Well, if I can step in as someone who’s been doing broad-spectrum publications work for about 35 years, from business cards to nonfiction books to novels to websites to motion pictures and absolutely everything in between, and who doesn’t mind sharing advice with colleagues and hopefuls…
It’s not about the tools. I’ve known many a Photoshop, PageMaker or Final Cut wizard who had almost no creative ability.
It’s not about the tools. I’ve known many graphic designers, publication designers and web designers who could craft technically exquisite final works of absolutely no value to anyone.
It’s not about design for design’s sake. Ever.
It is about content and communication. If you can’t write or shape content, and the client can’t write or shape content, get someone in the loop who can. Otherwise it’s all jerking off with Photoshop or DreamWeaver. Graphic design etc. is the psychology of the arts department - you know, the degree you fall into because you’re too lazy and untalented for anything else.
ETA: I have worked with more self-taught creative specialists who impressed me than college-taught ones. The latter tend to go into it for the wrong reasons and bring none of the essential talents with them, so they end up being tool wizards, copycats and little else.
Quite simply, some people have the talent and others don’t.
Yes, you can learn the basics and probably do some decent (if not exactly inspired) work, but some people can just take a stick and draw better in the sand that others could with 10 years of school and the best techno toys on the planet.
Taking some courses would help - you learn some short cuts, some new tricks, some other ways to use tools that you were not aware of, some industry standard requirements, how to merge projects from one software program to another…the list goes on and on.
For instance - with just Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator - you could probably buy a new(er) textbook and simply go through the chapters on your own - skipping over what you know and trying out new stuff you didn’t know. This would at least get you up to speed with features you are unsure of, or perhaps don’t even know exist.
I had one student who had a really old computer, and the only design software he had owned was a really old version of Photoshop. He did absolutely amazing work that I was not even aware you could do in Photoshop - granted, he “invented” some of the techniques himself, and it could have been done easier and faster in other programs, but the resulting artwork was excellent.
You might want to check into a few night school classes at the local community college to give you some broader perspective and have someone show you what’s new, or what you have been doing incorrectly - but carry on! Sounds like you might have a knack for it - and as long as you are producing work people want and like and will pay for - go for it!
Another mostly self-taught designer, who had to <gulp> make the switch from the light box, T-square and rubber cement to computer design while on the job. And maintaining productivity. Keep files of things you like; if it’s advertising, read the periodicals and clip the samples you like-when you hit a blank page wall, go back thru your files. I sort by design elements, and type use and effects, etc. Technical questions-I can easily find tutorials on the web, or communities of designers willing to share. I take a few courses, mostly 1 day, with the computer on the desk to use and play around with, and an instructor to help-small classes, usually 10 or less people; not those bullshit classes where you sit at a table and look at projected images-useless to me. That type of class is expensive and a waste of your time.
And if it is advertising, don’t let your creative juices get in the way of selling the product. You may love the design, but it needs to sell. And IMHO, bosses and clients never get creativity for the sake of creativeness.
I’m a little younger than panache, but getting kind of over the hill design-wise. I started working in a print shop at age 16, hand setting lead type, but we had an offset department, too, so I did some paste-up. (I also did a LOT of hand-feeding and Chandler & Price press like this baby: http://excelsiorpress.org/Chandler_and_Price/10x15_Photo.jpg.
Then I majored in visual design/illustration in college and got a bachelor of fine arts degree.
I’ve I’ve been in or close to the profession ever since, working for newspapers, print shops, freelancing, and publishing my own magazine for nearly ten years. Graphic design is an important part of the job I’ve had for the last 17 years, though that’s not in my job title.
Advice? Nearly everything we learned in school and everything I learned in the trade was based on looking at examples of other people’s stuff. If you’re reading stuff like Designing With Type, that’ll be a big help, but mostly examine what’s gone on in the past and what’s going on now.
Artists don’t really need school, though guidance from/apprenticeship with professionals has always been helpful.
Take some courses if you can, but mostly learn to OBSERVE.
