everything similar and keep at it until you are convinced yours is miles ahead. Other opinions are irrelevant.
jackcosgrove 1y ago
I don't think it's just about doing vs talking. There are people who are great at something not because they do novel work, but because they redo known work that's really hard. Not everyone has the luxury of knowing where the frontier lies and working at it. Many, many people reinvent the wheel simply because they don't know that what they're trying has already been done. And they can redo the work in a great way. Of course they'll never get credit for this.
Mathnerd314 1y ago
Hot take but you can be a terrible designer and be completely unknown too. I've been getting into music and there are a lot of wannabes and very few "gems hidden in the dirt" or whatever - if your music is good you'll at least be able to get some decent bookings.
alissa_v 1y ago
Butler's piece is spot on. It reminds me of those core open-source tools we all depend on daily but rarely think about the people behind them. Like, who actually knows the name of the person who maintains requests in Python? Probably very few, yet their work is fundamental. That quiet contribution feels like the real definition of impactful design, way beyond the noise of social media.
tasuki 1y ago
This is almost too obvious to write a blog post, no? Many great artists died in complete obscurity (eg van Gogh). Some have found their fame posthumously (eg van Gogh). I'm sure many who were even more ahead of their time remain in obscurity.
yeyeyeyeyeyeyee 1y ago
so who would be the great unknown artists of today ?
lordnacho 1y ago
In fact, part of the reason for the current cacophony is that everyone has discovered this fact. Better to invest your time being seen than being good. It's a kind of tragedy of the commons. Instead of our attention being taken up by creatives who are mostly competent, it is taken up by everyone who wants to short circuit the system. (This would be even more interesting if I could find that article that suggests our taste in music is actually created by exposure.) There used to be editors of various sorts, whether it be in writing, art, or music, who would be the arbiters of taste. You could indeed take issue with who they decided to elevate, but they definitely provided a useful function.
- ghaff 1y ago
  They probably did recognize diamonds in the rough. I’ll also say that the one time I did a book through a publisher it was because I happened to be seated next to the managing director and followed up with the acquisitions editor over coffee in London. Would probably never have happened had I sent in a proposal cold. Didn’t make me much money but was a nice addition to the resume.
bestui 1y ago
[dead]
ofrzeta 1y ago
You can be a great X and be completely unknown. The history is full of people who only got famous after they were dead.
Arisaka1 1y ago
I had a similar train of thought like the author has, but it happened while I was playing Expedition 33, which is a game made by former Ubisoft developers who decided to go indie, and made something that is really cool. It made me realize that there's an innumerable amount of talented people out there, who are most definitely capable enough or willing to grow enough, that can produce something that makes you think that Ubisoft could have made it, because those people were always right there! And if they weren't motivated enough to risk it all, because you're only starting from a mere idea, we would never have seen the fruits of their labor. I'm not claiming that they're comparable with the greatest artists of our time but, the probability of someone out there becoming great will be silenced and squashed before it even has a chance to show up, either because they must conform to the job market to survive day to day, or because of office politics, or out of their own temperament avoiding risks. Especially if that risk is unemployment and homelessness. As a fan of John Carmack, for example, I have to wonder if he would've ever hit the status he achieved if Doom wasn't this fun to play, or if he kept shipping monthly video games by mail instead. I'm not talking about whether he would be this intelligent or not, but whether he would be known.
hipinspire 1y ago
I 100% agree. e.g. https://hipfolio.co https://hipfolio.co
nelblu 1y ago
This is a life fact, I realized this early on. I grew up in part of India which is close to the famous Ajanta caves. There are several local artists there, who literally carve a stone into an absolutely beautiful images of Buddha. A lot of times the tools they used were so crude, imagine what they would do if they had access to modern tools. Similarly, when we look at some of the most beautiful ancient artifacts we can hardly say with confidence who actually built them and whether they were truly the greatest of their times. Personally, I find this very satisfying, there is no need of recognition, all one needs is to enjoy what they do.
thomastraum 1y ago
"the correlation between quality and fame is weak at best, and that we should be suspicious of any definition of design excellence that depends on visibility." everyone needs to internalize this. its similar to the "Gell-Mann Amnesia effect." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect) if someone in your domain is famous but their "quality" is weak, assume by default this is true for all other type of famous.
FrameworkFred 1y ago
I love this line in the post: "The next time you use something that works so well you barely notice it, remember that somewhere, a designer solved a problem so thoroughly that both the problem and its solution became invisible." There a things that I immediately replace when they break or get lost: bolt cutters, dremel, leatherman. There's software like IDEs, Zim, Inkscape. It's very much like losing a limb when any of it is unavailable and it's absolutely true that there are folks out there who did their job so well as to make them indispensable. Great post.
amai 1y ago
"What, so young and already unknown?" -- Wolfgang Pauli
lolive 1y ago
There is this discussion going on on Slashdot right now: https://alterslash.org/#article-23675569 https://alterslash.org/#article-23675569 about the lack of AppleTV marketing support for one of its shows, called La Maison). That opens an interesting discussion: the role of their influencers. Their choices can either bless or curse anyone’s work just by manipulating the word of mouth. [which reminds me of that absolutely brilliant speech by Alan Moore, on « magic » : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k1qACd0wHd0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k1qACd0wHd0]
yummypaint 1y ago
For some real examples of this, check out if your local university has a graduate music program. If so there will be at least one free concert per year where people's compositions are played.

