Then I tried looking up “Chip Kidd net worth” and “Michael Bierut net worth”. Clicked on two search results for each and ended up with apparently fake numbers since both of their net worth was $2.5mil on one site and $250,000 on another.
Would anyone mind helping me find the answer(Or even better reply with the answer)? I intend to figure this out in order to learn more about the business of design and not end up being a starving graphic designer at least.
You would be more better off searching the Median salary for a graphic designer. Not everyone will be rich and famous. While you might get there someday, determine whether or not, in the mean time, you can eat on what the average pay is.
Those net worth sites, someone has to be interested enough to dig through public records to determine net worth. The fact you are getting “fake” numbers may mean no one cares enough to check, or the people in question are keeping their net worth private (tough to do these days.)
Sorry Thug, but I don’t have any answers for you on this, and I don’t think it would be worth anyone’s time to seek them out.
Studying the exceptions will not teach you anything about the business of graphic design. Actually, I’d contend there’d be much more to learn by examining the least successful attempted endeavors, not that it would be any easier to find information about that. Due to my vicious hatred of off-the-cuff statistics, I won’t project any specific numbers, but I’d guess the chance of making an adequate living—one that could support the household of a small family—these days as a graphic designer varies greatly depending on the market in which you attempt to practice, but could be well below 50% just about anywhere. (In fact, the higher pay graphic designers take in a given locale, the more competitive it is there.) That probably puts the chance of replicating the career of anyone in the top 20 . . . err, the top 1000 . . . earners near zero. I’d even go so far as to assert an opinion that the best graphic designers to be found are quite likely locked away, toiling in anonymity, making less than you might imagine yourself earning next year. No matter what happened in the past for the most fortunate of graphic designers, the profession has changed profoundly; not for the better.
Thug-D, your logic is flawed. A person’s net worth is determined by more factors than their salary. You can make a boat load of money; but, if you blow it, you can wind up poor. Conversely, you can make a modest amount of money and, if you’re smart and live within your means, wind up being okay.
People don’t typically announce their net worth to the public.
When wealth is tied up in shares of publicly traded companies or in real estate or when it comes from other publicly known sources, net worth can be approximated from things like stock prices or real estate values, etc., but I don’t think too many designers (if any) fall into these categories.
Nobody (literally nobody) gets rich as a graphic designer working on a salary. Instead, the road to reasonably good money resides in expanding beyond graphic design to things like owning an agency, owning a design-related business, getting ongoing royalties, investment income, etc. And doing these things are by no means a sure thing — they’re just the hit-and-miss paths that sometimes lead to wealth.
Swims carefree in his vault of gold coins - until feeling a sharp pain in his rib
Wakes up pub side at 10:30am with empty whisky bottle in hand, being prodded by local kids.