External qualifications

Wether or not you need extra qualifications aside from your degree (if you have one) is a bit tricky to define. I think a lot of people would like to know wether this is a worthwhile endeavour seeing as they are often not free and can actually be quite expensive depending on what it is and who it is run by so I am going to try and explain my current view point on the external Qualifications thing. First of all what exactly are we talking about here? There are all kinds of qualifications that you can sign up for and some are based purely in software others are based in specific design practices like email
design and SEO etc.




Software Training:

1. The "Adobe Suite" training certificates are probably the most widely recognised qualifications for software largely because the Adobe Suite has become an industry standard software package across design professions. They range in difficulty from the "Certified Associate (ACA)" level to the "Adobe Certified Expert (ACE)" level and the finally you can become an "Adobe Certified Instructor(ACI)". All these courses are listed here with a much more detailed explanation of what they entail; http://www.adobe.com/support/certification/ You can do certain packages individually or you can go about completing the training for an entire suite in one go, and that will of course affect the pricing but can be more productive and cheaper than doing them one by one. These will to be honest help your CV to stand out from the crowd because every single designer suggests that they are great with every single software but few of them are certified by Adobe and can prove it!

2. Lynda.com is gaining popularity from employers all the time as it offers various courses for all kinds of software in a monthly or yearly subscription plan. This is something that you can go back to time and time again and keep up to date with all the current technologies and trends so is fantastic as a training tool. As far as qualifications go this is as good as any and you can have a certificate of completion for every course that you go through. http://www.lynda.com/home/Player.aspx?lpk4=80569&playChapter=False There really isn't any software left out of the data base and the teaching style gets great reviews from student and teachers alike.

Development Training:

1. The "W3C" or the "World Wide Web Consortium", have a website from which you can learn standardised coding for the web. These are in fact free lessons that you can get at http://www.w3schools.com and then you can get certified for around 60 pounds per language you take.  I actually have one of these myself and I have to say that they definitely help you to stand out. You are probably being hired by an HR department rather than a designer at least in the initial stages so it will help you to get your foot into the building at least. The rest of course is up to you. It is probably worth mentioning though at this point that you can only learn web related languages and scripts from this site and not software programming languages like C or Java. These are for programmers rather than designers and will most probably be useless to you as a designer.

2. There are numerous "CIW" (Certified Internet Web professionals) accredited courses that you can do in web development which were invented by a community of web designers and developers during the dot com boom and have survived to this day. These certificates are not easy to obtain and they are not cheap either at around 600 pounds a course. However they are internationally recognised and they do teach job specific skills rather than just vague principles so definitely worth taking a look at. They remain popular with many employers because a large number of university teach them across the UK, Europe, and US.

Design practices.

There are numerous courses that teach general design practice and in fairness wont do you much better than having a degree. This is a pre requisite of most job adverts these days so if you are going to study a broader topic then personally I would advise that you do it in a degree and at least have that piece of paper to get you into the interview room. Im not saying that these kinds of certifications are worthless by any means because they will probably teach you the things that you were too hungover to hear about in your lectures but from an employers perspective there is too little known about the worthiness of such a course and they don't want to have to do the research. If its accolades are easily "googleable" then by all means go for it, but if nobody has taken it or heard of it then I would steer well clear and keep your pennies in your own pocket.

Long term advantages.

It would be nice to think that you could go to school and be done with it and then just walk into a job but unfortunately that is not the way the world works. There isn't just one glass ceiling either there are many! If you think about it in the world of work and most especially graphic design there are pay brackets to consider. when you are in an entry level role you can expect to earn around 14-18k per annum, then when you are in a junior role you can expect to earn between 18-21k per annum, now there is a little more scope in a mid-weight position depending on the company that you work for so you can expect to get anywhere between 21-30k per annum. Senior roles 28k plus and so on. How much of that depends on external qualifications and outside factors is really not that easy to judge but I do know that if I were presented with someone who hadn't done a days education since school (on paper at least) and someone who had actively seeked out professional development certificates and courses throughout there career, I would likely choose them for the promotion. Not because it means that they are better than those without the qualification, but because it says that they are willing to work on there mistakes and grow as much as they can. Businesses need that. (at least in my amateur entrepreneurial brain they do anyway).

Short term advantages.

