Alternative career

In the end I had to lower my expectations and apply for anything remotely involved in the industry.
I don't want to criticize when you're obviously going through a bad time, but is it not possible it's at least to an extent your own fault? I speak as a freelancer whose clients have dried up recently (we all know this happens, I'm used to it), so forcing me to go out and look for new ones, which I am finding more difficult than ever. I am coming to the realisation that I have let myself be overtaken. Fifteen years ago, there weren't many qualifications around in my business and you didn't need them anyway, but now there are, and you do. I should have worked to strengthen my CV when things were going well, not now when things are difficult and it's much harder. Fortunately, I have at least kept up to date with skills and technology, so I'm not completely sunk, but I am not in the best of positions. This isn't the world's fault, it's mine, for not keeping up.
 
I don't want to criticize when you're obviously going through a bad time, but is it not possible it's at least to an extent your own fault? I speak as a freelancer whose clients have dried up recently (we all know this happens, I'm used to it), so forcing me to go out and look for new ones, which I am finding more difficult than ever. I am coming to the realisation that I have let myself be overtaken. Fifteen years ago, there weren't many qualifications around in my business and you didn't need them anyway, but now there are, and you do. I should have worked to strengthen my CV when things were going well, not now when things are difficult and it's much harder. Fortunately, I have at least kept up to date with skills and technology, so I'm not completely sunk, but I am not in the best of positions. This isn't the world's fault, it's mine, for not keeping up.
I'm not sure that's the point. The industry has definitely moved around us and you can learn all you like retrospectively, the technology natives are going to surpass you and they're younger and cheaper. It seems to me that studios used to be filled with visualisers, designers, artworkers, copyfitters, typesetters, proof readers... the whole shebang! Now one person and a Mac does the lot and for a lot less!!

Our earnings expectations are now in the toilet. Time value of money: creative director circa 1988 about £50K today that equates to £128k. Creative director 2010 about £30k - £50k. WHAT!! Less than half and its the technology and its ability to produce so efficiently that did it.

Being a designer is vocational, its who you are. What do we do when we're clearly of so little value that saving, a mortgage or God forbid holidays and school fees were in your plans?

I'm not a designer anymore in practice but I'm still a designer in every emotional sense because its who I am and all I need to brief a bottom feeder is a pencil and paper. The technology has turned the industry into an IT literate purgatory fit only for the intellectually bereft and the lazy who think it might be a cool job.

They'll learn.
 
Whew, dejavu.... I have also been in the industry for 20 years now and grown with it and I gave up going for interviews a long time ago - it is soul destroying. I was made redundant 5 years ago and it doesn't really matter to anyone that you have advanced from manually cutting and pasting camera-ready artwork and moved with the times and the mac through the years anymore...

I turned 40 a couple of months ago and in the midst of my mid-life crisis, it suddenly dawned on me that I honestly don't think I could go through another 20 years in the industry. I freelance 3 magazines from home for peanuts - and next week I am hoping to get an interview as a part time Art Department Assistant at the local high school, to supplement my part time career adding bomb bursts onto pages for clueless people.

It might sound scary, but the thought of washing mucky paint brushes for a living actually excites me!!!

Good luck to all of us dinosaurs ;0)xxx
 
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I don't want to criticize when you're obviously going through a bad time, but is it not possible it's at least to an extent your own fault? I speak as a freelancer whose clients have dried up recently (we all know this happens, I'm used to it), so forcing me to go out and look for new ones, which I am finding more difficult than ever. I am coming to the realisation that I have let myself be overtaken. Fifteen years ago, there weren't many qualifications around in my business and you didn't need them anyway, but now there are, and you do. I should have worked to strengthen my CV when things were going well, not now when things are difficult and it's much harder. Fortunately, I have at least kept up to date with skills and technology, so I'm not completely sunk, but I am not in the best of positions. This isn't the world's fault, it's mine, for not keeping up.

Have you considered that some of us simply don't get the time to update all the skills that are required to stay competitve these days?

There are no jobs in design where i live, forcing me to travel to London for the last 10 years, work long hours and be away from home for at least 15 hours. I consider myself fortunate to have a direct route to London and to be employed, but there's no extra hours in my day where i can find the time to update all my skills such as building professional websites.

I think the last two posters have summed it up very nicely.
 
