A new year, a new chance at life. With the calendar turning over this month, I’ve spent plenty of time reevaluating my life/career/future. Unfortunately, nothing nor no one decended from on high to answer much of anything.

Yesterday I stumbled upon this short piece. All in all, it fairly accurately summed up the few conclusions that I’ve been drawing lately. For those not the least bit interested in the career-ramblings of a web designer, feel free to jump off elsewhere. Not surprising, so no hard feelings here.

So back to the topic at hand, though. As a designer, there does seem to be a well-defined caste system, a progression of sorts. Well, at least for print designers, since their profession has been around quite a bit longer than web design. But for all intents and purposes, we’ll lump both together. The caste system in design goes from junior designer (peasant, lowest of the low)—who gets the crappiest jobs, trickled down from the next higher position. The senior designer (landowner) directs the flow of jobs, picks the better/more visable ones and passes the pamphlets and newsletters to the peons below. Many designers want to stop here. After all, a designer lives to create beautiful pieces. But for others, the desire to move on either sweeps them up, or they feel a calling for something more. The art director/project manager position is where the rules of the game start to change. You are less involved in the day-to-day grind of production. You call shots from a higher position, creatively directing the flow of “looks” and “market positions.” The skills required are less artistic and more business. Above this job is the entrepreneur that just plain breaks the caste to start his own villiage as king.

The past year or so, I’ve felt the urge to move on. Perhaps it’s because my daily grind is virtually free of any sort of creative production, and more managerial and production. I spend more time making decisions and art directing/managing our outside consultants than I do designing from scratch myself. In a way, I like this…and it scares me.

See, for a designer, it’s the idea of “be great or be gone.” Sure, the world is made of regular-joe designers, not all hot shots and design l33ts (elites). But there really is a cut-throat environment and intense pressure to stay on top of the hippest colors, fonts, designs. This month New York is calling the shots. Next month it’s Brussels. After that San Francisco. Everyone is a budding designer, and design schools puke out better designers yearly. That guy is only 17 and he has clients from Nike to MTV! And add on top of that the constant tech advances in web design (new languages/architectures/coding styles, etc) that you have to be up on and you could easily spend more than 24-hours a day learning and reading and supposedly advancing. The race is what makes it exciting, seeing if you can put out a piece just *one more time* that makes the grade. It’s an adrenaline rush. At some point, though, you’re bound to get tired.

So I sit here, with 04 somehow giving way to 05 without me noticing where it went, and trying to figure out if I want to tap out. I find solace and almost equal enjoyment in directing the movements of designers in their frenzied race to stay on top. While most professions don’t get to chose if they want to move into management or not, I guess design is special in that sense. But on second thought, what makes management so great?

Maybe the second half of this year’s first month will provide an answer as to which road to aim for. Or maybe I’ll flip a coin.