Decide what box you should go in

I listened to a podcast the other day with Sean McCabe. He talked about how people like to put people in boxes. “Oh, he’s the logo guy” or “she’s the SVG CSS guru”. We categorise people by what we see them do. Not because we are judging them, but because it’s a convenient way for our brain to organise information.

Sean suggests that people will put you in a box so you may as well decide what box you should go in. The way you do that is focus on one discipline. That doesn’t mean you have to only work on one thing but it means you need to filter your output.

Lets say you’re a designer and you design websites, logos, t-shirts, and anything else you can but you’re most passionate about logo design. You don’t want to stop doing the other work because they provide diversity and money. The way to put yourself in the “Oh, he’s the logo guy” box is to only put logos in your portfolio, on your Instagram feed and on your Dribbble account. You need to filter your output. That’s how you get known for something.