I have found actually that since having taken a certificate or two and this may well just be co-incidence, that I have been getting a lot more interested parties for freelance work and a lot more interviews for jobs. I haven't actually secured any of these jobs so I cannot say that the certificates have helped me in so much as actually getting me into the company but they have got me a damn site nearer to the building and that is an achievement  it today's economy I can tell you (I probably don't need to I'm sure you already know). So i have decided therefore given the long and the short term benefits from a little upfront cash, that getting external qualifications will indeed help you and they will help you with the big players like agencies and such because they care about achieving. they care that you are a winner just like them so you might as well get cracking.

Disadvantages.

It means more studying! It also means more money and of course the time investment on top of that. Often you will have to work these kinds of courses into or around your working day and so can make your life a little bit more stressful in the short term. You will have to do the research yourself into whether the course you choose is worth this kind of investment which is again more work on your behalf. They are also not a guaranteed fix and trends with courses are much the same as with technologies. What was once the hottest thing since sliced bread can quickly become yesterdays news so you will also need to figure out the kind of longevity that any given certificate holds.

Overall though I think they work more in your favour than they do against you so if you are trying to jockey your way up the career ladder then professional development certificates will certainly help you in your quest to do so within your specified field.

The specific vs the broad portfolio

This is one of my favourite subjects to talk about, honestly. Its like creationism vs evolution. Okay so its not quite as politically charged as all that but it is pretty difficult to get anyone to agree on it. If you are a graphic designer of any description it goes without saying that you are going to have to have a portfolio that shows people exactly what it is that you do. You are supposed to be a visualiser of information so technically by that premice alone it should be pretty self explanatory what your skills are after having taken a look at your portfolio. Except for the fact that this is often not the case. There are many a pixel perfect portfolio out there that fails to communicate the essence of what exactly the designer specialises in, and this is kind of how the debate opens up. The question is less about how you go about making your portfolio visually interesting etc than it is about do you have or do you in fact need to have an easilly discernable specialism. I am going to go with NO, personally I believe that you do not need a specialism to be noticed because your "specialism" will stand out a mile from the rest of your work anyway. But it is good always to know from the perspective of a client or employer, that you are capable of stretching the remit a little if needs be. After all we have that little thing called the free market to worry about now too so you can bet your bottom dollar that the competition are doing everything under the sun to stop you from getting the work they could realistically handle by themselves.

Personally my portfolio is quite broad in that it stretches from interface and web design to logos, brochures, posters and even illustration. I do this because I tend to work on a project by project basis. I don't like the idea of somebody telling me that purely because I haven't done something before that I am going to be terrible at it. There is of course a possibility that this is the case but most of the skills in the field of graphic design are transferable. e.g.. If you have done something remotely similar to the proposed project you will probably have a good idea before you've even started where your strengths and weaknesses are going to lie. So it is really about using your discretion (and being honest with yourself) about what you can reasonably achieve. If I thought for example that I was capable of coding an entire e-commerce from scratch but had never done it before then what I would do before pitching for the project is do my research! I would find out all the extra resources that were involved how long it takes your average experienced e-commercer and factor in learning time for any thing that I don't already know how to do. If this then seemed like an unreasonable assertion on reflection I wouldn't bother to pitch for the project. But, if I still felt confident after all this then I would pitch for the project and go about putting together the bare bones of the project to send out as an example or sort of insurance for the potential client. Now in a position like that you have not only gained knowledge of a new potential avenue you have also gained albeit a small amount, but some form of experience in the field and a little something to put in your portfolio, and this is all even if you don't win the client. So for me this is a worth while endeavour. I know most of you creatives out there are generally talented little buggers who will thrive in any environment given the right incentives so whats wrong with a little dabbling??

Now the reason I defend the broad portfolio so much is because it opens doors. If you have only ever worked in web then it is likely that you will only ever work in web. The work you do leads you to other similar work and that is a fact. There is s always nothing stopping you from doing self set projects in the other specialisms that you would like to try or move into, but this of course takes time to build up and says nothing of your ability to apply it in a commercial environment. The only problem with this proposed approach is that generally it makes you seem like a bit of a wild card. The testimonial is your friend in this instance. If you have previous clients with whom you have been bunged a challenge and succeeded then by all means go about getting that recommendation because it will be what sways your new client or employer into believing in you. You don't want to be in a scenario where it is just your word against theres and back up never hurts you. There is also another point to having a broad portfolio and it is because it shows your potential employer or client (I know I have used that sentence already no need to be pedantic) that you are capable of growing and adapting with the times. This is a massive bonus. Technology as we all know is changing, expanding, evolving, whatever you want to call it, at a ridiculously fast rate these days and people have barley time to figure out how to use it before the next thing comes out. With the exception of the intuitive design model thats gaining popularity across the board and was largely introduced by apple products, this is not going to change any time soon. So basically what I am getting at is that wether you like it or not you are going to have to re-skill in this business a lot and having that broad portfolio showcases your ability and willingness to do so.

