ZEST: Framework for design leaders

In this episode of Delivered, Joost Huver shares ZEST, a practical cheat sheet born from his decade-long journey from junior designer to design director. Where most leadership frameworks focus on hierarchy, process, or performance metrics, ZEST reframes it around creative energy, taste, and human connection, the elements that elevate good work into meaningful work.

If you’re a designer stepping into leadership, or already there, wondering if you’re doing it right, this conversation offers something rare: An honest reflection on 13 years of trial and error, and a practical leadership lens built from the studio floor, not the boardroom.

Key learnings:

• Explore four dimensions of creative leadership that the ZEST framework is built on
• Learn practical ways to apply the ZEST framework in your daily work
• Discover small leadership habits that compound into a strong creative culture
• Find out how to hire for taste and look beyond industry awards

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Transcript

95% of digital products fail, but what sets apart the other 5%? That's what we're trying to figure out through our conversations with industry experts, business owners, company executives, creatives, engineers, and other brilliant minds. Delivered is your window into the world of amazing products, bold business strategies, and innovation in practice. The show was brought to you by digital product company, Infinum, and I'm your host, Georgios Athanassiadis. Today we're going to try something different. Normally, we are doing a live show, but we are experimenting with new formats. And for this session, we're going to do an offline recording. Rather than talking to people outside of our group and company, we are going to turn the mic inwards and highlight some of the smart talent that we have within the group. So for this first session, I have Joost with me. Joost Huver. He's our design director here in Amsterdam at Your Majesty.
And the reason I wanted to talk to him today is because he has been spending more than a decade in the design industry, learning from the floors of the best agencies in the world and picked up a lot of learnings along the way and put them into a framework for creative leaders because one of the biggest challenges for a designer is to move from being an individual contributor where you're very close to the work to leading teams of designers or creatives or whatever it may be. Joost has been going through that transition himself and turned that into a nice little framework that he calls ZEST.

Yes. Thank you for having me. This is nice. It's a new way of talking about it, which is great. Yeah. Excited to talk about it and dive in a little bit.

Yes. So let's do it. So let's start at the beginning. So making the shift from designer to a leader, you mentioned in your article that was a time for tension for yourself, challenge from going through that experience. So can you talk about how it was for you to go from being the designer to being the leader of designers?

Yeah, sure. So as you said, I started over a decade ago as a very young junior designer, not really knowing all of the roles and responsibilities there. My end goal was always to become the design director that knew everything and that had all the skills in them so they can perfect any sort of project themselves. That's what I thought the role was, and that's what I was looking up to. But along the way, I've learned that it's everything but that. And I think the nice thing was you spend years doing the actual work yourself, and then there comes a point in your career where you make that shift. And then that was really the start of this thought or this article. At one point there comes a shift where you're like, okay, now I'm working with other people and I have to guide them in doing the work. And for me as a designer with years, just making the actual work

Myself, was that something you always wanted to do or was that something someone else told you too? You've grown to a certain level now to lead other people.

Yeah. So I think it was four years back, I went from a senior designer to an associate creative director. Then all of a sudden I got handed a project and I had to talk about what is the team going to look like on the project? What is the team allocation? What are the hours that you need and what roles do you want on the project to make this project a success? And I was like, wait, what? Am I now doing that? So I wasn't really set up for that. And all of a sudden I just got tasked to do that. So I had to learn a lot in terms of like how many hours does something take? What is the budget on the project?

How many hours did that person need to do something. Exactly. And I think from experience, of course you can fill that in of like, okay, a junior designer might take a bit more time for experimentation and rolling things out. That was quite a shift because I was used to just doing the work. And then all of a sudden you're being put in this position where you have to talk about deadlines and how long does something take and how many people do you need on it and want on it and what kind of skillset do you require for

Your outcome even before you start the project. So that was quite a shift, quite a challenge. But I really love doing that, finding the right talent for the right projects. I think that's super interesting to look at it from a bit of a personal perspective of, can you figure out what your designers and your team actually like outside of work and in terms of interests and ambitions, if you can put that on a project, you get the best outcome. But to go back to the article, what I started with was this shift that I'm talking about. It's not really for everyone, and not everyone wants to be in that sort of leadership position. Some people, they're super good at their craft and they just like to stay in the craft. If you make that decision of like, I don't want to deal with all the other hassle of managing people and doing all the boring work or the paperworks and the line managing and all of that.

