B went into that crowdsourcing bit as a skilled designer. Someone who already knew how brand marketing works. That might be why his solutions were chosen more often than not. He was not a half-baked college grad with no idea how to interact with the real world and no after-training to know the mechanics behind the stuff they are creating.
If no one wants to hire you for a real job, it might be time to evaluate why. In a field glutted with designers to choose from if someone came in to be hired and their portfolio was full of crowdsource logos, I’d have to wonder what their skill level is if they have time to play around with that crap - and what they may have learned that I now have to get them to unlearn. There is far more to design beyond the pretty pictures people think are logos.
There are other avenues to gaining skills which do not all include working at a design agency. But they require putting down the computer and actually going out there to look and sometimes actually doing physical work rather than sitting in a coffee shop all day. For an industry that revolves around the success of a paying clientele, it sure lacks any sort of skill bar above which its members need to practice. This field is pretty much becoming Etsy-fied.
“…If no one wants to hire you for a real job, it might be time to evaluate why. In a field glutted with designers to choose from if someone came in to be hired and their portfolio was full of crowdsource logos…”
The most important aspect to keep in mind is, although you are using crowdsorucing, your portfolio must generate a message of professionalism and trustworthy. This mean, you must produce quality work, not just a bunch of logos or other graphics…
As you probably know, today most of the agencies are interested in your portfolio, rather what degree you graduated.
Why?
Because experience is everything.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge” - Albert Einstein
However, my whole point around this, was simple : doing this kind of work is a privilege to sharpened your skills.
We all know that creativity unused, diminished.
Using crowdsourcing gives you the possibility to use that creativity to actually create qualitative work for different clients with different needs.
“There is far more to design beyond the pretty pictures people think are logos”
Agreed. And still, a logo must be pretty, but in the same time to communicate the right message.
Why must be “pretty”?
It is not enough to convey the right message, you must also, create the attractiveness part of it, to awaken interest. You can create a logo with the right message, but aesthetically is so bad that the trustworthy aspect is simply destroyed. .A logo icon is a powerful element of a brand and must be invested in it, because a logo can bring you success, but also failure. Why? Simply, by its level of quality and meaning. In other words, a logo design has the power to influence the whole brand theme, feel & look.
So, yes, you must first create the logo, and then the rest of the materials / designs.
The word admitted implies that I originally tried to hide something, which I did not. I brought it up as background information regarding my opinion that, on the whole, crowdsourcing is a bad idea for both designers, clients and the health of the profession.
Yes, crowdsourcing does require coming up with lots of ideas quickly, which is a highly useful skill for designers. It can also be a viable source of income for designers is countries with less opportunity and lower costs of living.
Unfortunately, those are just about the only good things I can say about it, and I’ll even qualify both those statements by saying that for beginning designers this kind of rapid ideation, in the absence of guidance from senior designers, will lead to some counterproductive assumptions and very bad habits.
First: here in the U.S., breaking into this business via crowdsourcing while forgoing the traditional routes — like a formal four-year college/university design education — is a bad career plan. The money made from crowdsourcing won’t pay the bills and it won’t provide the kind of experience or education increasingly needed to land a job. It really doesn’t matter if no other options exist, without that 4-year degree and good internships from working professionals, a viable beginning career in this field is increasingly unlikely. This may not be true, in your part of the world, however.
Second: a beginner planning to improve skills and experience as a designer in the absence of a formal education is a very poor education plan since students, by definition, don’t know enough about the subject matter to teach themselves what they need to know.
From a purely practical standpoint, this is a dead-end plan. Where I work is typical of the situation found at other design-related jobs in North America — no four-year degree means the application is immediately discarded with no further consideration. Again, where you live, this might not be the case.
Not true — at least here. Whether this is good or bad is a worthy subject for discussion, but the fact of the matter is that, no degree increasingly means no one even looks at the portfolio. Just this past week, at my agency, we closed the application period for a beginning creative team job (a writer in this case, but it’s the same for design applicants). We had 167 applicants. Even though the job announcement required a relevant college degree, about 25 percent of those 167 did not — they were all immediately eliminated from consideration by the human resources computer software. No one ever saw their names, no one looked at their portfolios and no one even glanced at their applications. Next, we cut anyone without college internships and at least three years of actual work experience at a known, reputable company — again, these cuts were made across the board without even glancing at portfolios. This is not peculiar to my company — this has become the norm here in the U.S. Again, though, this might not apply in your country.
