The design is not you and you are not the design. The rejection is only a rejection of an idea and getting it wrong is part of how you do your job. It’s part of the process.

Culture is everything. In the right culture, you can be creative and your skills will not only flourish but also grow.

Sorting out the good ideas from the bad takes some experience and a little intuition. But you’ll also need to hone your ability to pull different ideas together. That’s what innovation is — the ability to take ideas from somewhere else, strip away the garbage in those ideas and put them together with other ideas to form a cohesive whole.

The design meeting is like the Super Bowl for a product or feature. How you present an idea can mean the difference between pushing the project forward or finding yourself back at that blank artboard.

Spend some time learning about ethics in design and figuring out where you stand. Consider who you work for and develop a code or credo you design by.