As someone with over ten years of experience, I’ve seen how powerful mentorship can be, both as a mentor and a mentee. In the fast-changing design industry, mentorship isn’t just an extra, it’s key to helping people grow and excel. While people often talk about the direct benefits, the bigger impact mentorship has on designers, teams, and organizations is even more significant, leading to better design work, stronger teamwork, and more innovation overall.
The biggest and most obvious benefit of having a design mentor is the growth of the mentee. For new designers, working in a fast-paced industry can be overwhelming. Mentors offer guidance, wisdom, and support, helping mentees improve their skills, build confidence, and solve problems. As experienced designers, we provide more than just technical advice. We help mentees think strategically and understand that design isn’t just about looks—it’s also about making an impact on the business.
With my experience as a design leader, mentorship speeds up a designer’s progress by giving personalized advice and practical insights that go beyond what you can learn from books or courses. Through feedback, brainstorming, and reviews, mentors help mentees reflect on their work, think critically, and become more self-aware. This helps them discover their strengths and work on their weaknesses. In the end, mentorship helps new designers refine their skills and gain confidence in handling the challenges of the design industry.
Leadership and Influence
For a senior designer, being a mentor isn’t just a generous act; it’s a leadership duty that extends their influence beyond their own design work. Mentorship is a way to shape the future of design leadership by passing on valuable lessons, mistakes, and insights from years of experience. By mentoring, we help raise the standards in design and prepare the next generation of designers for the challenges ahead.
Mentorship also affects the overall culture and leadership styles within an organization. It allows senior designers to model important values like empathy, patience, and clear communication—qualities that are key not just for mentoring, but also for leading diverse teams.
A great example of how mentorship influences leadership is seen at Apple, where Jonathan Ive, mentored by the late Steve Jobs, eventually became Apple’s Chief Design Officer. Ive’s guidance and leadership played a crucial role in creating iconic products like the iPhone and MacBook. Under his mentorship, younger designers learned how to combine design with technology and business strategy, ensuring Apple’s products were not only visually appealing but also highly functional and easy to sell. This mix of great design and smart business thinking became a key factor in Apple’s success.
In my experience, mentoring creates a lasting impact. Many of the designers I’ve mentored go on to mentor others, spreading good design practices throughout the industry. The skills and problem-solving techniques they learn often influence future projects and strategies in ways mentors might not immediately notice. This ongoing cycle of mentorship and learning strengthens the entire design field, with each generation building on the knowledge of those who came before.
Driving Innovation and Evolution in Design
The ripple effect of mentorship drives innovation. The design industry relies on fresh ideas, new viewpoints, and changing processes, and mentorship helps make this happen by encouraging both mentors and mentees to question the usual way of doing things. As a senior designer, mentoring younger professionals helps me stay up-to-date with new trends, tools, and cultural shifts that I might otherwise miss. In return, I give them industry knowledge and advice on how to handle these changes effectively.
My mentorship at CVSpan has focused on developing both technical proficiency and creative innovation. By providing guidance on industry best practices, tools, and technologies, I’ve helped young and aspiring designers enhance their technical skills. Additionally, through regular design reviews and feedback sessions, I’ve encouraged them to push their creative boundaries and explore new design approaches.
A notable example is the way I’ve worked with designers to refine their use of cutting-edge design tools such as Figma and Adobe XD. By teaching them how to leverage these tools effectively, they’ve been able to produce high-quality, professional-level designs that stand out in a competitive market.
When designers at different career levels work together and share ideas, they challenge each other to think differently. A mentor may provide a practical approach to problem-solving, while the mentee brings fresh ideas for reworking old systems. This exchange of perspectives speeds up the growth of design, benefiting not only individual designers but also the entire organization, helping them innovate and stay ahead.
How Design Mentorship Has Helped Major Companies
A well-mentored design team is better at aligning design decisions with business goals. Mentors teach mentees how design affects the company’s success, from improving the user experience to strengthening the brand. By focusing on how design and business connect, mentors help designers create solutions that not only look good but also increase user engagement and drive revenue.
Mentorship has also been crucial in developing future design leaders in major companies. Through guidance and professional development, mentors help new designers build the skills to lead teams and shape design strategies. This ensures companies always have talented designers ready to promote long-term growth and innovation.
At companies like Facebook (Meta), mentorship has played a key role in developing leaders who can handle complex projects and think strategically. These leaders, having been mentored themselves, often become mentors, creating a continuous cycle of improvement and leadership development.
Another important factor is that by 2025, 75% of the global workforce will be made up of millennials, and 79% of them see mentorship as essential for their growth. As time goes on, the demand for mentoring increases, and just like satisfying customers keeps them happy, providing employees with learning opportunities helps them excel and benefits the company in the long run.
For example, global law firm Clyde & Co. started a mentoring program in 2018 to create a more inclusive workplace. While the initial process was manual and challenging, in 2021 they switched to Guider’s mentoring software, which made everything smoother. Now, employees have easy access to mentors worldwide, can set up meetings, track goals, and build strong relationships—all in one place. This has improved communication, helped career growth, and increased employee satisfaction.
Moses Arfo is a UX/UI Designer who focuses on crafting user experiences and design systems for software, web and mobile products. He is also passionate about applying consumer psychology for an interactive science-backed approach.
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