Here’s something that I don’t think is dependent upon location — United States or Romania or Moldova, it doesn’t matter. It’s not possible to learn even a small fraction of what one needs to know about design from books. I have hundreds of design books that I’ve bought over the years. I love them all, and there are things in each of them that have helped me gain new perspectives and insights, but none of them taught me design.
In addition to thousands of hours of critiqued practice, people learn design through close personal interactions with fellow students, fellow workers, experienced instructors, more advanced designers, printers, production experts, technicians, writers, photographers, illustrators, various specialists, mentors and the experiences that comes through these interactions and seeing how those with more experience successfully handle them. This does not come in a significant way from either crowdsourcing, online tutorials or reading a thousand books. If someone, where you live, can use crowdsourcing as a stepping stone to an agency job where your real education will begin, great. It’s unlikely to happen here, though.
And I’ve barely touched on why I think crowdsourcing is bad for both clients, quality of work and the health of the profession, but this post is already too long and I have work to do. Thanks for the good, thought-provoking discussion, though.
I was on a similar boat; graduated in 1997 and worked full time except for taking 5 years off to be with my son. The biggest mistake I made was that I didn’t keep up with the industry. Anyway, I would strongly recommend you learn web design and all the Adobe suite programs. There are other programs starting to gain some traction (I think one of them is called Affinity and the other is Sketch), but Adobe is still the Big One.
For me, learning InDesign was easy since it was somewhat similar to good old’ Quark Xpress. Web design has been a different animal, and I am finally biting the bullet and taking classes. However, there are tons of great tutorials on YouTube, Skillshare, and Lynda that can help you learn new skills.
Unfortunately, you most likely will have to put up with lousy pay and long hours while you rebuild your experience, but you can always freelance to supplement both your income and your portfolio. Salaries vary depending on where you live. I am located in South Florida, and a lot of places want to pay pennies for someone to do everything from branding to answering the phones. I am very fortunate to work for a company that values my work though, so don’t lose hope- good employers and clients do exist!
Another idea would be to continue doing whatever you are doing, and take on freelance jobs on the side to rebuild your portfolio.
Go on Behance.net, Adobe, and AIGA to get a sense for what the current design trends are. I find this to be important so I don’t get stuck in 1997…
That’s all I can think of for now. I’ll update this if I come up with anything else.
I hope this helps!
no four-year degree means the application is immediately discarded with no further consideration. Again, where you live, this might not be the case.
Here’s an analogy.
Think of this from another perspective. Lets say you own a club of football and you have two footballers : one who graduated the class and the other one did not graduate.
Now, you start to test them both and you noticed that the one who did not graduate has more talent than the first one who actually graduated.
Who is more valuable for the club?
The first one who own a license, but lack in talent and experience, or the other one who does not have a license, but is very skillful and experienced footballer who actually can make a difference?
I think people pay too much attention on degree than the talent or experience itself. We are too much caught in the society system that we kill others talents / gifts.
Albert Einstein said: “Imagination is more valuable than knowledge”
Of course, knowledge mixed with talent born wonderful “things”, but creativity and experience is more valuable than knowledge itself.
In design field, knowledge without creativity is nothing. Design is different. In this field, creativity is everything.
I noticed, not in my country, that more and more agencies hire designers based on their portfolio / experience / level of creativity, rather than the degree itself.
Again, having a degree is a plus, but not the only condition, or at least, it should be.
For example, personally, I would rather hire a skillful and experienced designer with a great portfolio, than a graduated one of whom his portfolio is not so great. And I think most of the people think in this way, because everyone wants to have the piece of mind when hiring someone.
In my career of designer, just 1 client asked me what degree I have, the rest of them did not care, they simply view my portfolio and judge from there, because they know that experience and talent is everything.
“… but this post is already too long and I have work to do. Thanks for the good, thought-provoking discussion, though.”
I also appreciated the discussion, thank you. Have a great day!
Here’s the thing though.
In the design field, there are so many applicants for a position, they can’t all possibly be interviewed. That designer without the degree is not even going to get tested.
Firms like the one B works at get upwards of 100+ applicants for one job. The first weeding is by computer. No degree, the computer doesn’t even spit out the name for a portfolio review, let alone an interview or test.
The other part of the equation is, no one wants to hire a just-graduated designer either. The current entry level design position requires not only a degree but at least some amount of real world experience, generally 2 years. That is why you will see us suggesting the serious design student be working part time and weekends in any sort of design/print industry position they can get, be it internship or part time job. Freelancing doesn’t count. An unmentored position barely counts.