257 points by delaugust 1y ago

If people did not give credit where credit is due.

This is well written. It also seems to describe society at large, especially our current society. So many things work so well, they become invisible. After time, people dont even realize how much is working behind the scenes to make everything work well and they assume we dont need those things.

setsewerd 1y ago
It's the same logic that's behind the declining vaccination rates unfortunately. Things could get pretty bad if that trend doesn't reverse.

abtinf 1y ago

In fact, becoming known takes an enormous amount of energy dedicated toward that purpose.

ilrwbwrkhv 1y ago
[flagged]
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
  Uhh... having a LinkedIn takes like 10 minutes spent once. For most industries it's a pretty obvious investment to make yourself reachable by anyone who might be looking for you and to have an added data point of legitimacy (as in simply "is this a real human being emailing me") Your heuristic is extremely bad.
- codr7 1y ago
  I use LinkedIn to find jobs; and to troll the self applauding, back patting influencer crowd for fun.
- stavros 1y ago
  Of course you'd have to pay 700k if you're basically rejecting anyone who's ever been online. The candidate pool is, like, three people.
mattgreenrocks 1y ago
Yes. And time is zero sum. So you end up with people who see no issue with sinking lots of time into audience building. I’d rather do the thing than talk about it. Or, frankly, watch/listen/read others.
- famahar 1y ago
  I read an interesting thread about this in relation to game dev. Development is ugly, so a lot of audience building and investor potential comes from creating visually appealing gameplay demos and mechanics. Often they are made separate from the core of the game. All that time spent making engaging content ends up compromising the development process and turning it into more of a show reel, rather than a fully functioning holistic game.
- dagw 1y ago
  I’d rather do the thing than talk about it. That is fine if you're doing it for yourself, but rather unhelpful if you hope to make a living out of doing the thing. The people I know who make a living off their art are those who sink a lot of time into selling their art (and themselves). Those who sit and home and just make (often much better) art languish in obscurity.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

I think that greatness of mind needs to be coupled with ambition, a certain level of arrogance and self-absorbtion, and a personality that doesn't make you a pariah. I suspect that combinations like that, are, indeed, as rare as hen's teeth. Many great talents probably couldn't be arsed to play the rat race game, and keep their domain humble, or they piss off other people so much, that they never get a break.

handfuloflight 1y ago
Why does it have to be arrogance and self absorption? Why not simply confidence and vision?
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  It certainly can be (I'm obviously not the expert on the traits), but arrogance (think Steve Jobs) means that there's less self-doubt, and less openness to outside counsel, which is normally a Very Bad Thing, but, if your own counsel [vision?] is very good, then maybe not so bad. In my time, I've worked with some top-shelf folks, who had many -but not enough- of the combination, to be mildly successful. Most of the best were extremely ... er ... confident. Some, it came across as rudeness, but others, would politely accept your counsel, and then instantly feed it to the shredder, without you ever knowing. I preferred the rude ones.
  - sublinear 1y ago
    > I preferred the rude ones. Seeking social cues to describe greatness is exactly what the grift preys on.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
      Depends. I’d rather know, up front, that someone isn’t open to my PoV, so I don’t waste time, trying to give help, where it is not wanted.

mylons 1y ago

you can be a great <insert w/e here> and be completely unknown. there are a lot of niche opportunities out there. you could be helping michelin star restaurant owners with a new booking website that just charges customers on their reservation and literally be set for life after that interaction. the last anecdote is a true story. one of the original owners of Alinea (Chicago) did just that and the guy who developed the site is quite literally set for life if he doesn't do anything else but also has this incredible in within the fine dining world now.