There is of course a down side to having a broad portfolio and this one comes up for the more project by project basis. If you are trying to win over a freelance client as an example for lets say a packaging design on a new shaving product. You as the broadly skilled designer will likely have some good examples of similar packaging work. They may have even been for some major blue chip clients but if you are in direct competition with another designer who solely works in packaging! then the chances are you are going to lose this battle. They simply have a far better arsenal of project specific work and the years of experience to back it up than you do, which is all fairly obvious stuff but worth mentioning anyway. This is not me by any means suggesting that you shouldn't bother trying to get projects that are highly specific just a word to the wise. So all in all I am confident that benefits to having a broad spectrum of work far outweigh the negatives and give you as a designer a much better sense of your abilities in that you have stepped out of your comfort zones regularly. I can at this point therefore only advocate the same for all aspiring designers. Do everything try everything make it good. That is all.

Internships (the pro's and con's)

First of all let me say that I have done quite a few internships myself and they can be good and they can be bad depending on your perspective. It is unfortunate that in the last ten years or so the use of interns has become a cheeky way for start ups and larger companies alike to exploit hardworking young people in their quest for gainful employment. If you take a job and call it an internship then you don't have to worry about all those tricky little things such as tax responsibilities, minimum wage, and employee rights. That is of course coming from a rather cynical stand point but still one that is worth bringing up none the less. So I feel that I might as well begin this little chat with;

The Con's

The legal definition of what actually constitutes work and therefore should be paid at least minimum wage is this: having set hours, being engaged for an extended period of time, i.e. office hours 9-5, being given a set role. Now for anyone who has taken part on an internship lately they will know that these are exactly the criteria of the roles that are being dished out in lieu of paid work, and all in exchange for experience and a bus ticket. Most of the time you wont even get lunch paid for and will end up actually out of pocket working for someone else. This to me seems a little unfair and is the kind of thing that makes you feel as though your degree was in fact worthless. Not only do you have a huge pile of debt but you are no closer to getting your foot in the door than unqualified school leavers with no experience either. This is by all accounts frustrating. The fact of the matter is that in this modern era of the globalisation and the free market etc if you want to get a good job then you have now got global competition to deal with as well. One thing that universities know is that education in such a climate is big business and therefore they will do anything to persuade us that we all need a degree, and to counter that one thing that businesses know is that universities do very little to prepare there students for the real world of work, and the graduates are therefore unlikely to be able to (excuse the terminology) "hit the ground running". The fact of the matter is you probably do need a degree to get your foot anywhere near the door of a specialised position these days. You may even need a 2:1 and a masters and on top of that, you may also need 2 to 3 years of experience to qualify you as an employable human being these days which seems a little absurd when you see the amount of "work" that takes place in your average offices but I digress.

The second problem with a lot of "internships" is that they are not even remotely what they claim to be. For example I would say that about 80 percent of the Graphic Design"internships" (and I use that term loosely, hence the quotation marks) that are advertised on Gumtree.com are actually just start ups that cannot afford to pay a private firm to design their company literature. These kinds of deals are often set around the premise of, you come to us and pay your travel upfront and we will re-imberse you (maybe), you bring your own equipment and software with you, you brand the company, design the brochure, build the website, and make everyone tea whilst your at it, 9-5 monday to friday, until your role becomes so legally tenuous that we have to let you go. In exchange you will get work experience and a reference plus a few bits for your portfolio. This actually doesn't even sound quite so bad at first glance until you look at the job descriptions of a lot of entry level roles and the fact that you will be asked to do far less and be paid around 18,000 a year for it. Its then that it starts to seem unfair. This might have more to do with Gumtree than internships in general, but I feel I have made my point about the pitfalls ahead. I believe that you do gain valuable experience, but it is mostly experience in recognising that you are being exploited.

Last of all there is the fact that the unpaid internship often goes on for far too short a period of time for any real employer to see it as proof of your experience in the field. Again this comes down to the fact that legally an unpaid internship in the UK is not supposed to go on for any longer than a month so you are still in that catch 22 position of not having had enough experience. You need realistically a solid year behind you, and the competition for the legitimate, paid, year long kind of internship is frightening! Unless you have the perfect candidate profile including the grades, which looks more like that of a political candidates resume plus the contacts to show for it also, you can pretty much forget it.

but there is hope out there for us all!