For me, I really like that because I love to help people to achieve new things and to be better at their work. But when I was talking with other design leaders, they all said as well, "Oh, how was that for you? How was that for you in terms of making that shift?" And yeah, everyone always talks about how difficult that is. So I was like, "Okay, well, let's just reflect on my journey over the past 13 years or so
And what were those moments? How was I managed? How did I like to be managed? What was I missing?" And I started just penciling that down and that resulted in the ZEST framework.

Very cool. So let's dig into the framework. So first off, did the framework come first or the cool name first? I think the character trait, zest, has been described to me before as in like, "Hey, you're kind of like a zesty person, zesty guy."

What does that mean?

I think you bring a certain flair or energy to the table and I think that can be infectious.

The icing on the cake or the little extra.

So I started with the name and then I started to break it down. I had a lot of notes like, oh, what does that energy mean for a project or for a team? And what does empathy mean for how you do one-on-ones or how you work with your team and how can you facilitate a bit of growth for individuals, but also we're also in the industry of making beautiful things. So these were four points and then that turned into sing, empathy, stretch, and taste. Yeah.

So let's go through each one of them.

Let's do it.

You start with sing, which is the energy that sets the tone and move things forward. Is that it? Yeah.

I think whenever you start with a new project or you start putting together a new team for a project or just as a whole with team leadership or management, I think no one wants to be bossed around by people that don't like their job. I think that sort of enthusiasm and flare and energy is infectious. And I think it's what gets people to show up at work every day. If you love your job and if you really care about your job, I think you bring so much more to the table on a project. If you love the project, if you like the work, then the outcome is going to be way better
than if it feels like a chore. I think that for me, that was very important to set that up in a way where even with project kickoffs or things like that, if you bring the energy within that first moment of the kickoff and the first steps into a project, straight away you get the curiosity and then you get the sort of enthusiasm for the project. And I think that's what makes it good. If you can capture that in a way where you almost set that enthusiasm in the room, you set the standard straightaway. Okay, cool. Get the energy going. And of course you also need to know when to tone it down and when to pumpt that up, but yeah, that's affections.

Yeah. And I think we are quite privileged in our industry that we get to make beautiful things for a living. And I think coming with, even if it might be something that is a little bit less exciting, I don't know, a password recovery flow or something like that, I think coming in with a bit of saying is that, okay, within these constraints, how can I take this and make it something that I'm excited about and that it becomes meaningful?

Yeah. And I think we all know in this industry, not all projects are the most fun. However, I think within every brief, you can find something that you can make important for yourself and where you can bring that sort of extra curiosity of like, "Hey, that's actually interesting. I haven't thought of that. " We deal with a lot of different industries and a lot of different clients, but I'm super curious about figuring out what it means for the client and why is it so important for them? Because for them, that's their job and that's their sort of importance. So it's really interesting to put yourself in their shoes and figure out what is the thing that makes them love their job, and therefore you can put yourself in their shoes a little bit. I think that helps in terms of the curiosity of things. And it's good to not know things.
You come into a project and you have no idea about this specific sector or sometimes that brings the best ideas because they might have not thought about it like that, but I think it's just important to stay curious and have that sort of mindset at the start of a project. I said it starts with enthusiasm.

And another word on E is empathy.

Empathy. Yes. Which is you described as the human layer that builds trust and clarity. Talk a little bit about

That. I think in the end in this business and we're dealing with people first, you make the work with people that come from so many different places, so many different backgrounds, and everyone is so different and colorful in their own ways. And I think the human aspect of things is just so interesting because everyone has different things to bring to the table. And I think in terms of leadership and in terms of mentorship and in terms of being a line manager, as they call it, I think it really starts with empathy. The top down view of boss versus employee, for me, that's such an old school way of managing. I see this sort of the one-on-ones and the line manager says, "You're a coach in a way." It's not this sort of, I'm going to boss you around, but it's this thing of I'm going to understand what makes you good at what you do and I'm going to help you find your flaws and see how we can make that better. But also I want to understand what drives you, what you value, what you do outside of work, and what makes you happy.
Because if I understand that, then I can better anticipate on the needs in a work environment and a project comes in, that's amazing because straight away you get that enthusiasm back.

And then you get to zing.

And then you get the zing again. But it really starts connecting on a human level, not just the work level, but I always say, let's go for a beer or let's just try to find something where you can bond with outside of just the work environment so I can really also help you with whatever you're going.