I sometimes teach graphic design. What I suggest is to go to the nearest university bookstore and look at their text books. Of course, this won’t help with some aspects of design, but it will help in technical aspects. You can even buy used editions online or in used bookstores for far less. For example, if the college is selling the 6th edition, look for the 5th. In a lot of cases, there isn’t much different. Follow the text book and “teach” yourself.
I’ve been a designer for 20 years now, and went to a 4-year design college and got a BFA in graphic design.
The short answer is “Yes, people who don’t have formal training can hold their own in the design industry.” I used to work for one. She was incredibly talented and had good taste and loved the field. And she was in the position to hire and fire designers who had more “formal education” than she ever had.
I suspect that part of panache45’s hostility, as inappropriate as it was, comes from the fact that graphic design is one of those fields that it seems like anyone who ever took an art class or has a copy of Photoshop feels like they can do. So on a level, you might imagine how one might feel — especially in high unemployment times — when some young whippersnapper pops up and says “Oh, hey, I can do that!” Add to that taste is subjective, and some people don’t even care about standards anymore.
But it sounds like you have a passion for it, and that’s good enough for me — I’m actually in the middle of rereading Binghurst’s book myself. Exposing yourself to the trends and work of your peers is crucially important. Read design blogs, keep a clip file of the work you like and deconstruct it so that you know the chemistry of the elements that make a piece work for you, so you can experiment with those graphic ingredients yourself (rather than merely swiping someone else’s work).
Most importantly, get your work critiqued by professionals in the field. Ask for blunt but constructive feedback. A seasoned pro should be able to deconstruct what works, what doesn’t and the reasons why. Average, everyday folk’s viewpoints are good for measure too, but can’t take the place of the seasoned pros.
goBuffalo, I run a design company, and am a designer of c.20 years standing.
Yes, you can ‘make a go of it’ in the design world without formal training, with caveats. You have done very well so far just getting hired. Many creative diectors, including myself, would disregard a designer’s resume without a degree, unless they had considerable experience and proven track record. You are on your way to achieving that record.
I think what is lacking from designers without a formal education is not how to use the software (that’s just a tool, like a pencil) and not how to make something look attractive, that’s the easy bit. It’s about critical and conceptual thinking – the finest design work demonstrates real understanding of your audience and your product and how to match the two together, and professional training helps enormously here.
However, the absolute best training in the biz is learning from your more experienced colleagues. The worst designers in the world are ones who work in isolation, quite often the designers who work ‘in-house’ for large companies and don’t have other designers, strategists, artworkers, digital developers and production managers around them who add a world of knowledge and perspective to your work.
If you are surrounded by good and experienced designers, make time to learn from them. Share your ideas, ask for their opinions, use your creative director as your mentor, hassle the digital guy or the print artworker for advice on production restrictions, absorb the planning document produced by the strategist to demonstrate understanding of the brief, talk your way into meetings just to listen to what the clients and the bosses have to say. Always think about the client, the brief, the product and the audience, never about what your designer mates think looks cool. You need to acquire understanding of business as much as design technique.
And then you are on your way to being a good designer.
I’d suspect that majority of graphic artists don’t have any formal training. My wife used to work as a graphic artist in the old days for a business that used to be call a newspaper. You may never have seen one of these things, but once upon a time a newspaper, which is sort of like a big unbound book (like an ebook except printed on paper) (paper, you know that stuff money is made out of), was published everyday. Yes, everyday they made up a brand new big unbound paper book, and each day people using exacto knives and wax would construct the newspaper. Those people were graphic artists, often untrained.
That’s what would be more commonly called these days a ‘paste-up artist’, long since replaced by artworkers working on computers. Not the same as a graphic designer. Kind of similar to the difference between a product designer and a draftsman.
It may be many things, but it’s not unknowledgeable. It’s based on 35 years of hiring, firing, supervising, working under and working with many individuals.
The essentially self-trained ones tended to impress me at a 10x rate to those who had BFAs or MFAs hanging on the wall. The latter tended to be like actor/waiters a bit too good to be doing this commercial work, because their real art or design career was somewhere ahead of them.
My experience, my opinion - am not saying it’s universal. But I sure found it common.
