Schools, universities, books and magazines, classes, tutorials, trainings, they all teach us techniques on how to make the computer work for us, helping us grow from beginners into experts. They help us express our vision, however they don’t teach us the most important lesson: the experience we gain from working on real projects for real clients. These real projects have tasks that need to be completed and limitations to be considered, deadlines to be respected. These are all projects that have an ending, serving defined purposes, for which we get paid afterwards. Having worked on a lot of projects, I can say that all these projects will give you the experience that you need to go on, evolve, and maybe get hired at a better workplace/company/agency.
As a young designer, you can gain experience in many ways and from many directions.
The best way to get started is by working pro-bono, for small and medium clients, for businesses which technically don’t afford to hire professionals to get their needed work done. Even if there isn’t a lot of money involved, the experience you gain is priceless, as you can learn a lot from trying to create a new brand identity, working on a new website, a brochure, or even a simple annual report.
Other designers choose to freelance, starting off by working on real projects for real clients. The difference between working pro bono and freelance is the fact that for the latter, you get paid, which of course stimulates you to work on bigger and better projects. I can personally state that I have learned the most from the freelance work I did, back when I started with graphic design. You learn what a brief means, how to start a project, how to communicate with the client, how to deal with tough deadlines. You also learn that graphic design is actually a business, just like any other businesses out there, and compared to the work you might have done for school or for your personal development, you realize it’s more of a commercial type of art, which has a strategy as a backbone and a reason for which it is created.
Working on real projects, even if they are paid or not, you learn to accept critique, advice, new specific speaking-terms to use in your client-conversations, you learn how much it takes to build up a team, what the components of a good team are, you learn to respect international design standards and most of all, only at this point you learn how to really ‘learn’.
At this point, most designers choose a discipline that they like most and want to get better at. Most designers develop their own personal style, which is extremely important for the personal growth of a graphic designer. It is also important for the future employer; it helps him realize what his employee is capable of, and what his weaknesses are (to be improved, of course). This is when the designer must have his own portfolio of previous projects and maybe even start developing a strong personality for a better self-branding.
It is important that designers know the field/discipline in which they work and its history, acknowledging that each field/discipline has its own needs, rules and advantages, to prevent mistakes, clichés, and doing something that’s already been done before. A designer that really knows what he has to do, in the field he chooses, will have better chances to be excellent at what he does.
Once the portfolio is updated and features work for different clients, it’s time to search for a good working environment at a company/studio/agency. It’s always important to know what employers look for in young designers: originality, team-players, strong personality, communicative, passion, a creatively presented portfolio, intelligence, ability to communicate/brainstorm ideas about projects with the people around and most of all the power to over-satisfy the needs of a client.
This article is not supposed to be a receipt for success, but a close and sharp look at the steps a young designer has to take in developing a future career in the field of graphic design.
I chose to talk about this subject because I myself am the youngest member of the X3 Studios designing team, freshly coming from freelance work, and I know that it’s not long ago that I went through all the steps that I talked about here. I have learned a lot in the six months that I’ve been working here, I still have a lot to learn. I am grateful to my work-mates for our collaborations and because they successfully taught me how to ‘learn’.
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