tptacek 1y ago
I feel like the people in key roles at Tock were generally pretty high profile to begin with. Last time we talked in depth about Tock here on HN, Kokonas showed up.

motohagiography 1y ago

to me designers are the real architects of history, however, the cybertruck example as brash i disagree with for specific reasons. it is a perfect example of what it does without any deference to other design languages. instead of po-mo symbolism, it really is just the sufficient metal and glass to do the thing. an essential truck is unsentimental working capital. its not a duck, its an undecorated shed. i think the design will age very well because there's nothing to add to it.

codr7 1y ago
It's hands down the ugliest thing I've ever seen.
- pcmaffey 1y ago
  I call it the trash compactor
- BoingBoomTschak 1y ago
  But at least it's not boring. I'd even call it audacious. Most of today's SUVs, you wouldn't be able to guess the brand/model if you took the badges away.
  - philipallstar 1y ago
    It's true - they are all looking more and more similar.
  - codr7 1y ago
    True, the same mindset that lead Microsoft to create the Metro UI, which has similar appeal.
analog31 1y ago
I don't disagree with you about its utilitarian aesthetics, even if it seems ugly to me. But an amusing irony is that most customers probably won't ever use it as a truck.
1y ago

spamjavalin 1y ago

Remind me of the statement (I’m paraphrasing) ‘No one gets the credit for solving a problem that never happened’

bluGill 1y ago
This is why I hate the end of project awards. Someone always get great credit for staying late to save the project - but if they had done their job right in the first place the project wouldn't have needed saving.
- lolive 1y ago
  The right way is never the shortest path. So the right way will still make people stay late.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

pelagic_sky 1y ago

As a designer, I know some absolutely amazing artists who just hunker down and produce phenomenal art/designs and I am not fluffing here. As a climber, I also know of climbers who are at the best in the world level, but don’t post sends on IG or muck about in socially promoting themselves. It’s great to know that there are extremely talented people doing their thing and it’s not driven by leaderboards or social clout.

cultofmetatron 1y ago

reminds me of this video I found the other day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcjdwSY2AzM&ab_channel=Veritasium https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcjdwSY2AzM&ab_channel=Verit... if I'm understanding correctly the implications of Emily Noether's work, its an absolute travesty that she isn't famous in the same breath as Einstein and Feynman. Yet this video was the first time I had even heard of her.

esafak 1y ago
Physicists know her. Einstein was a public intellectual, Noether was not.
MoonGhost 1y ago
There are many great scientists you've never heard about. Soviet side of the world was almost as big as western. Yet they got only a very few nobel prices. It was absurd when western derivative got, but not the original work.
- rablackburn 1y ago
  Do you have any recommendations for where we could read more about the soviet originals/western derivatives? I’ve never heard that before (born after the collapse) and that sounds like a fascinating story.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/73052/technomagica-progression-fantasy-litrpg https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/73052/technomagica-progres... - it is a fiction story so it might or might not be to your taste. The story is a soviet (or just after the fall) scientists it reborn in a fantasy/magic world - like most such stories there is constant comparisons to the old world, but the old world is the soviet one not the western one. It probably isn't a comprehensive list, but it is a good overview of who the soviets saw as important.
somenameforme 1y ago
Einstein's discovery explained a centuries old mystery that people, including every major mind of the time, were completely and fundamentally on the wrong track towards. All without being able to find any academic position that would have him - he was working as a low ranking patent inspector at the time. And that discovery completely reshaped physics, which many at the time thought had been mostly 'solved' and was down to a measuring game. I think a parallel would be if some random guy, outside of academia, completely and cleanly solved the dark energy/matter mystery in his spare time, with a revolutionary way of thinking, and it completely reshaped our understanding of not only the cosmos but of physics itself. Becoming well known for advanced works in science requires a once in many centuries type level of achievement - which is what Einstein was. Feynman is a great example of this. He was undoubtedly one of the greatest physicists of all time and made many important contributions to science, yet he would probably be relatively unknown if not for his excessive public outreach and his exceptional ability to explain complex concepts in an extremely intuitive and clear fashion. A talent which he put to extensive use.

spiritplumber 1y ago

This was my experience in the "maker movement" in the 2010s. You may know me from OpenRov, RobotsAnywhere/CellBots, and the NAVCOM AI autopilot. But you probably don't. Who got attention? People who spent 20% of their time making and 80% self-promoting.