The pro's

The thing is you are going to be selling yourself on your portfolio. As much as it is wonderful to see that you are a conceptual genius that can produce ideas and campaigns to rival big brands like Coca Cola and MTV your day to day work load is not likely to be quite so exciting, so companies want to see that you can do the boring suff too. Your College portfolio will likely showcase all the shiny stuff but what you will learn very fast in the kind of internship that I mentioned before, is how your average freelance job might work out. You will get to know how to run a project from start to finish its its truest meaning and not only that but you be fully responsible for the outcome. This is going to look great in future where employers are concerned.

You will begin to see the inners workings of your average companies marketing department, from the number of employees, to the kinds of deadlines involved, and the level of responsibility that is put into the department.

Then of course there is the fact you will most likely speed up your work rate ten fold in the process (I know that I certainly did). This is something that yet again will put you in good stead with employers.

And last but not least you will also get the chance to figure out all of the non graphic design jobs that are included in being a graphic designer (nobody tells you that stuff whilst your still studying)

By the time you have finished doing a years worth of different internships for different kinds of companies (like I did if thats what you choose to do) you will be a certified pro, and probably ready to reach out into the big wide world of freelancing. Whats more you may well have gained a few great references (if you behaved yourself) and picked up some well needed office politics deflector shields! which really do need to become a real thing very soon. Obviously just like before you will need to be choosy about what goes in your portfolio still but you will also have those boring bits that prove you don't live in fairy land to the real employers, so you are most definitely gaining momentum towards your chosen career for having done one or two internships.

What should a Graphic Design education consist of?

I personally have just recently graduated from a degree in graphic design having done a National Diploma in Multi-Media beforehand, but even though this is true I am still no that sure that you actually need a degree in order to be a designer. 

Most jobs will actually state that they are looking for a graduate with a 2:1 or higher otherwise you need not apply which is a little harsh I feel considering the level of work that was getting produced by some of the 2:1 students I studied with, and the level of work that I have seen produced by people with no training whatsoever. No amount of kissing up to a lecturer is going to make up for a complete lack of design talent though so even the not so wonderful 2:1 students did show potential or conceptual strengths or something! The same old catch 22 of not having enough experience to land you a job after you graduate is also going to be an issue regardless of your final grade too. I have friends for example who graduated from their degrees 2 years ahead of me, some of which graduated with first class degree's and they are only just beginning to find work that is vaguely related to what they studied. This has of course got something to do with the economy and the job market yes, but it also has a lot to do with a lack of initiative on their parts.

Now what you learn at University on a course like graphic design is far too general to leave you with a concentrated portfolio to help land what will inevitably be some kind of specialist junior position fresh out of uni. Again this is a generalisation as there are some very lucky individuals that do exactly that! I can assure you though, they are few and far between and often happen to have some form of advantage on their sides such as a mentor to guide them throughout their entire studies or influential contacts in the business to land them that crucial foot in the door. Anyway I digress, the thing that is important here is having a good idea of what side of the profession you ultimately want to land up in. This can be a really tricky thing to figure out especially having no experience in the field to measure your thoughts against and most often times this is where the degree part comes in very handy indeed. You effectively get given 3 years of design play time to figure out exactly what you are good at, what you are terrible at, and what you could reasonably swing your portfolio towards once you finally do graduate. 

Even still though many do not figure that stuff out even by the time they have graduated because the deadlines are tough and the briefs are not necessarily made up of what you wanted to try your hand at so you can still lose out in that respect. If you are clued in though by some fluke and know exactly what kind of designer you would like to be before you have studied for your degree, then you are in with a good chance of getting a job without the degree. Your portfolio after all will be what sells you not numbers on a piece of paper. It is always good to know that someone has the will power and self-discipline to finish a degree as they are not as much of a ride in the park as they get made out to be, however ultimately an employer wants to know that you are good at what you do. 