Perhaps we come from places with a different cultural attitude to graphic design. In London, graphic design is held in high esteem and attracts highly talented and motivated graduates. University places are hard fought for and even then many graduates never get a break in the industry – something like 70% of design graduates never get a job as a graphic designer and end up as project managers, artworkers and marketing people working client side. It is certainly not an ‘inbetween’ career. You’d never get a job here if you thought that.
Another self-taught designer here. What I’m wondering is what’s the best way to go about getting training in software I’m unfamiliar with? My background is almost strictly print, mostly magazine and screenprinting, but I want to start at least practicing with web design. What’s the current standard for web design software? And as for training, what do you all recommend? I’m fairly good at book learnin’, but I’d like to take some structured classes. Would I be better of with those 1-2 day seminar type things, or should I look for local semester-length college classes?
It’s hard to beat Lynda.com, but there are other sites out there that have excellent tutorials, sometimes hundreds of them.
I may be so old-fashioned I browse with a rock, but I believe it’s critical to understand code to become a successful web designer. Dreamweaver is pretty much the go-to, go-with tool, and you can get a long ways with it without ever looking at code, but learning basic coding from scratch before you get into visual design will serve you long and well.
Print is dying fast and graphic design jobs are rare and the competition is ferocious. Fortunately tablets are reintroducing design to the web.
Also, graphic design is incredibly fashion conscious. Keep up with the latest trends. If you can already use the tools, school will not help you much. What they teach you about design will be out of date in a year.
School is not about teaching you how to use software or follow fashion. It’s about teaching the fundamentals of design, typography, critical thinking. Styles may change, but you still to understand structure and communication. You need to understand what makes one font more legible on screen or in small print than another, or how to structure a grid to allow a certain reading speed, or study why certain styles, colours, fonts evoke certain eras or emotions. How do you know how to design to appeal to 10 year olds or 80 year olds? How can you make sure that a mechanic or a high flying businessman will connect in any way with your work?
If you think graphic design is about just about software and fashion, you are a seriously bad designer.
I understand where panache is coming from, being on the web side of things. I think he’s having a kneejerk reaction to self-taught ‘designers’ who have no idea what kerning or leading are outside of options in Photoshop. Or they have no idea the theory behind typography and why a certain amount of spacing between words increases readability.
We’re having a similar issue at work here. All of the designers come from print backgrounds and management is getting them to design for web and they have no idea how web design is different from print and what they should be doing, and they are getting defensive about it. I understand why they’re getting defensive about it, but you need to learn!
I would pick up a step-by-step book on a program you don’t understand, that approaches teaching from a project-based standpoint. You know, the ones where you work through a project from start to finish and the book introduces more and more concepts each chapter. Many classes are the same thing, you just have a human there if the textbook confuses you.
For print->web specifically, I highly recommend Smashing Magazine. It’s one of the web design/dev industry heavyweights and has a yearly ‘trends in web design’ feature. One of the things you will find overwhelming is just how fast the web moves and how quickly technologies become obsolete.
Edit: For specific software, I’d recommend Photoshop to start, but knowledge of making a web design in Photoshop, Fireworks and Illustrator will come in handy. Do you have a working knowledge of InDesign, being a print designer? Also, reading articles on responsive web design and grid based layouts is highly recommended.
Hun, don’t worry about the education not being “formal” some of us just have the natural talent and the common sense to figure it out on our own. All the classes do is slow you down and teach you irrelevant material that you will never use. Graphic Design is not rocket science but you do have to have talent and a sense of good design. There is NOTHING taught in college that you can’t teach yourself. There are far better designers with no education than some “educated” designers with 45 years experience. Just be sure not to announce you were self taught! People who’ve spent thousands of dollars to be formally trained can tend to be a little bitter and you don’t want to get stuck working with one.
I’m self taught. I’ve been a Graphic Designer for 13 years. My first job was full time for a Publishing Company in Direct Mail Advertising - 10 years and 2nd job (3 years now) is the same type of company, both full-time + I’ve done various freelance jobs. I was hired by “word of mouth” and my work was well liked. You’ll be fine.
