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[Date of Lies]

A teacher told me that there's no future in studying graphic design and that for every 10 students that study in graphic design, only 1 will be able to find a job.

I'm not TOO good at drawing. I mean, I like what I draw, but it could be better.
But I'll have no problems with using the design programs. And I find myself to be very creative and original.


Is my 'future' hopeless? Of course, I want to work with videogames later on.
I'm tired of hearing people bash my goals and tell me that "it's not that easy" and "I have almost no chance" or some shit like that, if you're going to tell me that I'll spend the rest of my life sleeping and eating out of a dumpster next to a tittie joint, please elaborate.


Is it so wrong to want to have a job that I have the chance to actually enjoy?

 

[FortNinety]

Sorry, but your teacher is a fucking retard. I can't even begin to start.

Just stick with what you want to do and screw all the haters. There's always going to be some jack-off saying whatever is "dead".

 

[GDGF]

Most of the people who tell you that there is no future in the art world don't know shit about the art world. Getting a job in graphic design is so much easier than, say, trying to make a living as a painter. Every big business needs a concept artist of some sort, and there are tons of advertising firms too. Don't suck, though. The better you are, the easier it will be (and it's always good to have a backup...remember if all else fails, you can teach English in Japan with any Bachelors degree)

 

[Makura]

Don't listen to him.

 

[Pachinko]

I'd say depending on where you live it could be tricky finding work to put your degree to use but like with anything in life, if you are motivated enough to keep trying to fish, they'll bite at some point.

Honestly , the only useless degree these days seems to be computer science, so much work with computers is being outsourced to countries with cheaper labour like india now that it's hard to get a job doing that stuff, let alone keep one you may have with a big corporation. I'm sure it's possible to find a job but really difficult.

 

[carpal]

Hah! At least your degree isn't going to be in multimedia!

(BTW, I agree with these dudes above. I'm just dicking around. My degree is dumb, yes, but I'm not worried about employment. All you need is some mettle and a bit of luck.)

 

[Date of Lies]

Sorry, but your teacher is a fucking retard. I can't even begin to start.

Just stick with what you want to do and screw all the haters. There's always going to be some jack-off saying whatever is "dead".

Hey, you're the guy that gives that game design course, right?


Do you think a technical speciality (I live in Quebec, it's a bit different) in Graphic Design for 3 years + courses in 3D modeling and Game Design in Flash (hey, since my college is offering them) + a year inside a Game Design institute (which will build me a solid porfolio) is ENOUGH?

 

[xsarien]

Make sure you know how to apply those skills to the Internet (e.g., user interface design, content creation, etc.) and you should be fine. That's not to say that the market isn't saturated and underpaid at the moment...

 

[Alucard]

Your teacher is RIGHT. My sis and a bunch of her friends all graduated with diplomas in graphic design and she's working in a cd store, and one of her friends is working in a gym as a greeter. Now, advertising, that's where the real money is.

*could possibly be talking out of his ass*

 

[sprsk]

My opinion is.........

Be a realist. Do you really think youre good enough? I think i am, but i know many who arent and think they are. Are you capable of doing whats being done today in graphic design? It *is* a hard field to break into and alot of talent is required. Sure if you go by statistics theres no future in any art field, but if anything that should provoke you into making more art.

 

[Date of Lies]

I'm heading to college next year and I need to pick what I'll study in this year.

I haven't done alot of graphic design.

I dont KNOW how good I am. I just know I'm interested in it.

Actually I'm pretty damn good in photoshop and I think I'm good and people tell me I'm good. But that's just photoshop.

I love my ideas and I'm confident in them.

 

[Ill Saint]

Graphic Design is a joke. It's an utterly fickle, incestuous and at times despicable industry. I am (or rather was) a Graphic Designer, yet I can't stand to look at Design hubs anymore. All fucking flowers, birds and Victoriana crap. It's like fashion... everything dictated by trends and a few "important" people.

Get into advertising, learn QuarkXPress / InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator. There will always be room for layout artists and from there moving up to studio manager, creative director etc...

In my humble opinion that's the way to go. The life of an artist or even graphic designer is a world of pain.

 

[Date of Lies]

yes I really want to go into advertisement, the disease of our modern society, the reason I don't watch tv, the reason I go to movie theatres late, the reason MTV and the Teen awards exist.