Im going to defend the degree actually for a moment as I feel that I perhaps have not done it justice. Something that doesn't get mentioned much when talking about design education is your ability to work with others. I remember when I started out on the Multi-Media course at college and at that time I was still fairly precious about any and every piece of work that I did. I always wanted good feedback and if I didn't get it I got a bit upset or despondent and then started to doubt my talents as a designer or creative. What you get whilst at university is forced to show your work to people and have them criticise it. It is something that you get used to very quickly and after a while you wonder what all the fuss was about, and not only that you are having your work criticised by like minded folk who understand the principles of design so you know that the feedback is genuine and constructive. (A little different to asking your nan if she likes the web page you made). This should not be scoffed at as a part of becoming a good designer because it is what will make you a good employee as far as a design firm is concerned. They do not want to have to fight with you on every piece of work you create and expect you to fully co-operate with them and the clients at all times even if it goes against your "design principles". Then there is the fact that you are going to get the chance to mingle with other designers and this will give you a better idea of the level you are working to so the benefits to me are more based in the social part of the degree. 

Here are some of the downsides though starting out with my favourite money! Degrees are expensive for everyone, for the rich and for the poor alike. You might be getting a student loan but its not like you wont have to pay it back and that is effectively 20 grands worth of debt you are volunteering yourself for there. Aside form that there are things to consider like computing costs, printing costs, software costs, outside training costs like internships and drawing classes, none of these are free. You will end up spending a lot of money on a degree and there really isn't much of a way around that so get used to the idea of being broke. It hardly seems worth it when you add that to the amount of time it will take you to get work that is relevant to your studies and that will most likely be an entry level job at an entry level wage. This is why I actually feel that you may well be better off doing job specific qualifications as and when you need them to suit the particular faction you lean towards. For example if you are leaning towards being a photography lead designer for a fashion magazine then get a job doing something run of the mill to pay your bills. Do an evening course in photography and volunteer one day a week at a fashion house and I wouldn't be surprised if you found yourself a quicker route into the industry that way. You might also have a lot less debt to be following you around too. Another thing is that the library is your friend! with access to the internet via your phone, in internet cafes, and in most peoples homes, there really is no excuse to not having access to information. You can find reading lists for degree courses on there websites and simply go to the library and read them yourself for nothing. this way you can give yourself a good education without spending thousands of pounds to pay the lecturers wages. Do not underestimate the power of books. I think it was Will Smith who put it across the best in saying that "the key to a good life is running and reading". If you read there is not one problem that somebody else hasn't already had so they might have a good answer for your situation too. 

Anyway in answer to the question posed in the title, a graphic design education should consist of what you need it to in order to get your foot in the door. There are too many variables when it comes to peoples lives, level of skill access to resources etc for me to make an honest judgement on what a design education "should" look like, so I am going to have to give you one of those wishy washy not really an answer type conclusions in the this post. It should be the means to an end and those ends should keep changing and growing with your career.

How can you make money as: Web Designer?

That might sound like a fairly obvious question with a fairly obvious answer but bear with me now because I think it is a little more complex than it would seem at first. There is a massive market for web based technology now more than ever. The world we live in relies heavily on the internet for business and communication alike so naturally it would follow that somebody needs to work on designing these web products. The front end of any web page is guaranteed to have been "designed" as even though there are a number of consumer products that allow the average person to play designer, (even MS Word) the fact remains you still need some degree of design training and understanding for it to be of any real value and have proper functionality (or of course natural talent). Anyway what I want to do here is outline some of the ways in which the web designer can profit from his or her skills.

What are you designing?

More than likely, as most people do, you assume that web designing involves designing web pages for a living and you are both right and wrong about this at the same time. Of course you will as a web designer be designing web pages somewhere along the way but you are not by any means restricted to only this. Even if you were there is far more to it than just laying out a page. Your main concern if you are designing web pages is usability. A web page is not the same as a magazine in that it is interactive. You will still have to make the page in a way that visually stimulates the user but the main thing is going to be making sure that the information is clear direct and readily available at the click of a button. Websites need to be easy to use and obvious in there navigation otherwise people will get either bored, or frustrated, or both quickly, and leave your site. Bearing this in mind your skill set then, should be more of an interaction, or interface designer, than that of a static designer who would be more concerned with wow factor from first glance than usability at second look. Another thing to consider is that the layout of the page and subsequent pages is going to require a lot of art working which will be things like background images, texture effects, buttons, headers and other branding elements that will help bring the site to life and give it a certain personality. The next thing to consider is moving or dynamic elements of a page with which the user may be able to interact with, or could be a short animation or  moving part of the site like a rollover button etc. Then there is the world of social media and communication. It is common nowadays for a website to have social media built into the page so that the publisher can put up to date information on the site regularly without having to worry about complicated CMS clients. You might see an RSS feed button or a live blog posting built into the site. You can also design Facebook business pages, and custom blogs to match the companies branding, so there is growing demand for these types of skills. Email is the most common communicative device used in business today and the fancy interactive newsletters that you receive are also part of the web design remit. 