It's about understanding what makes work meaningful for the other person, that you can connect the dots in their favor. And that requires stepping out of the boss and employee dynamic and just, "Hey, let's just connect as humans for a bit and tell me what makes a life work meaningful for you so I can help you.

And I think the thing there is what I always try to do is to understand the level of ambition in a way, because everyone deals with work pressure. Everyone deals with the pressure to perform at being the best at your job, being the best at the work environment, but not everyone handles that stress or that pressure the same way. Some people thrive on it. Some people love it. They love the grinds and they love to get pushed a lot and like, "Oh, be the best." Some people don't want that. Some people are really like, "I'm just here to do my job. I love my work. I'm a bit more of an introvert maybe versus being super expressive." So there's a very thin or sort of fine balance there and you really have to understand that on the individual level to be able to facilitate that as well.

And that brings me to my next, the S, which is stretch. I called it calibrated discomfort in a way where growth usually sits in an uncomfortable place. I think being challenged isn't always easy. It's this uncomfortable feeling that you have of like, "Oh, okay, what do I do now?" That stare at the blank page for a while before you create something that comes with a sense of sort of ownership, that comes with a sense of just being thrown into the ponder and into the fire.

Yeah. And into the fire or into the pond and let them swim for a bit. Swim through the fire. Yeah, swim through the fire. Yeah, sure. And that comes with a sense of being uncomfortable. And I think going back to empathy, you need to understand if they are comfortable with being uncomfortable. And the way to facilitate that is understanding their ways of working, but also what drives them as a human. However, I think. And I think to add to that, also provide them as a leader or a senior with the safety net or the tools to ... It's okay to not know. In our industry, often we are brought in to figure out something that hasn't been done before. So we need to be able to thrive in that chaos and uncertainty, knowing that we have the tools and support systems to eventually when the smoke settles, being able to work it out.

Yeah. And I think that's where the beauty lays of you being given a challenge. And if you don't know, that's okay. As you go through a process in the end, creativity is a process. You will learn that over time and there are different ways to tackle everything. However, sometimes it's great to feel uncomfortable because that pushes you to learn new things and to dive into new things in terms of being curious and just, "Okay, here we go. Let's find it out. " And so that's what I mean with calibrated this.

And the stretch is really like when you're outside of the comfort zone or pushing outside of it, that's what your learning zone.

But sort of balancing that with care, right? Yeah. So you don't want people to feel overwhelmed or you don't want people to feel like being locked because some people, they do shut down if you push them too much. And some people are like, "Okay, no, I take energy out of that and I actually take a step forward." So it's really knowing when to do that. I think the nice thing with Stretch is sometimes you get surprised by juniors or by people that are just only a few years in the industry of things that you would think like, "No, I would never do it like that. " But the beauty is putting them in their power to figure out their own way of solving problems and coming up with their own sort of way of tackling things makes you learn as well as a leader and as a director.

And it goes back to the empathy point again, that we need to figure out how that person learns. Like me, for instance, I was a throw me in the deep end. I don't want to be told how to, don't tell me how to do this. Let me just figure this out. Because if someone told me what to do, then I glanced over it and I was like, "Ah, I would rather..." That's how I learn, figuring it out myself.

Yeah. I mean, it's kind of like how you raise a kid, how you raise a kid. No, totally. Are you going to tell them that the oven is hot or

Are you going to let them? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You need to find that balance so they don't a little bit, but not the burn of the

Hand. And learning by trial and error is a beautiful thing. You learn as an individual, and I think that sort of reflection on it is really healthy for a project, for a team. That's why retros are so important, not only at the end of a project, but also at the end of a phase of a project like,

"Hey, guys, what went well? What went wrong? What can we do to make it better?"

And also lean into that on comfort. Stretch also happens in having a difficult conversation. So sitting down in a retro, it's like, "Oh, that went shit."
And then it's like having the vulnerability to say, "I should have done this better or what asking for feedback could have done this better. What do you think? " And then coming out of that experience, that little retro bubble, because that typically brings people together. I've seen so many teams, especially when putting together new people together, and when you see them really take the next step as a unit is when they had a big screw up, they worked through it, struggled a bit together and got out on the other side. Then everybody had the same stretch and then it brings them closer together.

Yeah, 100%. And that's interesting that you say that in terms of putting new people in a new team, what you see a lot there is that everyone wants to sort of take ownership or take part of like, "Okay, no, I'm going to prove myself." And I think that's good in the sense where it's like, okay, you can lift off of each other in that sense.

