Over the years, and it’s been over five now (I completely failed to capitalise on the marketing opportunity that is a 5th year anniversary, shame on me!), I’ve had contact from aspiring graphic designers.

What I mean by aspiring, is people who want to have a career in graphic design but aren’t yet achieving that, or not sufficiently to live off the money from it anyway.

They fall into two camps.
Self Taught
Graphic Design Students

What I’ve observed about each of these two camps is

Self Taught Individuals
- Tend to have a better understanding of what type of designs are commercially viable (ie a business would actually pay them to use the designs)
- Tend to want to become freelance designers, or own their own design firms.

Graphic Design Students
- Tend to be more creative than those I’ve come across as self taught, yet in each instance have been unable to supply me with portfolio items that would interest a business owner seeking out a graphic designer to hire. All works tend to be ‘arty’ rather than commercial. A major failing in the training course I feel personally.
- Tend to want to ‘find a job’ rather than go freelance or self employed in any way.

My deductions from these observations, whether right or wrong, are the following.
I believe that the self taught individual has a more self motivated character, and is not afraid of challenges…this is why they decided to teach themselves graphic design in the first place, this same character is then also more likely to be interested in going it alone in seeking payment for their skills …ie as a freelancer or self employed business person.

The formally educated designer tends to want to look for a job because I suspect this is what is ‘sold to them’ by the course they have embarked on. I suspect that graphic design courses don’t encourage, or even mention much, the possibility of a graduate becoming their own boss.

If they do touch on that subject in any depth, maybe the formally educated designer is just more likely to veer towards employment simply because this is their character type…ie they like an environment where their development and achievements in design are ‘led’ and formalised. They perhaps also enjoy the notion of security…ie the concept that if they get the qualification it will result in a job in their chosen career, whereas the self taught individual has no such assurance.

Of course neither does the graduate, especially in this particular industry, where design jobs are few and far between compared to the number of people who wan them, but many students don’t realise that fully until they leave the course and attempt to find said work.

Which of the two camps am I? Can you tell? It’s pretty obvious really

In a moment of intrique I actually posted a poll about how many people are self taught and how many are formally educated in design and the results and conversation relating to it can be found at my favourate business networking haunt;
http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=76861

This poll shows that most designers are self taught.
Well it doesn’t at all actually, because the entire Ecademy site is hugely populated by self employed people and as my theories explain, I feel a self employed/freelance designer is far more likely to be self taught than formally educated and so this skews the results completely…you might find the short convo on the subject matter interesting though.

Amanda
xx