Any Graphic or Jewelry Designers on the SDMB?

If so, do you do either as a hobby, or as a business?

I would love to have my own business doing both, but:

  • Graphic Designers are a dime a dozen nowadays, and the market is just saturated
  • As far as I can tell, no jeweler wants someone else designing their pieces for them.

Share your stories. I’m listening. :cool:

I did contract computer graphic work for nearly 18 years before my health made me unable to meet deadlines. It was nice while it lasted. Interesting work, fairly good pay most of the time. The majority of my work was for cable television providers. For a while I was designing weather maps and icons of little suns, rainclouds, etc., which wasn’t all that interesting, but was very lucrative.

I have also made and sold quite a lot of jewelry, but it’s of the inexpensive variety. Beaded earrings, twisted copper wire necklaces, and such. I’ve never gotten into precious metals.

I miss my arts & crafts days. :frowning:

Part-time graphic designer, for 5-6 years. My partner and I do web sites, identity systems (logos, stationery, etc.), print projects, and other stuff (signs for parks, etc.). But I was a full-time writer for years, and started off in science writing, so we are currently trying to focus on infographics and marketing–specifically, explaining difficult processes/etc. and hard-to-encapsulate company purposes quickly and easily using graphics and text.

We are refocusing partly because (a) it’s what we’re best at (information design), versus pure artsy/graphic capability, or typography, or cutting-edge web programming (b) we’re looking for a higher caliber of client, and the kind of client we’ve found doing this sort of work values our services more than anyone else we’ve encountered–i.e., they’re smart, want to improve their businesses (a real rarity), can teach US some things, and, most importantly, are willing to pay more for our services © we resolved that, seeing how the whole world is going, we should only seek out business that CANNOT be outsourced to India (so, if someone ASKS us to do a corp. logo, we will, but it’s ultimately going to be a losing battle to market that sort of service, which has largely become a commodity).

My advice: sell your brain. Graphic design is a hard sell, because everyone thinks THEY can do graphic design (I’m talking about business owners here), so no one values it. But if you can figure out a way to sell your experience and reasoning skills (i.e., as a “consultant”), you may be able to beat the overseas outsourced companies and the people who are happy designing their business cards and logos in Microsoft Word.

I did some graphic design as an undergrad for the student newspaper and promo stuff for clubs I was in, but never anything I got paid for.

I’ve designed and made beaded jewelry for about eight years now. I do off-loom bead weaving and mostly make amulet bag necklaces, although I sometimes make other styles of necklaces, bracelets, and earrings. I’ve always thought about selling my work, and even once asked for some advice here on the subject, but I think I just lack the business personality. I’ve done a few commissions for friends who wanted special pieces for themselves or to give as gifts, but that’s it.

However, I recently joined the local beading society and through them currently have a couple of pieces in a small show. We’re going to have a booth at an upcoming jewelry expo too, so I may make my first real sale sometime soon.

Coincidences abound! I’m a graphic designer, have been for about fifteen years now, and my sister is a jewellery designer.

I’ve done freelance work on and off over the years, but found much more security by working for someone else (ie, able to raise a family type security). That way you’re not always chasing the next job, and you have some level of flexibility with your spare, non-project, work-time (although, I’m sure the permanent free-lancers will tell you they value the ability to work when they want, where they want and on what they want, but it’s a case of different strokes for different folks. I prefer working for someone else, letting them handle the business management, keping that stress away from me. Certainly, there’s still stress, but it’s a different kind of stress).

As others have also pointed out, there’s lots of different types of graphic designer. I’ve worked in television (a little) and entertainment design (laser spectaculars) but mostly I’ve worked in e-learning. All of these jobs require specialist skills, and are very different disciplines. I have friends who work in newpaper art departments, video game companies, art print houses, teaching and Video FX houses, and this is a small chip off the proverbial iceberg. For more diversity you can look at how graphic designers work in print versus multimedia (all of which can be applied to the bulk of the jobs I’ve just listed. The catch-all phrase ‘graphic designer’ isn’t as simple a job description as you might think.

Toadspittle is indeed correct, selling your brain is the way to go. Simply because your skills can and will be found more cheaply either locally, or overseas. I’ve found that the ability to speak to high-ranking corporate decision makers with conviction about design elements and media has helped me more than the ability to sit down and design a pedagogic agent for 18-35 year old clothing manufacturers. The company I work for HAS outsourced work to India, and we found the only way to stay competitive in the face of that was being able to guide the talents in the work. This means that art-direction skills and communication became as important as anything else I’d done.

Toadspittle is also correct in saying that EVERYONE thinks they can be a graphic designer. it’s that old saw, ‘I don’t know art, but I know what I like’. This means you really need to be able to sell yourself, as much as you sell your work.

As for Jewellery design, my sister has had to work LONG AND HARD to get where she is. She runs her own boutiquie jewellery creation studio in Sydney. She takes students and she does A LOT of exhibitions and competitions (wins a lot of them too!). And even with all of this she finds herself struggling, because a lot of people are willing to go to el-cheapo mall jewellers instead of looking for something unique, or custom designed. That said, she’s doing a LOT better now than she did in the early days, and a lot of that is because of her growing reputation for being punctual with delivery of commissions, and her staggeringly high quality work. These are two things that seem to be CRUCIAL in the world of jewellery design.

However, I’ll let others speak about that in more depth, simply because IANAJ. One thing to bear in mind, you need money in the bank to be a jeweller. Your start-up costs, and equipment costs will far-exceed the already sizeable equipment costs faced by a graphic designer.

I do both, sorta. I call them “profitable hobbies” rather than business, though.

I design and make jewelry - beaded, polymer clay, etc. No real metalwork beyond wire-wrapping, but it’s fun and it sells. I do most of my selling either at craft fairs or by commission. I also teach and write on the subject (teaching through craft stores, bead stores, or the park district; writing how-to articles for magazines) which is where MOST of the money is made, and I test craft products for manufacturers - and that’s how I get a lot of my supplies free/very cheap.

As for the graphic design stuff, I’d say I’m a talented amateur - I make business cards, flyers, newsletters, stationery, help out a LITTLE on website design (but not execution, since I’m retarded in HTML) and that sort of thing. Most of my business comes from word-of-mouth - I’m way cheaper than real professionals, so I get a lot of work from charitable organizations, schools, other home-based businesses.

As hobbies go, I’m making a load of money, but I couldn’t live on it with the amount of time and dedication I am currently applying to it.