Where will you be getting this work from?

Probably the most important thing to consider is who will be paying you? If you are a freelancer and I mean the kind that literally bangs on doors and gets there own clients then the answer for you will be simple. Your clients that you secured will be the ones paying you, and how much you make will be down to how much you charge so you will have to be careful not to price yourself out of the market or sell yourself too short. Seeing as this is the trade you are in you should also know that the internet is your friend. It will be your livelihood and income source at the same time if you play your cards right.

For example the web designer of today can do a lot to make money on the side selling website templates. Market place sites like http://themeforest.net/ and http://www.templamatic.com/ make it really easy for you to earn royalties on every sale of the template that you make. This way also you get an accumulative income from your designs rather than the one off payment you could expect from a purely bespoke design you may have done for a client. There are numerous other websites that will allow you to sell vector images like Icons you may have created or buttons left over from previous projects.

Whilst we are still on the topic of making money online I may as well bring up another model such as http://www.crowdspring.com/ which works similarly to a competition brief. You pick the project and then submit your design idea to the company and should they choose yours as there favourite you get the money that was offered for the project which is usually around 650 pounds for a small website under 4 pages. This might seem like a waste of time considering you are not guaranteed to win but you can always replace any branded elements like logos with generic images and then sell them as templates on the previously mentioned market places if you don't win. So overall it isn't the worst idea in the world and can be great fun just for practice if you are new and need to try out working on live briefs.

You can also use social networking to your advantage and piggyback other people projects because often in the world of web design the developer and the designer need to work hand in hand. In groups and forums and social networks like linked in you will often find advertisements from developers looking for designers to help them finish a project so depending on your skill level and negotiating tactics you may be able to gain work via this method.

If you are not thinking of freelancing at all then you are probably going to be one of two things and that is a designer who works for a creative studio, or designer who works for an agency. If you are a designer who works for a studio then you will be part of a small team working on whatever it takes to get the project done for the client gained by the studio. The same applies to working through an agency except you may not be required on site at all as you will effectively be a freelancer albeit one with access to a regular stream of work. Or the other thing that I haven't mentioned is being an in-house designer. If you take on a massive project such as a football clubs website for example then this is going to need constant care and attention and you will most likely be hired to take care of all the web and graphical needs for the duration of its lifetime which can be a rewarding or limiting experience depending on your viewpoint.

How will you get there?


I said when I started this blog that I would try to give advice that was based on my experiences and had some real world application and so I appreciate that the above mentioned things could be a little too vague to have any real value. But what I will say is this. I have tried most of these things out for myself and none of them are easy, they take a while to get into and a few attempts to get any return so you will have to have some patience.

I went to college and studied multimedia and at that point had no real understanding of web design even though I was taught a little bit about dreamweaver as part of a unit somewhere along the way. When I finally got to university to study graphic design my course was so based in conceptual and historical knowledge about graphic design that any technical knowledge had to be gained in extra workshops and outside learning of my own. This still wasn't enough knowledge to do anything to a commercial standard with so I went and did a few internships but most of them didn't teach me anything and expected me to know everything already so I only really got to understand what web design was all about by building one for myself as a portfolio website. In that short space of time I began to understand why people often say that web designers should have a working knowledge of HTML and CSS because without it you simply cannot understand what your design is asking of the developer and some things are simply not feasible at all. My advice therefore is to learn how to build websites by building them for you and your friends or whatever. The internet is full of learning and you won't need to do a degree in order to find out what you need to know. Just do it and then you will have a portfolio that will land you some paid clients wether that be through online marketplaces or asking around is irrelevant. The key thing here is to produce work and keep on perfecting your skills. The way the world is now everybody wants a website so you won't have a hard time finding work.

What kind of graphic designer will you be?

In all honesty the answer to this is one that is very hard to define. I have on several occasions thought that I had found the answer only to find out quite quickly afterwards that I did not actually know what I was talking about at all. Thats life I guess, thinking you know something only to discover that you don't. Graphic design, much like many things in life is no exception. It changes with the times like people do. Now the overall purpose of graphic design remains the same as it always has. To help advertise and communicate information in a visually stimulating way. That is not to say that it cannot be a vehicle for other things like tackling perceptions and changing the way people think about what they are doing and how they are interacting with the world around them because it does these things too.