I have recently started working from home so i will get the chance to learn new skills, just not in the design world, at least for now. I still want to learn pro website building at some point though. Who knows, one day i might be able to freelance as a plumber aswell as a designer.
 
I have been considering lately that a design partnership or affiliation of those who learned using pencils, typescales and markers should be launched, where thought, ideas and rationale matter more than presentation and tell clients no! There's so much crap out there in the world of Brand that a protestant attitude might bring benefit.

I think graphic designers (not budget designers) in the main still use the traditional methods. I'm 35 years old and learnt from a very experienced Creative Director called Rob Davie. I started in graphic design after the introduction of the mac but I was taught to use the traditional methods before using a computer.

I don't think it's so much when people started their career but more who they had to teach them. If you have the right mentor from the beginning it bodes well.

Thats why there is so much crap because the budget designers don't know HOW to design properly. When you ask them to use markers they almost laugh at you. There IS money in graphic design but you have to work at finding it. Once you have found it and you establish yourself, the money will come from people who want real design because they soon realise they are getting what they are paying the extra for.
 
Have you considered that some of us simply don't get the time to update all the skills that are required to stay competitve these days?
All I'm saying is that if you don't keep working on your professional skills and qualifications, the world will catch up with you, and there's no point in saying it isn't fair. My own core business is not design (my wife's is), but it makes no difference, it's true of all professionals. Doctors, for example, have to work all the hours God sends and still find time to keep up to date with their constantly changing discipline, and just as well for the rest of us that most of them are responsible enough to do that. If the kids nowadays are leaner, meaner and prepared to endure worse conditions and accept less money than you are, then to compete, you have to be better and faster and - here's the nub - be able to prove it. Fortunately, there's one reason why the 'the digital natives will always win' argument is wrong, though: we've been learning for longer than they have, and if we put our minds to it, we're better at it. I'm in my fifties, but technologically and skill-wise I'm still in there. I just omitted to get the certificates to prove it.
 
All I'm saying is that if you don't keep working on your professional skills and qualifications, the world will catch up with you, and there's no point in saying it isn't fair. I'm in my fifties, but technologically and skill-wise I'm still in there. I just omitted to get the certificates to prove it.

You're right there, definitely. I'd go as far to say that it doesn't really matter what certificates or qualifications you've got. If you can show people that what you do can match or surpass anything anyone else is doing then that's what counts.

Also, if you work for yourself and have no work coming in, who's going to bring the work back in? As JohnRoss has mentioned, we can keep blaming everyone else but the buck stops with us.

I don't agree with the notion that 'qualifications rule' anyway, I never have done. I don't think I've ever worked anywhere where it mattered. Studios want to see what you can do, not what a university say's you can do before you get in the real world. Don't get me wrong, it can be an advantage, but only in the right hands. You've got to have the core skills there to start with. Thats where the budget designers come unstuck. They have a computer, so they believe they can design.
 
I don't want to criticize when you're obviously going through a bad time, but is it not possible it's at least to an extent your own fault? I speak as a freelancer whose clients have dried up recently (we all know this happens, I'm used to it), so forcing me to go out and look for new ones, which I am finding more difficult than ever. I am coming to the realisation that I have let myself be overtaken. Fifteen years ago, there weren't many qualifications around in my business and you didn't need them anyway, but now there are, and you do. I should have worked to strengthen my CV when things were going well, not now when things are difficult and it's much harder. Fortunately, I have at least kept up to date with skills and technology, so I'm not completely sunk, but I am not in the best of positions. This isn't the world's fault, it's mine, for not keeping up.

A fair point I suppose, all I can say is I've tried to keep up with the latest technology. I'm learning Flash & Dreamweaver on a Adobe acreited course at considerable expense to myself to keep up.

The simple fact is there a too many people going for too few jobs. Let's faced it when an employer has the choice of an older experienced designer & any number of fresh designers who will work for less to get on the job ladder, who do you think they will choose?

It's interesting, what started as a slightly tongue in cheek post seems to have struck a nerve!
 
A fair point I suppose, all I can say is I've tried to keep up with the latest technology. I'm learning Flash & Dreamweaver on a Adobe acreited course at considerable expense to myself to keep up.

The simple fact is there a too many people going for too few jobs. Let's faced it when an employer has the choice of an older experienced designer & any number of fresh designers who will work for less to get on the job ladder, who do you think they will choose?