forrestthewoods 1y ago

I’ll go a step further. If someone is well known it’s more likely than not that they’re a charlatan. Not always of course. But if someone gives 6+ conference talks a year it’s like 80%+ chance they’re a dingleberry. The world is full of amazingly talented and hard working people. Almost all of them are not on social media.

eddieh 1y ago

You can be a great X and be completely unknown Where X is any vocation, skill, talent, etc…

wanderingmind 1y ago

One of the reasons I love listening to 99% Invisible podcast[1]. Not just a great designer is unknown, but the hallmark of a great design is that its almost invisible unless you look for it. [1] https://99percentinvisible.org/ https://99percentinvisible.org/

rglover 1y ago

This is the paradox of the post social media world. I see a lot of mid-tier talent—in all sorts of disciplines/industries—being elevated, while what I personally consider the "greats" get a fraction of the attention (e.g., this designer who I love and have bought stuff from but seems to be a relative unknown [1]). The book "Do the Work" explained it well: "The amateur tweets. The pro works." People who fit into the Shell Silverstein "I'm so good I don't have to brag" bucket aren't as visible because they're working, not talking about working. Something fairly consistent I've observed: the popular people you see tweeting and on every podcast are likely not very good at what they're popular for. Sometimes there's overlap, but it's the exception, not the rule. [1] https://xtian.design/ https://xtian.design/

pixl97 1y ago
I mean advertising is advertising. You could have the best program in the world but if no one knows about it chances are you're not going to get rich. Now I'm not much for salespeople in general, but I do understand their purpose.
- tough 1y ago
  This is more true for indie hackers or solo team founders i guess, if you're just a designer in a big corp, you don't usually handle marketing beyond trying to build/design a marketeable product, devrel and other positions are more marketing like
- godelski 1y ago
  Honestly, that seems like a solvable problem. Certainly not easy, certainly tremendously difficult, but I'm not sure it is impossible nor that we can't make strides in that direction. We're fundamentally talking about a search algorithm, with specific criteria. I doubt there would be good money in creating this, but certainly it would create a lot of value and benefit many just from the fact that if we channel limited resources to those more likely to create better things, then we all benefit. I'd imagine that even a poorly defined metric would be an improvement upon the current one: visibility. I'm sure any new metric will also be hacked but we're grossly misaligned right now and so even a poorly aligned system could be better. The bar is just really low.

codr7 1y ago

Fame quickly becomes an obstacle to progress, it's the last thing I need in my life.

ilaksh 1y ago

People just don't know the difference between popularity and merit. Similarly, they don't know the difference between someone who is successful or good at what they do versus one who makes a lot of money.

bdangubic 1y ago

works for SWEs too - I've had the pleasure working with a bunch of amazing SWEs in my almost 3 decades in the industry, 9 out of top 10 if I rank them do not have a Github account or blog or post sht on "X" or wherever... Just do amazing sht at work and go home to their families :)

listenallyall 1y ago
Absolutely. And there are plenty of occupations where even a Michael Jordan level talent would go totally unknown and unappreciated. Accountant. Plumber. Chemist. Many more.
- ghaff 1y ago
  And contrarywise fairly mid-level professional athletes in a lot of sports are known at some level by a lot of people. Likely actors too. I assume if you look at Wikipedia you’ll find a lot more articles about journeyman actors than you’ll find about CEOs of major companies.

econ 1y ago

It's easy. You just compare your thing to everything similar and keep at it until you are convinced yours is miles ahead. Other opinions are irrelevant.

jackcosgrove 1y ago

I don't think it's just about doing vs talking. There are people who are great at something not because they do novel work, but because they redo known work that's really hard. Not everyone has the luxury of knowing where the frontier lies and working at it. Many, many people reinvent the wheel simply because they don't know that what they're trying has already been done. And they can redo the work in a great way. Of course they'll never get credit for this.