Yes I really want make the next Oh Henry ad you'll see on the side of the bus each morning.

 

[Ill Saint]

Well, you're cynical enough for it.

It's your life, go with what you think is gonna make you happiest, but your teacher's correct. And if you have a problem taking advice that you might not like to hear, you're on the path to losing already.

 

[Date of Lies]

nah I appreciate the advice.

And in all honesty, if someone offered me a job in advertisement and I couldn't find any better, I'd go for it. I can actually see myself being good at it.

But advertisement is not my first choice.

 

[Alucard]

Seriously, the graphic design field is extremely competitive. You have to be the cream of the crop, otherwise you're not going to be making any money. A friend of my sister's works for BMG music and she didn't even finish her graphic design diploma. It's about who you know and WHAT you know. You have to get your stuff out there and get noticed. The jobs aren't going to come to you. Design websites, offer to lay them out for companies...just get yourself out there. I don't know much about the industry to be honest, but from what I've gathered, you almost have to be an entrepreneur, otherwise you're not going to get very far.

 

[SentientStone]

Originally I was heading towards majoring in graphic design/animation or something like that, but I have recently decided to scrap that and major in business administration instead (specializing in marketing). I am still going to do a minor in the graphics design though just to give myself more flexibility.

 

[Ill Saint]

I don't know much about the industry to be honest, but from what I've gathered, you almost have to be an entrepreneur, otherwise you're not going to get very far.

Yeah, you have to pimp your shit like mad. Website design is good bread and butter work for most freelancers. Either that or illustrating magazines.

 

[Burger]

Graphic Design is a joke. It's an utterly fickle, incestuous and at times despicable industry. I am (or rather was) a Graphic Designer, yet I can't stand to look at Design hubs anymore. All fucking flowers, birds and Victoriana crap. It's like fashion... everything dictated by trends and a few "important" people.

Get into advertising, learn QuarkXPress / InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator. There will always be room for layout artists and from there moving up to studio manager, creative director etc...

In my humble opinion that's the way to go. The life of an artist or even graphic designer is a world of pain.

This man speakes the truth. Layout artist is the way to go. I'm shit at drawing, yet I'm a pretty good layout artist/typographer/wide format printer operator/whatever. Every once and a while I get some design job and I HATE it. It's good when you pull it off, but for every one of those, there are 4 nightmares (usually related either to your boss, or your client).

Graphic Designers are usually wankers anyway... Oh, and they usually use Macs, so watch out.

 

[FortNinety]

Hey, you're the guy that gives that game design course, right?

Yes indeed!

Do you think a technical speciality (I live in Quebec, it's a bit different) in Graphic Design for 3 years + courses in 3D modeling and Game Design in Flash (hey, since my college is offering them) + a year inside a Game Design institute (which will build me a solid porfolio) is ENOUGH?

Sounds like a plan. My advice for anyone is to study as many different subjects as possible (as long as all things are relative, of course). Not only will you be able to derive inspiration and skill-sets from other areas to create a stronger whole, but you can always fall back on something if your main area of interest falls through.

Though it also sounds like, at least from your other responses, that you're really not sure that it's what you want to do with absolute certainty. Truth be told, doing graphic design is tough, more so than many are aware off.

And it is competitive. And with the market being the way it is, it's getting harder and harder to get noticed. But the chances of succeeding is still out there. My advice to always keep your eyes open as to what else is out there. I'm sure you have plenty of outlets, but if you don't know about it already, be sure to check out Newstoday on a daily basis.

And be prepared to deal with a ton of bullshit. It comes with the territory with most art related jobs, but with design it seems to be especially worse. Perhaps this is why most graphic designers I know are absolute assholes whom I can't stand to be around for more than five minutes at a time (no offense to anyone here, of course).

Graphic Designers are usually wankers anyway... Oh, and they usually use Macs, so watch out.

:lol

 

[Date of Lies]

You're right, I'm not 100% absolutely sure YET, I could change my mind. But I want to work in the industry. So it's either programming or graphics for me (I don't want to go throught quality control) and graphic design can't be worse than programming.



Being game designer is my ultimate goal, but I'd be just as happy (and less burdened) with say being a level designer, which is around the same area.
So in that respect, Graphic Design is THE college course I need to take. It's not Industrial Design or Illustration and Design or Computer Science.



I'm not interested in business, commerce, law, health care, teaching, sociology (well I like some things in it, not a lot) or history (although that depends).