However, I think as a director, as a team lead, it starts with that trust of like, okay, they will figure out this balance within the project and predefined roles on a project or within a team. In the end, that's the old sort of way of hierarchy. Sometimes a junior can lead the entire project and

The senior is a supporting person versus the senior leads the project and the junior is learning from it. So yeah, it really depends on the project. But again, that comes back to knowing the individuals and knowing what drives them. Sometimes a project can be done only with juniors. That curiosity and that sort of eagerness can push a project way beyond sometimes.

Then if you put, instead of putting a bunch of seniors on it that have already a predefined way of working and might fall back more into repetition in terms of what they know, because it's been working for them for so long. So it's interesting, that balancing act for sure.

Indeed. And the last one, the taste is I think a topic that is thrown a lot. It's a word that's thrown around a lot now when everybody's trying to figure out what creatives will do in AI. And that's taste. I think everybody's seen the Rick Rubin video where he basically built his whole career on taste. And I thought you defined it pretty well because for me it's always been this kind of soft, difficult to ... And it's hard to describe what's taste like and because it's so subjective, but I think ... Yeah, talk about how you think about it.

I think that as humans, we have a radar or a compass for good, beautiful stuff. Whether that is a beautiful car, which you can't really describe why you're attracted to something. I think there's a subconscious there where we're just attracted to good, beautiful things.

Beautiful things in the end. And I think often it's being overlooked how powerful that can be within a team setting. Of course, it comes from inspiration. It comes from what's around you as a sort of sponge, you take up everything. And that's, I think also subconsciously you reflect back into the work that you do or that you create. But I see taste also as a sort of compass for clarity of like if you're not really sure where to go with a project or you're stuck or like something, take a step back, see what others are doing.That's totally fine. See what makes you feel good on specific things. It is a little bit of a balance of what is good for the project, for your client, does it align with their business objectives and all of that? But at the same time, we're also the experts in our field where we can really differentiate from what's out there by just following also your gut a little bit in that sense.

And also living and breathing this for a very long time.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. And I think that the nice thing there, if it is with a team setting or whether you're leading a project or a team, I think it's really important to talk about taste and talk about sort of inspiration, sharing new things out there and talk about what you think of it. And you get really interesting perspectives. As you said, it is subjective in a way, but sometimes- Yeah,

Because you get shaped around with the people around you, the people you spend the most time with and the culture you consume or the

Content you consume. Exactly. Yeah. But yeah, basically as a leader on a project, you set the floor in a way, you set the ceiling in a way.
If it's sort of compiled of what you consume or what you sort of have around you at all times, if you're just in this bubble of like, oh, good design, that's it. You might miss very beautiful things around you that can be infused that are completely out of industry or completely in a different sector or whatnot. So I think it's really important to talk about that and we share all of these things. One of the things that I take inspiration from the most is just talking with other people in different sectors and in different industries, because we are in a bit of a bubble ourselves. Absolutely. If we're only in that bubble, how do we then define what looks good for people that your users of your product or of your specific project?

Yeah. And I think that's why it's important when going into any new brand or when we're designing something, I think we need to go in and hold space for empathy for their customers and get a feel of what's the taste of the people that they want to connect better with so that we can design for that. Yeah. So when you look for new team members, how do you check if they have good taste?

Ooh, that's a good one. I think, again, it starts with understanding what drives them outside of work. In a way, what they like to do, what they feel ambitious with. But also, I think you see that nowadays a lot with designers that everyone looks on Dribble or everyone looks on those specific websites.

Yeah. It's all sort of lifting off of the same sort of vibe or of the same sort of design techniques or whatnot. I like to be surprised by if I'm hiring like, "Oh, where do you look for inspiration?" Or, "What is a great movie that you watched?"

Why did you like it?

Yeah. And what is an amazing album that you listen to lately just to get out of that sort of bubble a little bit, I think Taste is a collection of notes that come from so many different things. It's beneficial to enrich that outside of your own little bubble. And sometimes we get applications of people, "Oh yeah, I won so many awards on this platform." It's like, okay.

Yeah, exactly. That's nice, but that shouldn't define success in that way because that is just our industry.