Mathnerd314 1y ago

Hot take but you can be a terrible designer and be completely unknown too. I've been getting into music and there are a lot of wannabes and very few "gems hidden in the dirt" or whatever - if your music is good you'll at least be able to get some decent bookings.

alissa_v 1y ago

Butler's piece is spot on. It reminds me of those core open-source tools we all depend on daily but rarely think about the people behind them. Like, who actually knows the name of the person who maintains requests in Python? Probably very few, yet their work is fundamental. That quiet contribution feels like the real definition of impactful design, way beyond the noise of social media.

tasuki 1y ago

This is almost too obvious to write a blog post, no? Many great artists died in complete obscurity (eg van Gogh). Some have found their fame posthumously (eg van Gogh). I'm sure many who were even more ahead of their time remain in obscurity.

yeyeyeyeyeyeyee 1y ago

so who would be the great unknown artists of today ?

lordnacho 1y ago

In fact, part of the reason for the current cacophony is that everyone has discovered this fact. Better to invest your time being seen than being good. It's a kind of tragedy of the commons. Instead of our attention being taken up by creatives who are mostly competent, it is taken up by everyone who wants to short circuit the system. (This would be even more interesting if I could find that article that suggests our taste in music is actually created by exposure.) There used to be editors of various sorts, whether it be in writing, art, or music, who would be the arbiters of taste. You could indeed take issue with who they decided to elevate, but they definitely provided a useful function.

ghaff 1y ago
They probably did recognize diamonds in the rough. I’ll also say that the one time I did a book through a publisher it was because I happened to be seated next to the managing director and followed up with the acquisitions editor over coffee in London. Would probably never have happened had I sent in a proposal cold. Didn’t make me much money but was a nice addition to the resume.

bestui 1y ago

[dead]

ofrzeta 1y ago

You can be a great X and be completely unknown. The history is full of people who only got famous after they were dead.

Arisaka1 1y ago

I had a similar train of thought like the author has, but it happened while I was playing Expedition 33, which is a game made by former Ubisoft developers who decided to go indie, and made something that is really cool. It made me realize that there's an innumerable amount of talented people out there, who are most definitely capable enough or willing to grow enough, that can produce something that makes you think that Ubisoft could have made it, because those people were always right there! And if they weren't motivated enough to risk it all, because you're only starting from a mere idea, we would never have seen the fruits of their labor. I'm not claiming that they're comparable with the greatest artists of our time but, the probability of someone out there becoming great will be silenced and squashed before it even has a chance to show up, either because they must conform to the job market to survive day to day, or because of office politics, or out of their own temperament avoiding risks. Especially if that risk is unemployment and homelessness. As a fan of John Carmack, for example, I have to wonder if he would've ever hit the status he achieved if Doom wasn't this fun to play, or if he kept shipping monthly video games by mail instead. I'm not talking about whether he would be this intelligent or not, but whether he would be known.

hipinspire 1y ago

I 100% agree. e.g. https://hipfolio.co https://hipfolio.co

nelblu 1y ago

This is a life fact, I realized this early on. I grew up in part of India which is close to the famous Ajanta caves. There are several local artists there, who literally carve a stone into an absolutely beautiful images of Buddha. A lot of times the tools they used were so crude, imagine what they would do if they had access to modern tools. Similarly, when we look at some of the most beautiful ancient artifacts we can hardly say with confidence who actually built them and whether they were truly the greatest of their times. Personally, I find this very satisfying, there is no need of recognition, all one needs is to enjoy what they do.

thomastraum 1y ago

"the correlation between quality and fame is weak at best, and that we should be suspicious of any definition of design excellence that depends on visibility." everyone needs to internalize this. its similar to the "Gell-Mann Amnesia effect." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect) if someone in your domain is famous but their "quality" is weak, assume by default this is true for all other type of famous.

FrameworkFred 1y ago

I love this line in the post: "The next time you use something that works so well you barely notice it, remember that somewhere, a designer solved a problem so thoroughly that both the problem and its solution became invisible." There a things that I immediately replace when they break or get lost: bolt cutters, dremel, leatherman. There's software like IDEs, Zim, Inkscape. It's very much like losing a limb when any of it is unavailable and it's absolutely true that there are folks out there who did their job so well as to make them indispensable. Great post.

amai 1y ago

"What, so young and already unknown?" -- Wolfgang Pauli

lolive 1y ago

There is this discussion going on on Slashdot right now: https://alterslash.org/#article-23675569 https://alterslash.org/#article-23675569 about the lack of AppleTV marketing support for one of its shows, called La Maison). That opens an interesting discussion: the role of their influencers. Their choices can either bless or curse anyone’s work just by manipulating the word of mouth. [which reminds me of that absolutely brilliant speech by Alan Moore, on « magic » : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k1qACd0wHd0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k1qACd0wHd0]

yummypaint 1y ago

For some real examples of this, check out if your local university has a graduate music program. If so there will be at least one free concert per year where people's compositions are played.