What I want to talk about here though is less of a philisophical stand point on the nature of design and much more of a practicle guide to what you as a designer might get up to during your day. Mainly I aim to give you some helpful information that I had absolutely no clue about when I started my journey into the world of graphic design.

The profession is split up into subcategories that deal with different aspects of design (fairly obvious) and rightly so. Doctors may all be doctors but they all have their specialisms and the same applies for designers. If you are to become an expert in anything then the narrower the feild, the more accurate your expertise are likey to become. Don't take this as gospel I am sure someone will point out many things I have missed but the broad categories of graphic designers are as follows.

Web designers,
( This is largely made up of layout design for the web and is quite similar to that of brochure and magaizine design. The difference being however that the elements of interactivity in the web make the design process slightly more challenging as you have to figure out your customers behaviours as well as make the information palletable. Often web designers double as web developers (writing mark up language similar to what a programmer does) and have good technical knowledge to do with software and computers. Web pages themselves are just one part of web design though as there is a growing maret for e-marketing strategies, e-commerce, games, applications and so on.)

Digital designers,
( Digital design is rather more aimed at interactivity than static design. It can involve anything up to and including web design, interface design, application design, and animation. This particular feild tends to be one of the more challenging ones as it is user oriented and involves a good understanding of semantics and usually requires a knowledge of both static and motion design as well as an understanding of programming laguages. There is more planning and testing involved in this feild than there is actual design as the emphasis is on how things work.)

Motion graphic designers,
( motion graphic designers bring static images to life. They tend to work in film, television, and animation, and take on a very similar role to that of the digital designer. (it is more likely that all of the above would work together on a project) they would do work such as idents, movie credits and dynamic web pages as an example.)

Print designers,
( There will always be work for the print designer despite what people might be saying due to the growing dependance on technolgy. Alot of the information we consume from day to day is in printed format. The menue at a restaurant, a business card, a bill from your phone company, the instruction maual that came with your new PC etc. Any where there is paper there is a print designer involved somewhere along the way.

Packaging designers,
( This requires virtually no explanation as they do precisely what there title suggests. Every single thing that you buy comes in packaging of some kind and therefore in our modern consumer society becoming a packaging designers could well be a great way to guaruntee yourself work (if you are good of course).

Signage designers,
( The modern company has a real challenge on their hands when it comes to standing out from the crowd considering the fact that even your average joe can present themselves as a brand these days. Signage can quite literally capture an audience as well as inform on a location and help to navigate an area all at the same time. So the job entails some serious forethought. Then there are materials and costs to consider as well as environmental issues such as wether or not the sigange gives off light and disturbes the local wildlife and so on.)

Type designers,
( Although when we think of graphic design we tend to think of web design, interface design, and things like magazines what people forget is that typography does not just magically appear. Somebody dedicates there entire career to creatoing character formats, different lettering styles, entire font styles etc whilst all the while considering its legibility and tone as evry font has its own personality.)

So as you can see some of these categories blend over each other as the requirements for each job often require you to be multiskilled, but generally I think this is a fair representation of what kind of work is out there for people. Now under each one of these categories there is also a subset of roles within that. but these are the kinds of things that you will work out in your education and career for yourself so I wont go into that. What  I hope you have gathered from this is that you wont be completely up the creek without a paddle if you find that any one of these genres doesnt actually suit you. There is always another one for you to try and the likelihood is your experience with the other may actually give you a head start in your new direction.

Like I said in my previous post for those of you who read it, you need to get stuck and be brave because your calling isnt going to come and bite you in the arse. Only time will tell (I am so full of cliche's for this I apologise) but knowing what is out there for you to try in the first place should be a big help. I didnt have a clue that half of these roles existed at all when I went to college and I think I would have benefitted greatly from it at the time. You probably already have a good idea wether you are more interested in motion or static or print or digital or 3d or flat etc. So trying out things in each of these will help you to realise where your strengths lie.

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Why choose a career in Graphic Design?

The philosophy

I think that in all fairness choosing a career is one of the hardest things a person can do. With the variety of different industries that exist today and the exposure we get to the possibilities within those fields from a young age the choices really are endless. 

