Sixth Form or a Job? Starting a career in design

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Thanks Berry, that's really helpful advice!

I'm hoping that I can get a temporary job at Apple in Birmingham as a Genius so I can be expanding on Mac knowledge, along with getting quite a bit of pay at the same time (that's if I don't get any job opportunities in design companies other than yours (thank you! :D).

I hope in ... err foresight (is there a thing...?!) that I do stick around, because patience isn't always my best quality.
 
Update: I'm onto my fourth project of the year now! Am starting doing print and design for a client applying for youth parliament :D
 
Hey,

well i've been to Uni and studied German...I wanted to be a translator ... and it cost me £17,500 which I still have hanging over my head. I regret doing it now although the social life was great, the actual qualification in the end didn't mean anything. I'm speaking mainly on the basis that an "Arts" course probably isn't that great-what's better is experience.I worked in germany for 18 months thereafter and my German since has been so much better than anything I learnt at Uni. I should have just gone to Germany to study or something! I changed my mind though about translating. I have Art and graphic design GCSE and loved doing it so decided to go back to college in the UK (cheaper) to learn more the computer side of things and what's involved with graphic design etc. but after I finish my National Diploma I want to get a placement/internship in a studio or something where I can really get hands on relevant experience and learn the real stuff. Although education and qualifications may look good, its a portfolio, contacts and experience on your CV that get you jobs.
up to you though!
 
bad luck on the whole German-uni-£17500 debt-thing!

i agree with the portfolio, and have been working hard on it recently- doing a few free jobs for people so that I can get people interested in me for their future jobs, so i can pass some time, and so as small firms can get somewhere without spending loads within five minutes of their company opening.

thanks for the post :D
 
na its ok. In a weird way I learnt a lot on the way about life, myself, the world etc.I got mature and business like! lol.I found out what I wanted. I regret the money part coz its crippling me atm but its all a learning curve along a winding path. Without it I wouldn't have ended up here! ;-) Some of the German degree course material has actually helped me in my Graphic History units in the design course now! There's a lot of cool German designers out there you know! Its quite surreal when I'm looking at info and history for the second time round but in a completely different course!
 
Usually I'd advocate going to College/Sixth Form but in this case I agree with everyone else. It depends what your skills are like in design; if they are very very good then perhaps you should keep building up your work into a portfolio. Intern somewhere local or give out free services to those in need to get noticed. Enter design competitions too at 99designs.com.

If you are interested in other things though you could go to 6th Form whilst doing all the things said above. I'm in college right now and I'm going to university. I love design but I don't do it anymore and I wish I could start pursuing it again. Alas; I'm doing Psychology because I adore it and I want to be a therapist :)
 
Wow, busy schedule!

Thanks for the advice, will be sure to check out 99designs.com this evening! I've been attempting to acquire an internship for about a month, but haven't found a company that I'd be willing to work with or a company that wants to be helping me out. Sucks to be me.

Good luck with the therapy, sounds... confusing! :batman:
 
"And how do you feel about that?"

99Designs has great competitions and if you don't want to enter it is great practice anyways, my friend has won a few of up to £2000 prizes :)

Good luck! Check out Freelance Jobs for some freelance jobs just incase you dont find any internships but I am positive you will.
 
Thanks very much! Very helpful!

I'll get back to everyone about what's going on soon... have done about 14 million new pieces of work in the last week... knackered!
 
Have joined 99Designs - quite confident with one competition put forward by a company. no-one's applied yet and it's great money! love it!
 
oh, forgot to tell you guys, I recently handed in a half arsed application for sixth form, just so I have a fallback.

I'm not going anyway, it was just something that would make my mom and dad think I was being sensible about it all.

There was one web design course (aka applied ICT), but it looked crap, and only the lower achievers were picking it because it involved a computer. I was kinda disgusted by it TBH, because the teacher said "maybe we'll teach you something new? who knows" and the syllabus was "creating a navigational button" and things such as these.
 
I'm currently doing my pre-degree foundation at college after 2 years of sixth form. From my own experience, Sixth Form is a way to keep doors open. It gives you more options in case later down the line you change your mind.

If your thinking of going uni, then I highly recommend the foundation course. It allows you to explore other areas of art you might not have explored if you just stuck to graphic design.

Either way, whatever you decide to do, if your determined enough to be a designer, you'll be one, whether you chose to go down the education route or not.
 
Hmm, well I'm 18 and went to 6th Form (though rarely actually turned up). I worked freelance and at a design/print place, then at a web development company in parallel to 6th Form. I also managed to bag my A Levels.

That work experience got me my job (which I absolutely love) and I have A Levels to fall back on later. Get into the game sooner rather than later but I think 6th Form might be an idea because GCSEs aren't a lot to fall back on.

EDIT: D'oh, rookie mistake, this thread's ancient. Still all true though ^^
 
Doesn't matter that the thread's ancient, good that every has their own experiences to help me out or for me to know what the expect. :D
 
I find that GCSE ICT and probably A-Level ICT suck. In GCSE it's just spreadsheets and we didn't have time to do web-design like they promised me.

Not sure what A-Level ICT is like; but if it's "create a nav button" then it's definetly not for you.
 
Your 6th Form learning doesn't necessarily have to reflect career choice. Mine didn't. It's just a qualification to fall back on should you need to.
 
Oh right, didn't know that. I heard A levels are good to fall back on, but not if they waste two years of your life, and in that time, economy gets worse and companies are less willing to take people for their jobs.

And thannks Charlotteis - glad you agree that creating a navigation button/bar and 300x200px "advertising banner" (an animated gif with one word one each frame) isn't really what I need. lol
 
I went to 6th form, and art college ( before getting booted out, cause I had an 'attitude' -they were right tho!)
Didn't mean jack sh*t. lucky to still start at the bottom with a good mentor. Experience is still the best qualification.
 
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