It's interesting, what started as a slightly tongue in cheek post seems to have struck a nerve!
It may have been tongue in cheek but its somehow comforting to know that I am not alone. I remember thinking to myself when I first got into a studio that there were no older designers anywhere. The odd creative director of course bit the ratio didn't seem to add up even then and I had a creeping suspicion that this is where the majority of us end up.

Anecdotal evidence when assessing an industry is meaningless, how one feels about the impact of technology or employment trends in an industry is also meaningless, what matters in the assessment are the objective data and their analysis.

As designers we tend not to come across models in economics but I have found these models to be essential in developing an informed opinion. I recommend the lessons of "The Innovator's Dilemma" (technology curves and disruptive technologies), "The Long Tail" & "The Economics of Free" (how the internet makes internet based services and products essentially free), "The Black Swan" (scaleability & known unknowns, known knowns etc) and "Predictably Irrational" (how conflating business norms and social norms destroys margin by eroding the added value of design) all books that apply to technology shift (seeing what's coming) and aid understanding of where the combination of technology innovation and the ubiquity of the internet is leading us.

After the books there are essential models: Ansoff; environmental scanning (industry data), the 3 competitive modes (monopoly, oligopoly and perfect) and Porter; generic strategies and five forces (the big ones). Apply these using the information from the books and other data such as industry statistics and the subjective opinion disappears.

About 60% of all graphic design firms are less than 5 years old that's a hell of a turnover, I remember reading the success rate of a start up is about 1/100. I've met and consulted more than 1,000 small firms, many of them design and marketing based, all but those at the very top of the pyramid are scared of how the future is destroying their margins and those at the top just let people go as they need to.

Industry summary; new entrants every year from colleges and universities + newly redundant + internet based international competition + templates + technology efficiencies + client budget cuts = imbalance between supply and demand where supply outstrips demand and the bargaining power of the buyer increases leading to ... you can figure this out yourselves.

I'm not doomsaying for the hell of it, I wish it were otherwise but it seems inevitable.

A good example from the world of software development, thanks to the internet as a service channel what took £2m+ to code and deliver in 2000 takes about £50K in 2010. I've seen it done.
 
I'm not doomsaying for the hell of it, I wish it were otherwise but it seems inevitable.

It depends on what way you look at it. You say that you have read that there is a success rate of 1/100 for startups. My view on this is work your arse off, put in the time and effort, show what you can do and make sure that you are that 1 in the 100. The alternative is sit there and tell yourself that it's inevitable you'll be in the 99 and you won't be trading in the near future.

I really don't know why we are all bothering if this is the case. Why am I and everyone else on here pursuing a career that really does not stand a chance? Might as well just throw in the towel now and be done with it. It IS doomsaying because it is labelling everyone the same. I'd be the first to admit that it is FAR from easy at the moment, there is no point in trying to say otherwise, but by the same token I'm not going to lay down and say 'might as well give up then'.

Everytime I speak to a designer I ask the same question, 'how are you finding it at the moment?' Everytime, they answer it's always the same 'Not great. Works not really happening at the moment'. Their attitude is defeatist. They never say 'it's tough BUT we are doing this to counteract it....'. I'm sorry but if thats how everyone wants to play it then that's fine. I just feel that instead of accepting defeat we should try to turn the tables and find a way around the problem, because as we all know there are always ways around problems. Thats our job.
 
Is it just me or is there a sense in which an awful lot of designers view themselves as a bit ... I don't know ... special? On the whole, I maintain the view that it's a job more or less like any other and that, as such, you need to either excel at the commonplace or carve out a niche for which there's a sustainable demand.

I don't operate at the cutting-edge of design by any means; a large part of my more profitable workload lies in the perhaps less exciting area of the corporate world where I'm able to stand out by applying higher level design values to commomplace products (and yes - that does mean MS Office a lot of the time which I expect means that some people will stop reading at this point on the grounds that I've just lost all credibility as a bona fide designer). At the core of all this is the fact that I'm essentially a business first and foremost and that, for me, has to be the key driver (a central consideration being that the people I work with on this kind of project don't bat an eyelid at paying proper consultancy rates for any given task).

In short, get a grant from the Arts Council or get off your trip.
 
