advice for self-taught graphic designers?

In My Humble Opinion
41

[quote=“SanVito, post:38, topic:548729”]

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?

:slight_smile: This “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?”
Came natural to me! And this: "how to design to appeal to 10 year olds or 80 year olds? "
You’re kidding right? Try common sense. These questions are no brainers - at least to me they are. Again, Graphic Design isn’t rocket science!
Wow.

42

My husband is a self-taught graphic designer. He’s mostly done freelance and contract work during his 20-year career. In his view, education in this field is nothing more than a shortcut - he sees guys propelled to his income bracket early in their careers when they’ve got an education. But steadily building a portfolio has served him well, as has making the right decisions when encountering forks in the road. He chose web design over print back before that was an obvious decision, and has recently focused on mobile sites because that too is the future. He’s done plenty of fun jobs where his creativity was highly valued, but as of late has been working for the Man, designing websites for a bank. Not as fun, but great pay and benefits.

I think it’s great that this field doesn’t require a degree. So many fields require one for no real reason except that everyone who has already gone into debt and jumped through the hoops would be too bitter to allow someone talented and trained on the job to get what they’ve got. It’s a huge bummer.