Why You Should Consider a Creative Career

Long gone are the days where people mock the choice to delve into a creative career, where once there were jokes about starving artists, now there are masses of people trying to land a significant career in the creative job pool.

When the world started heading to a more digital method of working and designing, and freelancing started to become the new ‘norm’, it was a free-for-all for those who can combine their strengths and technology.

Creative thinking is a highly valuable and incredibly practical in almost every industry now, so if you know you have a creative flair and just aren’t sure why you should be thinking about a career in a creative industry, then you’re in the right place.

Firstly, and most importantly, it is vital to bust the myth that creatives don’t make money. The design industry is utterly booming, there is plenty of work to go around, from the big corporate business to the freelancer working for local companies branding. Putting together a portfolio early on of work will help give you a bit of boost into the arena. If you aren’t sure how to build out a portfolio without going through formal training, then start by working on some person projects and then applying for freelance positions on websites like Upwork, Freelancer and People Per Hour.

You’ll be building incredible transferable skills. Once you master how some design software works, you might find that you can move seamlessly between creating the designs for a shop fitout to working on the next must-have bag. You’re not going to be pinned to just on ‘type’ of work, in fact, you can pick and choose from some of these:

• Illustrator
• Photo Editor
• Web Designer
• Graphic Designer
• Video Game Design
• Advertising & Marketing Designer

There is plenty of advancement opportunities. Starting off a freelancer perhaps, or fresh out of university into a junior role, all the way through to head of the department. With each level comes more responsibility and great new challenges but at the heart of the job will always be the creativity that you love.

Part of the utter joy of working in a creative field, is you get to watch your designs and ideas come to life. From logos to beautiful websites, the moments you spend colour correcting, editing and daydreaming what it might look like when it was done.

You will always be using the newest technology. Graphic tablets improve each and every year, the software moves on every few months and usually with a design-led focus. And, while the joy of a sketchbook and pencil, or a fresh set of watercolours might always be your first love and where it all started, tech can give you more capabilities than you thought possible.

You can work globally. The collaboration opportunities for design work are tremendous now, with so many freelance sites you can always find someone to help you tackle personal or work projects.