Top Design career options for creative people

Do you like to flaunt a unique whacky style, does doodling give you a creative high? Do you enjoy working late nights on your computer with music on, discussing art and film with your friends over a cup of coffee and do you genuinely think you have it in you to earn a living out of a creative career? If the answer to these questions is a yes and you find yourself drifting towards this unique career, this article may offer you some insights into the world of Design and Art. 

While working in a creative field, like art and design, may seem like a cool, relaxed and easy career choice, where one normally expects to get a lot of creative freedom that follows innovation out-of-the-box solutions to design-related problems, in reality, this discipline demands more hard work, dedication, focus, and precision than any other stereotypical career choices. A lot of youngsters want to choose a creative field as they get swayed by this so called swag surrounding this discipline but before you choose this field you should consider the following points.

First, it is important to have the right mindset when studying design. This requires one to be open to challenges and the need to be well aware of what is that you have signed up for. But before we understand design, we need to have a basic understanding of art.

You might want to say that art is something that is created mainly for its aesthetic appeal while design is a skill that has a purpose to solve a problem.

The two areas may seem different but some practical skills are common for both artists and designers, which comprise of a mix of practical skills involving creative expression, observation, aesthetics and precision.

A student of design has to first learn to observe and document their ideas. So, it is important to lose any apprehension that one would have towards sketching and drawing, as universally designers use sketching and drawing as tools to visually document their ideas.  

Second, a keen perceptive eye for detail, an interest in color, form, and space, experimenting with the latest available technology to give shape to your ideas, should excite any design student who aspires to have a successful career in design.

The designer’s job isn’t to always invent something entirely new, but to communicate something for a purpose, with a purpose.

As a discipline, design can be understood as the practice involving visual communication and industrial design, enabled by the latest technology and evolving knowledge in the way we communicate and understand our micro and macro environment.

Design today can also be seen as a discipline that broadly encompasses visual communication, industrial design and even components of new media, interaction and experience design. Designers create experiences that should engage you, make you react and respond in a certain way, and end up offering solutions to solve problems.

Often, this off-beat career path of an artist or a designer does not take the so called conventional route. Most designers prefer to work as freelancers after getting trained in the industry, as freelance work allows one to be in charge of their own business, build their own brand, and eventually cultivate their own individual style, exhibiting, and ideally selling their work on their own terms. Quite often, students who study design end up doing more internships than students from any other streams to learn more hands-on industry-relevant skills. 

While most designers ideally prefer to work at their own pace and feel the need to have a lot of creative freedom and space, it is also true that they can't live in isolation for too long. They are expected to develop essential networking skills, a good sense of the industry and business, patience and diligence to deliver quality work, to survive and perform well, even with tight deadlines and haphazard schedules. A good majority of design-related jobs can also be done remotely in case a need arises and may not require the designer’s physical presence for getting the task done. All Design Professionals must create and maintain an online portfolio that can be showcased to a potential client or employer to fetch projects and also to stay relevant in the Industry. 

Multidisciplinary design is the way forward and as a designer one needs to have a broader understanding of various communication and industrial design-related fields as a whole. All design based jobs require a great deal of collaboration and ideally one needs to learn to work in tandem with people from diverse backgrounds such as technicians, craftsmen, artists, editors, sound engineers, coding specialists and programmers. 

Careers in art and design can also span many other specialised areas, ranging from painting, advertising, photography, architecture, fashion, accessory, animation, new media and filmmaking. Most design students major in subjects such as:

Some of these courses can be understood as micro specilisations within a core course following a more practice-based teaching approach instead of a very rigid theoretical framework. Feedback and self-reflection is encouraged in most design-based assessments which are meant to train the aspiring designer to justify, defend their creation, reflect upon constructive criticism and feedback to further refine their design-based solutions.

To survive and stay relevant in the design world, one needs to constantly reinvent and innovate within their chosen design discipline

and also have a working knowledge of other design disciplines as well. A designer's survival completely depends on an excellent skillset, proven records, strong references and solid Industry connections. Finally, success comes only with a passion for the work one does and even more so for someone like a designer who must first learn to empathise, prepare to be a life long learner and be ready to identify and solve problems for the betterment of the society at large. 

About the author:    

Noopur Tiwari is Associate Professor at Jagran School of Visual Arts and Design, Jagran Lakecity University - JLU.

Note: The views expressed in this article are solely author’s own and do not reflect/represent those of Shiksha