Is it just me or is there a sense in which an awful lot of designers view themselves as a bit ... I don't know ... special? On the whole, I maintain the view that it's a job more or less like any other and that, as such, you need to either excel at the commonplace or carve out a niche for which there's a sustainable demand.

lol Well that was obviously aimed at me. I see myself as 'special' because I don't want to end up on the scrapheap as someone who's tried and failed? Maybe I just don't want to be down on this career like everyone else does. That doesn't make me 'special', it's called motivation. In fact I see that as an insulting comment. Without knowing my circumstances you cannot make a judgement on why I want to be good at what I do.

It might be a job like any other job but it's MY job so I really don't care about teachers, bankers, secretaries or anything else because they aren't going to pay my bills. Your view seems to be lets earn money and toddle along. My view is lets earn lots of money and strive to be the best we can be. Does that get your gripe? Sounds like it does.

I don't see myself as 'special'. I FOLLOW people that are special. I admire them and what they have achieved in their chosen field. I believe that if you follow people like that and put the work in then maybe, if you're lucky, you might achieve the same status. Or we could all just say that design is dead on its legs and just plod along...ho hum...
 
Actually, I think your post went up while I was composing mine. Still ...

If your business is making you lots of money because you're the best at what you do (and love doing), then great: I'm jealous, if anything. However, I'm talking about a situation in which people are unhappy that they're not earning what they feel to be their worth when the reason for the shortfall is that people aren't prepared (for any of a number of possible reasons) to buy what they're offering at the prices they charge.

If you (that's a general you - not a you you) love doing it but people aren't buying it then what you've got there is essentially a hobby (or a failing business at any rate) - and yes: for the record, in straightened times, I'm more than happy to be making a decent, independent living on the back of whatever skills I have.
 
Actually, I think your post went up while I was composing mine. Still ...

If your business is making you lots of money because you're the best at what you do (and love doing), then great: I'm jealous, if anything. However, I'm talking about a situation in which people are unhappy that they're not earning what they feel to be their worth when the reason for the shortfall is that people aren't prepared (for any of a number of possible reasons) to buy what they're offering at the prices they charge.

lol Ok, I apologise for that. My fault, crossed wires.

The comment you made above I certainly agree with. There are some people on here (mentioning no names) that clearly believe they are graphic designers and they clearly aren't.

As I mentioned before, I'm all for giving encouragement and lets be honest, we never stop learning. Design like you said is an ever moving industry and we all have to keep up with it and for that reason no-one can ever be the perfect designer. However, there are some people putting work on here that will clearly never be a designer, and one of them asked the question the other day why they are not getting any responses to the work they are putting out. To put a bluntly, they shouldn't be asking fees for work of that quality at all.
 
it's very easy to get despondant

I have found it very hard to accept that it's not easy earning the money I used to ear, I'm convinced that it's out there somewhere and that's what keeps me going, because basically I still love design.

In the mid eighties I was earning £35 an hour freelancing in London, £17 an hour as a part time lecturer and reasonable fees from my own clients and now I struggle from job to job - but whatever I do, I refuse to produce crap, whatever the client asks for. I was producing a booklet for someone a while back and he asked forthe type to be justified. I told him the only way he'd have it justified was that if someone else did it. I explained about rivers and horrible spacing in general. legible line lengths etc. etc. i suggested that he looked at quality magazines and brochures for style and he came back to me and said he could see my point and to carry on as I had been.

Times are tough and at 58 I realise I'm pretty much unemployable, I've applied (and still do) for hundreds of jobs and very really even get a reply, but if I didn't keep at it, I end up topping myself.

If you really hate it do anything else because life is too short - but if you don't, just keep plugging away - something will turn up.
 
Let's assume for a moment that this particular client looked into justified text, as you'd suggested, but then, as they often do, decided that they wanted to go with their choice anyway (I'm not a fan either but it has its place and can usually be made to look okay if it's managed correctly). Are you then saying that you'd have turned the work away? And then bemoaned the lack of work out there?
 
Turning work away

I'd already told him that if he wanted justified text I'd charge him for the work to that point, send him the files so he could take it to a designer of his choice and to make sure that there was no reference to me anywhere on the job.

I built a reputation for good quality work and wouldn't want my name connected with something that I didn't like. Work may be scarce but I have standards that I'll not sink below. Let's face it, there are plenty of people out there who don't care and will produce poor quality work because they know no better.
 
To get back to Designersaur's original question, to what other career might a graphic designer of more than 20 years practice switch?

To begin, what else are we qualified to do? How far do our less than academically rigorous Degrees go? Or am I being once again unkind and does someone believe that their design qualifications equip them beyond graphic design?
 
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