Ironically enough some of the most successful people on the planet never really chose their careers at all. In reality they just stumbled into them over time through a series of both fortunate and unfortunate events. Don't get me wrong now I am not suggesting that you don't choose a career at all because these people all had goals. Steve Jobs knew for example, that he wanted to work with computers and systems. If you have ever listened to one of his inspirational speeches you will see that he made choices based on his reality at that moment. He did not try to predict the future, because trying to pick a career isn't that different from trying to predict the future. It assumes that you know something of how you are likely to develop as a human being, how the market will continue over the years, and what the need will be for your specific skill-set.

Now looking back on my own choices and what lead me into a career in graphic design I can tell you that there was very little predicting of the future going on. I, like many other young folks out there at the time, didn't have a clue what I wanted to do with my life, in many respects I still don't. All I knew was that I was fairly intelligent (although my schooling hardly reflected this), I had a few obscure talents such as sports, music, and drawing and that I didn't ever, ever, want to live the life that so many of my parents and there friends lived. 

What was this life I hear you ask? well it conssited of conversations that revolved around furniture choices and what was on the front page of the news paper and the behaviour of the neighbours, marital spats, living beyond ones means and generally having a life that was a carbon copy of every other person within a hundred mile radius. There was nothing wrong with it as such, but I found it all thoroughly uninspiring. I must have been just about to leave school when I realised all of this and so I set about going to college to do something that appeared to hold some promice of the future. It was a multimedia course at the time but to me it seemed like a gateway into cool, modern up to date liberalism and culture, and a far cry from what I already new and was so bored with. The reason I bring this up is because it is an example of my reality at the time and the choice that I made towards my current state of affairs. I had a goal in mind and the vehicle towards this goal was irrelevant.

The possibilities

I suspect that most people considering a career in graphic design are considering it for these kinds of underlying motives. Probably because you think it will allow you to avoid office politics and talk about cultural issues all day, and because it will somehow give you license to wear super sleek modern glasses that you would never have normally considered, and because like everyone else these days, you are addicted to coffee and the internet so you may as well make the leap and join the forces of people who rely on them to get there work done. You probably beleive that you will go to cool hip parties where other cool hip graphic designers party, and your music collection will be so up to date nobody will have heard of any of the bands. And you are right about these things, they are all true of the proffession to an extent. But there are a few realities of the trade that you should be made aware of if you are genuinely thinking of going down this route.

The reality 

Being a graphic designer does not make you cool! It never has and it never will and all the best graphic designers are seriously uncool people that don't go outside. That is because they are so intertwined with what they do they have forgotten what the world looks like when its not printed up in helvetica. 

Being a graphic designer does not pay well. Unless you happen to be some kind of guru that is snapping up the latest advertising campaigns left right and center you are likely to be working for an average wage doing run of the mill jobs like business cards for your local bricklayer.

You do not get to avoid office politics you just get a different kind of office politics and most people think that you quite literally draw for a living and will therfore stick there noses up at you wherever possible.

You can dress like a wanker if you really want to but it is only going to make people think that you are indeed as they always suspected....a wanker.

A degree in Graphic Design is step one of getting a job and it is the third most popular degree in the country. You have an awful lot of competition so you had better be good at what you do! You are going to have to prove it time and time again, also there are something like 135,000 graphic design graduates a year and only about 20,000 job roles to fill.

The hours are basically as long as it takes until the job is done.

The software and the technology that you use will become outdated the minute you master it so you had better like the idea of reskilling on a regular basis.

The internet has created a space for ametures to take over where proffessionals once were and so what you are left with is a minimum requirement of skill level. This is high! You are going to have to become all singing and all dancing to compete with the masses.

People will often try not to pay you for your work and you will have to get used to the idea that people don't like your stuff. It is highly subjective but something that you will have to get used to none the less. 

The last thing that I would like to say is that it can be expensive breaking in. The software is pricey and a machine powerful enough to run it will set you back as well. Not to mention extras like a digital camera, a drawing tablet, a printer, paper, ink etc. 

Where do you stand?

Now having said all of those things above it is still a rewarding career and there are many subdivisions within graphic design that will give you room to breathe. Some graphic designers double as artist and interior designers, others start up there own printing firms, and some freelance in digital and web design, the list goes on. It is really about figuring out exactly what you are good at and swinging your career around to that. The only way you are going to do that is by trial and error and don't be afraid to end up doing something completely different from where you first started because all the fun is in the journey! I think that if you are inclined towards the creative arts and you happen to have some talent then graphic design is as good an industry as any, and probably holds more chance of you getting a pay check for your efforts than being a painter of a sculptor. So get down to your local college, get stuck in and see where it takes you.