The same cannot be said of people who go out and freelance, with a degree or without. The industry of graphic design currently has no standards of practice for designers out on their own. Bear in mind the everyday mom&pop client has no idea if a designer is a capable professional based on their portfolio. They just see pretty pictures that appeal to them, not even considering whether the stuff in the portfolio is suitable for attracting their intended clientele. They don’t make that leap. The upper end clients however, the ones with the really deep pockets, they are going to be looking for knowledge, references and quantifiable results.
For instance, if developing a branding strategy for a brick and mortar venue that would include far more beyond the logo, a client and/or his architect is going to be looking for all kinds of assurances that the designer is capable in the field. A degree and specific on-going certified education is going to be part of that, not to mention a resume that shows where you’ve worked and who you’ve done work for.
Another for instance, if working on a new branding experience for a product, a new one or an existing one that has faded from public favor, the company is going to be looking at the metrics of your portfolio items, not the pretty pictures. Did your work accomplish quantifiable results? And how did you measure them?
It is very difficult to move up and beyond the mom&pop level of client without a degree. Not impossible. Just far more difficult.
Valvos, PrintDriver’s response mirrors my own in many ways, so I won’t repeat what he’s said, but I’l just say I agree with him, then add a few thoughts.
I don’t disagree with hardly anything you’ve said in your last post, but I have to be practical. There’s absolutely no way for us to fairly and thoroughly assess 150-plus applicants for every job or I’d never have time to do anything but that. This is why we’ve hired trained human resources people to narrow down the applicant lists.
You’re absolutely right about ability being more important than education alone, but experience has taught me that education makes a huge difference. The piece of paper itself isn’t important, but the degree serves as evidence that the applicant has received the basic training and has met the minimum standards necessary for graduation and employment. In other words, not only does the formal education teach people things they need to know, it serves as a filter or sieve that, when one successfully passes through it, serves as a guarantee, of sorts, that the person has performed at a certain level, has shown the necessary level of commitment and has learned the minimum amount necessary to begin a career.
Does this mean that there aren’t perfectly talented and capable people who achieve a high level of ability through other means than college? No, it doesn’t. When we make an applicant cut based on college degrees, I’m absolutely sure that it eliminates several good, perfectly capable candidates. Is this fair to them? No. Does it mean we might miss hiring the best candidate? Yes.
Again, though, from a practical standpoint, we have to make preliminary rough cuts or we would never get anything done besides evaluating portfolios. And experience has taught me that eliminating those without college degrees and work experience will yield a far higher proportion of viable candidates to interview than if we didn’t.
This next week, I’ll be spending two full days interviewing 12 candidates out of about 170 applicants who interviewed for a job that just closed. Every one of those candidates will have a bachelor’s degree in a related field. About half of them have master’s degrees. All of them have at least five years experience doing the kind of work we’ll be hiring them to do. Each one of them will have an entire hour to convince us he or she is the right person to hire. Again, judging from lots of experience, I’m certain that at least five or six of them will be absolutely perfect for the job. And we will arrive at this choice of perfect candidates while knowing full well that there was almost certainly at least one or two perfect candidates who were eliminated due to those rough cuts made earlier. The bottom line, though, is that we will have found the right person.
There’s one more thing that pushes us (here in the U.S.) in the direction I’ve been describing: federal and state labor laws. There are lots of anti-discrimination rules in hiring that need to be followed. If the company does any work involving federal or state contracts, additional rules and regulations can come into play.
In other words, if an applicant decides to file a complaint or lawsuit claiming he or she wasn’t hired due to certain kinds of prohibited discrimination, like age, sex, ethnicity, etc., there needs to be a well-documented paper trail and evidence that no discrimination existed.
Ironically, following the law in these areas actually leads to certain, arguably, discriminatory practices, like across-the-board rough cuts based on hard lines that can be drawn. In other words, if an applicant who isn’t selected files a lawsuit claiming she was not considered due to her being (whatever), we can show that she was not considered due to her not having the required degree or experience level. To back up our defense, we can demonstrate there were no exceptions where we did consider someone without those specific credentials.
Valvos, if the hiring process is simpler where you live, great. If companies care more about portfolios than degrees, and have the time to consider everyone’s abilities, that’s great too. It used to be like that here in the U.S. too, but it’s increasingly not that way any longer for better or worse.
Here’s another way to hone one’s skills; volunteer to help non-profits and other struggling organizations with their marketing and graphic design needs.
Do good in the world while you build your portfolio.
This is good. When I get a break with a week or two or free time, I just might sign up for this. There are a few causes listed there that I’d be happy to contribute some time and expertise toward.
