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San Francisco Digital Designer & Analog Screenprinter Joined almost 10 years ago
Thorough, as expected from Eli. Good work.
You can also create shortcuts for free by just going into System Prefs and adding in Sketch's missing key commands:
What you personally believe is a moot point. Your hurt feelings have nothing to do with the fact that we're all born with different abilities. It shouldn't make you feel bad that some people are great and some people suck.
There's no debate that some people are born with natural born abilities - both physical and mental. We've all known people personally who from an early age we could tell were naturally better at things. Michael Phelps was born with a swimmer's body, you can't train someone to achieve that body. Stefan Sagmiester was born with a brain that thinks differently about graphic design. You can't teach someone to be an innovative designer like him.
I've taught at the university level, and I'd never tell (and never have told) any of my students to quit because they 'weren't born with it'. People find out soon enough on their own. I assigned honest grades on projects based on what was created and I show them how they can improve, but students improve at different levels based on their potential. We also exist along a spectrum. It's not a binary 'having it' or 'not having it'.
I lived and worked in New York City for 12 years. You learn very quickly in that city (and many other cities) whether you have what it takes to make it. Hard work is a big part of it, but so is talent. Hard work doesn't make you more creative. You can't squeeze water out of a stone.
A great book on this topic is 'Outliers' by Malcolm Gladwell. He breaks down success to talent, timing, and practice.
It absolutely is nature and nurture, but nuture can't make up for what you're lacking in natural potential.
So no, you cannot acquire talent. We're not created equal.
All brains are not capable of the same greatness. That might not seem fair, but that's how it works.
It works that way with intelligence, creativity, and it works that way with athletics as well.
I've been a design professional for almost 20 years, I've been around the block many times and seen a lot. I've taught at FIT in Manhattan and Rutgers University. It's naive to think you can acquire talent. You can fine-tune and perfect nature-born talents, but you can't create them.
Everyone has the capacity to get better but very few have the capacity to be great, otherwise everyone would be great at what they do, but they're not.
Establishing creative habits and work ethic while you are young can only take your innate abilities in a field so far.
This also applies to passion for something. Regardless of how passionate someone might be about astrophysics, if they don't have the talent to think abstractly and visualize equations, they'll go nowhere in that field.
Nope. Only certain people can be designers, just like certain people can be musicians, dancers, writers, [insert a talent].
Like parents who tell their kids they can be anything, and there are no losers, saying anyone can be a designer is not only misleading but irresponsible.
I've moved on from Photoshop to Sketch for app/website mockups. If you don't think $99/year is reasonable, find a different line of work.
As for me, I have no problem handing over my money for a good product. Sketch is worth more than $99 per year.
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Where the design community meets.
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This is bad.
Temporary solution: In the Creative Cloud application manager click the dropdown arrow next to OPEN for Photoshop. Then select: Manage > Other Versions. I'm reverting to Photoshop CC version 19.1.7 (2018).
screen grab for reference