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.

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.