I like literature (I was considering taking English), cinema, psychology, math and physics. My parents wanted me to take Applied Science, I don't mind taking the course because I will stand to learn a lot, but then, what the hell am I going to do afterwards? Be a scientist in some lab? No thanks.

 

[Semjaza Azazel]

With these types of jobs, it just matters how GOOD you are. No one cares how nice you happen to be or where you went to class or what grades you got... if your output is better than someone else's, that's really all it takes. Plus being aggressive. A lot of people seem to have this idea that employers should do most of the work for some reason. Would be nice, but it never works out that way with this stuff.

You're likely to run into a lot of freelancing work as well. Some people prefer this to an actual steady job, some don't. Some actual jobs prohibit you from doing freelancing as well. You have to take this side of the market into consideration. You'd be surprised where these jobs come from... even your dentist or doctor could be interested. Money's money. If you're into print work, getting a good printer and being decent acquaintences with him/her can also lead to quite a few jobs with little work involved in acquiring them.

If you're better than a good portion of your classmates, then I'd say, in general, you have very little to worry about. The market is a bit slow, but there's always demand for good work.

 

[Ill Saint]

With these types of jobs, it just matters how GOOD you are. No one cares how nice you happen to be or where you went to class or what grades you got... if your output is better than someone else's, that's really all it takes.

Well, yeah, sorta, kinda... it really depends on what your target is, and your ambitions. If you're aiming at the big-time, it may be enough to just latch onto what the current trend is. If the "in" thing at the moment happens to be vector tracings of birds and flowers over pastel warm watercolours with aimless ornate noodlings, whip up a portfolio of that shit and get it out there. Then cross your fingers.

If you wanna take the maverick approach and forge your own unique aesthetic path, expect a lot of resistance. You'll probably make friends with small businesses who aren't clued in to what the trendoids are dictating. probably a better option money wise, but rarely does this feed a graphic designers ego.

Either way it's bullshit.

Being game designer is my ultimate goal, but I'd be just as happy (and less burdened) with say being a level designer, which is around the same area.

Surely in this case you've made maps for games, right? Learning a 3D app will be a really good idea.

 

[Warm Machine]

It is this simple...How many images are you bombarded with day after day? For every ad, every TV show, every commercial, every newspaper, every website, every magazine, every little graphic etc there is a designer toiling away pulling it together. There will always be a need for graphic designers.

 

[Tommie Hu$tle]

I think you all are missing the point his teacher saw his work and said you know you would make a great Psych major.

 

[Azih]

If you can make a very impressive portfolio then you should be ok. So.. do you think you'll be able to?

 

[Chittagong]

Move to Switzerland, Sweden or Finland. The graphic design scene is very healthy and it's actually lot easier to catch the attention of US trend seekers who tend to look towards Scandinavian or Swiss design for inspiration (and then remove all the insight and end up emulating the style only)

The scene is small and nice, so it's fairly easy to learn to know people.

Just check out

www.fellowdesigners.com
www.swedengraphics.com
www.syruphelsinki.com
www.bureaudestruct.com
www.bermuda.ch/bd
www.mongrelassociates.com
www.acne.se
www.bravounited.com

and see if you feel you could do as good or better. It's not about technical or drawing skills - it's all about ideas, sense of style and often a wicked typographic eye.

My story is that I decided after working in the scene for a few years, however, that it's more fun to commission design than to do it. Lot less pain, more joy.

 

[WasabiKing]

Just go to school tomorrow and bring in a print out of all the job openings for graphic designer, marketing production manager, and production coordinators. Hope you have a ream of paper to spare.

 

[Dice]

My friend and a few of his friends are good at graphic design and web design, so they started their own company and they're doing well. If you are good and you know it, sometimes you just have more luck offering yourself to the public than an employer.

 

[Warm Machine]

http://www.acne.se/film/showreel/?movie=SonetLetterToHeaven_QT04

That is a pretty funny ad

 

[Chittagong]

Oh forgot another cool agency:

www.steinmannklinik.com/

you need to click on the beef to see their stuff.

 

[xsarien]

I think the larger, more important point that's being missed here is the age-old maxim:

It's not what you know, it's who you know.

