Why Is Craft the Easy Part of Hiring a Designer?

Henry Modisett treats craft as the easy part of hiring a designer because the work can be judged before any conversation. The hardest things to find and suss out sit apart from work you can already see. A weirdly ugly resume signals something, because the designer had complete control, the page is just typography, and they phoned it in.

A designer looking for a job gets to flex and signal in the smallest ways, because the person hiring is very detail oriented, and all they have to do is show the detail. Hiring a product manager is sometimes the hardest search, because it takes a lot more talk to figure out a worldview and what the person really did. Reps, plus work the person actually did, show craft and taste. The team needs people who can do good type, spacing, and color. In the end, all software is that, and the details cannot sit way out of whack with other people's work. The basics are table stakes and not the only thing that matters.