Yeah. And a lot of the works that, I mean, it depends on the taste of the platform because they have a preference for a certain style or for a certain way of building scroll telling or whatever. Yeah. Okay, that's cool. So that's the framework. So for people that now, I mean, you already got a lot of traffic on this. You got a lot more attention than I think you maybe even-

No, the feedback has been great. So many people sort of send me a message on the site saying like, "Oh, this is such a nice way of sort of framing it. "
Years ago when I got put into a bit more of a leadership role and when I was searching like, "Oh, okay, so how do I do this now?" There are a lot of those sort of leadership frameworks out there, but they're all about, "Oh, this is how you establish dominance in a meeting room, and this is how you make your team listen to you. " And I was like, "It's such an old school way of talking about it. " I was really missing that sort of human layer and that's why I just started penciling this down what matters to me as a human, as a person, also the leader that I want to grow into further. But yeah, the feedback of that has been great because also people not in our industry were commenting and saying like, "Hey, this has been actually really helpful also for me.

Yeah, I think I see it as a little bit of a cheat sheet of if you're stepping into a leadership role or position, or if you have ambition too, I think these points are just a bit of a reminder of what, at least for me, what worked and what is important. So yeah, I really hope people like it and it resonates. So far I've heard good feedback, so I'm really happy. And for some people, for someone that's resonated with this, I was like, "Oh, that seems like something I want to apply in their leadership." What would be the first thing? If someone's going to start putting your philosophy or chi-chit to work, what would be your first step in implementing?

Well, I think it starts with small things that you can already try out in your every day in your work week, whether you are going to have conversation with a colleague one-to-one doing a kickoff or retrospective of a project, there are certain small questions that you can start to ask yourself. For example, for one-on-ones, instead of saying like, "Hey, how's it going?

What are actually things that might hold you back at the moment?" And really understanding what the problem is people are going through, seeing what you can do within your role, just to see how you can unblock them and help them out versus just saying, "Okay, we can have a look at that. " Actually follow up on that, do your part. Then in terms of retrospectives, we talked a little bit about that sort of feedback that you can learn from each other, like the reflection of things. For example, looking at the sort of end results altogether, what were some of the things that we could have done better that might have not been possible now and what was needed to accomplish that, whether that is time or additional resources or whatnot. So you can learn from that and take that to your next project. I think the energy in the room, of course, hits a little bit with yourself, try to get people enthusiastic about the work that you do and about the new briefs that come in and the opportunities, because that's just infectious.

That helps a lot. And sometimes it's, of course, on a Monday morning, it's a little bit harder than on
A ... But I think that sort of enthusiastic mindset, in the end, we're in an industry where we're very lucky to create beautiful things and really solve really-

Yeah, we get to do what we enjoy doing for a living. Yeah,

Hopefully.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, most people.

Yeah. But yeah, start with small things. I think empathy goes a long way. It's a very powerful, powerful ... Yeah, I don't want to say tool, but it's a powerful thing of connecting on a human layer and seeing how far that can go, both on projects, also within teams. That's very important. And as I said, that sort of calibrated discomfort in the sense that how can I push the team or the project further in a way which you've never done before and what are some things that we can just do different or etter. What is that extra 10%? Sometimes we're sitting together and jamming on a project and then we take a step back. It's like, if we would score ourselves right now, give ourselves a number on craft or on anything that is special, what is the one sort of thing that defines this work and how do we go from here to there and what do we need to do that? It's good to take those steps back sometimes and criticize yourself or criticize the work in a way where of course you can be honest, but also just take that as a positive. So yeah, I think there are small things that you can start to implement in your sort of week and then use it as a bit of a cheat sheet, I would say.

But I think as a final note, I think what I've learned through the years is it starts with trust. Instilling trust in your team and making others feel empowered to try out new things and just take that extra step or take ownership of the work or letting juniors present to clients. I think you'll be surprised on how much others that are maybe more junior than you are. They can surprise you in so many different ways. It's really interesting and beautiful to learn from them as well. You might have certain ways of doing things, but just be open for a different perspective there. In the end, I think trust is the most important thing in a team and showcasing that you have that within a team that just brings out the best in everyone, I think. Yeah.

Cool, man. Cool.

Yeah.

I think that was great. Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

A big thank you to all who tuned in for today's show. I'm Georgios Athanassiadis. This has been Delivered. A quick reminder, make sure you hit that follow button if you don't want to miss future episodes. And if you want to participate in our upcoming live events, ask our guests questions in real time, access exclusive content and participate in giveaways. Head over to infinum.com/delivered and subscribe to our newsletter.