Instil

Speaker: Jason from Instil is the head of design at Instil.

Lessons he wishes he knew at the start of his career:

  • Play exploding kittens they do it – Good team building exercise, it would also be a talking point for an interview.
  • Think of your career like a game.
  • Don’t be a control freak.
  • Being a designer is about convincing the people in the room that your ideas and concepts are the right one.
  • Everything is a remix (Talk by Kirby Ferguson) talks of imposter syndrome and inspiring yourself constantly. We put pressure on ourselves to design in a vacuum when in reality this does not tend to work. Gather inspiration from every aspect of life and bring it into your designs. Ample ( has an inspirational blog), it’s about documenting your inspiration. Hot potato by Brad and Dan Frost is another great blog for inspiration.
  • Have a creative outlet – a project that you are passionate about outside your 9 -5. Think of how you get sick of the food in the place you work at. You need to mix things up. Jason’s creative outlet is his blog fathers father.
  • Your career development is a game, so have fun.
  • You will not be able to control everything if you can’t control it – move on, don’t sweat it.
  • Leveling up – know your worth.
  • Cheat codes – you do, you. Look up other designers work and get inspired. Steal my dear. Work in whatever way works best for you.  Don’t take your feedback so personally, find people in your life that understand good design and that will tell you if your design is rubbish when it is.

Instil the company

  • 16 yrs old.
  • They are a holistic product based company.
  • They have a design team of 2 and external help.
  • Consultancy – get to work with clients in a long term basis eg 2yrs.
  • Room for moving and improving different skills eg UX and also improving UI.
  • Website is a work in progress engineering one not a design one.

IDEA: design a few ideas for new ideas for their website for their interview.

Placement

  • Split time with marketing and project work – agency and product experience.
  • Small company.
  • Paid placement.
  • Can be offered a job before leaving placement year, if get a 1st honors then get £5000 bonus when starting.

Soft skills they like

  • Empathy
  • Shared interests
  • Think big picture
  • Being able to articulate design as you will be in a room full of engineers – you need to make them understand why your idea is the best for meeting their needs.
  • The blogs will be seen as part of your written communication skills as the case study area in your portfolio is only a snapshot of your work.
  • Why is design necessary? think of building a house but not involving an architect – it simply would not work.
  • Read tragic design – this book has some great insight for inexperienced designers.
  • jasonk@instil.com is his email – they are happy for us to reach out to them and have an informal chat about the company.

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