And in this economy, that little bit of advice really hit home. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the field beyond it being very crowded. The one important thing you should do is learn how to apply it as it relates to technology, and develop a keen understanding of how it translates between media. For example, while most standard print principles translate well enough to the web, the opposite isn't always the case. Television is a beast in and of itself with rules almost completely exclusive to it.

You can be a graphic designer without being a "graphic designer." It branches out into so many sub-fields that as long as you know how to use the tools to create something that looks nice (and works), you'll do fine.

And this is coming from the most cynical person on the planet.

 

[COCKLES]

It's tough. Look hard at your work - compare it to other peoples. If you feel your VERY GOOD TO SHIT HOT - keep at it. If like me you feel your work's OK or NOT BAD. Find something else. Sorry to be brutal.

 

[DaCocoBrova]

I do it for fun on the side, and it pays well if you're thorough, have small turn around times and your creative.

Anyone care to post some of their sh!t? I'll go second...

 

[Date of Lies]

ok, thanks for all the help guys.

 

[God's Hand]

I worked 10 years (from age 13) of my life to get to where I am today. Start small, aim big. Oh, and if you have to go to a design school or read tutorials, you'll most certainly have no future. You either have it, or you don't.

 

[Comfort_Eagle]

Go for what you love. Thats how it should be. Sure, you might end up broke, but i really think thats ok.

 

[Date of Lies]

I worked 10 years (from age 13) of my life to get to where I am today. Start small, aim big. Oh, and if you have to go to a design school or read tutorials, you'll most certainly have no future. You either have it, or you don't.

Personally, I dont see it as black and white as "YOU GOT IT oR Ya DONT."

But I understand what you mean by you can't just read a manual or take a few courses to become good. I think you fundamentaly need to be an artist. I think that I'm more of an artist, that's why I won't fool myself into going in bio-technics or something like my parents want me to, but had I had less confidence in myself, perhaps that's where I'd be headed. Like a more "applicable" mind shouldn't go in graphic design. Although, there is a place for basic application and reproduction in the industry of graphic design, I don't want to be making panphlets for night clubs for a living. In a situation like that, you can't be super original. But more fundamentaly, if you have to push yourself to design graphics, than it's obvious they'll turn out like uninspired crap, because no inspiration went into them. If you love what you do, you'll do more to learn and become good, once you know what you're doing, it's hard to create something only you will like and everyone won't understand, it's subjective, and if you think it's good, than someone else will too.

I hate conformity and I hate having the same opinion as everyone, I like to stand out in what I do. I think I have cool, unadulterated ideas, but that's the only thing going for me as I only recently decided to go in graphic design, even if I have medled a bit with it before.

That's why I'm going to take these courses to learn what I need to learn and get some valuable experience. And personally, one of the reasons I plan on going to that game design school is to get myself closer to my area of interest and to add something to my CV. But hey, if I can get a job in the industry before that, I won't have to pay 16 grand to go to that institute (although I heard that you are almost garantied to get picked up by UBi apon completion).

 

[kevm3]

If you hate conformity, I would almost suggest against going in art. Sure, it's not super rigid, but it requires a lot more discipline and patience than you would think. I grew up doing art for a very long while and almost always found that you have to draw what the boss, teacher or other head honcho wants you to draw. It's rarely ever like where you sit back and just draw whatever fun character pops up in your head and get paid for it. Drawing ducks and wildlife and whatever boring shit that was asked = suckaaage. Still, if you LOVE art, then you can make it happen. If you're only halfway about it, I would suggest against it.

 

[Ollie Pooch]

even if you can't get a job doing freelance graphic design or something like that, you can still (like most of the guys on here have said) become a layout artist / mac operator for an advertising firm - which is basically what i've ended up doing. i have no advertising experience, but you don't need it if you're just creating the designs obviously not as much creative freedom as if you werre operating freelance or something like that, but its' a good way to apply your skills. tell your teacher to get fucked

 

[CurlySaysX]

Learn AutoCAD.

 

[Caddle]

The person above is right learn autocad. Yet the graphic design field is slowly dying in the united states. Because of outsourcing the field has gone to shit since and then with the 9/11 disaster the nail is in the coffin am afraid. My company had a client who was going to pay $80,000 for a design to use in one of the calvin klein ad, we do more layouts for advertising than anything else, well here comes some company in china which quote the job for $40,000. Well guess what happen after. This free trade bull shit is ruining this country. The graphic design field is not as healthy as it was 4 years ago, and it's getting worse.