My official title is `Creative Director´ but in real terms I am a designer. I currently run Squashed Pixel Ltd, a Website and Online Marketing agency based in Bradford, with my business partner Paul Campbell. Squashed Pixel has been running as an agency for 2 years although the name Squashed Pixel has been around for nearly 10 years, originally serving as the name for my online portfolio.
The route I took to become a designer wasn´t the usual journey by today´s standards. For as long as I can remember I always knew I wanted to be an artist/designer so at the age of 16 I didn´t take the usual A Levels and instead left school to go to Art College where I spent 2 years doing a BTEC ND in Graphic Design and OCNW in Photography.
From Art College, instead of university, I got a job as a junior designer in a small design team within a larger local company. The first year or so of any junior role mainly involves making tea for everyone in the office and watching everyone else do the `real´ work but it´s also the time where you´ve got to fight to prove your worth.
In the background of the day to day work and more often than not in my own time, I worked hard to develop and hone my skills and fought hard for any smaller projects that came up within the team.
Middleweight Designer
After a couple of years of hard work to prove myself I gradually moved up the ranks and eventually reached the title `Middleweight Designer´.
After reaching this level I then left the company (on great terms) and went on to work for various other design agencies, across a wide range of industries over a period of 4/5 years. I then felt I had the knowledge, experience and ability to set up on my own, at which point Squashed Pixel as an agency became a reality.
Qualifications, or experience?
I often get asked what qualifications you need to become a designer and what software you `have to´ know how to use. It´s not a question with a straightforward answer. Unlike a lot of other industries, rather than being qualification focussed, designers are judged on their portfolio, their experience and their reputation.
That´s not to say that gaining qualifications in the field aren´t an important or needed it´s just that when choosing between 2 designers, the one with a better portfolio will ultimately win out.
To be a good/successful designer you above anything else need a genuine passion and love for what you do. We all love to complain about our jobs (its very British) but I´ve yet to meet a good designer that genuinely doesn´t enjoy their job.
You have to be prepared to continually work long and hard. Web design in particular changes in both trends and technology on an almost monthly basis, so to be at the top of your game you have to be constantly researching and learning new skills, something that is incredibly hard to commit to without that genuine passion and interest in what you do.
You have to be prepared to be criticized (a lot), design is an intensely personal thing and it means very different things to different people, it doesn´t matter how good or perfect you think a design is, your clients won´t always see eye to eye and you need to understand why and be prepared to re-work and re-design elements where necessary.
Fun, glamour, sometimes
Design is seen as a fun, glamorous profession, and admittedly for the most part it is but be prepared to take the rough with the smooth. The actual design stage of project only accounts for somewhere between 20%-40% of the job, don´t underestimate the amount of time you will need to spend in meetings, carrying out research, developing concepts, presenting, actually producing the work and sitting in meetings (meetings do deserve to be in there twice).
You also have to be prepared to put in the time and effort. I don´t work as many hours now as I did when I was a junior designer but even today my average working week ranges from 45-60 hours a week,(even more so when deadlines start looming) but it´s not something you begrudge, when you love what you do it becomes more about the product than the time taken to produce it (although your spouse may not always agree)
Most designers I know are inherent people pleasers (which is also why you should never let a designer quote a price on anything) and the resulting client reaction when shown the final product is for most of them why they love doing what they do, whether it´s an illustration or a website, it makes all the difference.
Make a name for yourself
When starting out on the road to becoming a successful designer , get your name out there and forge a reputation for yourself. The key part of this is creating a portfolio.
For illustrators, print and graphic designers you can use online portfolio systems to display your work but if you´re looking to be a web designer than it absolutely has to be your own website portfolio that you´ve designed and made yourself.
Once you have your portfolio, getting your name out there is now easier than it ever has been before. My last job was found through LinkedIn where as my first job came of the back of an exhibition where I was displaying some work.
There are a multitude of platforms out there (linkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Behance are just a few) to start talking and engaging with your peers and potential employers/clients. The majority of them are available for free and only require you to dedicate some of your own time to using them, and they all can be used to drive people through to your portfolio.
When all is said and done, being a designer is for me a very rewarding profession and one I´m incredibly proud of. If you´re looking to become a designer my tips would be:
1. Make sure you have a definite passion for design
2. Be prepared for the amount of time you will need to dedicate
3. Be prepared to work in a lot of junior roles and to do the donkey work required to prove your worth
4. Make sure your happy talking face to face with clients
5. Be prepared to do the occasional presentation in front of small groups
6. Be prepared to acknowledge and appreciate criticism
7. Understand that your learning and development will be continual (and often frustrating)
8. Understand that you will inevitably become and bit of a geek and that in all likelihood, after a few years as a designer you´ll never look at a font the same way again.
A Career as A Designer
