Designers who choose challenge over comfort
I’m writing this from Berlin, where we’ve met four designers choosing challenge over comfort.
Three Australian expats and one American, all working in a country where English is the business language but not the native tongue. Their stories reveal something important about creative careers.
The courage to be uncomfortable
One heads Marketing and Brand design for a UK-based fintech. Another is Design Director at arguably one of the world’s strongest branding agencies. The third designs low-impact websites, while the fourth runs creative play-workshops for corporates alongside an UX role.
Different roles, same mindset: they actively chose difficulty over familiarity.
None retrained or learned dramatically new skills. They didn’t need MBAs or coding bootcamps. They simply decided their existing expertise deserved a bigger stage, more complex problems, and fresh perspectives.
The challenge wasn’t just professional. Three arrived knowing no one, none moved with jobs secured. They had to navigate not only foreign business practices but build entirely new social networks, find colleagues who’d become friends, and adapt to cultural nuances that go far beyond language barriers.
Two have been retrenched while overseas, one who faced long-term unemployment before landing her current role. Yet here they are, thriving in roles they could theoretically do back home, but choosing the added complexity of working across cultures and languages.
What this means for Australian designers
Many Australian designers feel trapped by their current situation. Too small a market, too few opportunities, too much competition. These women prove you can completely reinvent your career context while using the same skills.
The insight isn’t that everyone should move to Europe.
The insight is breakthrough often comes from changing your environment, not your expertise.
Sometimes the biggest career leap isn’t learning new skills… it’s having the courage to use existing skills somewhere that challenges you differently.
The comfort trap
Back home, we know the clients, understand the market, speak the language fluently.
It’s comfortable.
But comfort can be creativity’s enemy.
These designers chose the discomfort of translation apps, cultural misunderstandings, and navigating foreign business practices. In return, they got international projects, diverse teams, and problems they’d never encounter in Australia.
So what?
Change it up.
You don’t need to relocate to embrace this mindset. But you can ask: where are you choosing comfort over growth? What challenges are you avoiding that might actually expand your creative practice?
The skills these designers in Berlin have is nothing to do with the tools we use, it’s about being comfortable with challenge. They’re all thriving because they brought new, fresh thinking across the world.
Carol Mackay
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About Carol Mackay
After 30+ years running a design studio, I accumulated a pretty special network of fellow designers. One thing most have in common: a need for more information about the ‘business’ side of design. Most are impatient with any task competing for time spent doing what they love – designing so they wanted more info about how to work more efficiently and effectively.
Not me. I love that intersection between design and business. I built a career working with Ombudsman schemes, the Emergency Services sector and the Courts. My special power has always been an ability to use design to translate the difficult to understand or the unpalatable message.
I now use exactly the same skills with creative business owners. I translate the indigestible into bite-sized chunks of information. I share insights, introduce tools and embed processes to help others build confidence business decision-making skills. More confidence makes it easier to grasp opportunities. More confidence makes it easier to recognise a good client from the bad.
Outside DBC I have mentored with Womentor, AGDA The Aunties, and most recently Regional Arts NSW.
And I’m a proud volunteer and board member of Never Not Creative.
Always happy to chat, I can be contacted here.
