Do I have to go to college for Graphic Design in 2019?

Before I went down on the Graphic Design career path, l had a lot of questions. They all stemmed from wondering if you need to go to college or have a degree to start your Graphic Design career. I wondered if I’d be taken seriously as a designer who learned in her messy living room, or practiced in between entry-level jobs. Though I couldn’t afford going back to school, I’d daydream about a degree as a safety net.

So, is college necessary for a graphic design career in 2019? As a self-taught designer, it’s safe to say I have a bias towards DIY learning, but having gone to school for Fashion Design, I know there are also some strong benefits to attending school. Let’s talk through the pros and cons of both!

Nothing hooks a client or interviewer like a great pedigree. If you have an amazing portfolio, a degree from a good school –or any casually structured program, tbh– it places a bow on top of your design skills. I’m sure we’ve all had an “of course they’re fucking amazing, they went to SCAD/SVA/RISD” moment. We won’t go into the nature vs. nurture argument of education, but it’s safe to say schools are set up for intentional progression.

If you’re in graphic design or aspiring to become a designer, you know it’s hard to know what you don’t know. Colleges and design programs give you what most designers in the industry have a base level of knowledge about. From design thinking, design service thinking, and other styles of the design process, getting a design education gives you the right challenges at every level to expand your potential trajectory.

When I attended fashion school, a majority of my extracurricular opportunities, like volunteering for the CFDA Awards or visiting talks at Cotton Inc’s NYC HQ (they’re the ones responsible for “The Touch, The Feel of Cotton” commercials) were given to me because of my alignment with my school. My friends received internship opportunities to companies at large design companies, and I name dropped my school to land internships at Jac Langheim and Sex Trash, both small women-owned fashion brands, that dressed celebrities like Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, and Britney Spears. I know, I know, enough of my fashion past, but what I think you can gather here is that being in that school’s ecosystem opened me up to opportunities I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

What can a Graphic Design program get you? I don’t know first hand, but most colleges have placement programs for internships and jobs. If you join student government groups or leadership groups in the design program, you’ll be able to help decide who comes to speak (meaning you’ll be able to meet your design heroes!) or help mold the school’s program to integrate more of what you’d like to see. When you’re backed by a larger institution, you experience a lot more just by being around.

If you don’t lose your design preciousness (a.k.a. your thin skin) you will sabotage your career. Though those design programs exist, rarely will you get someone saying your design is outright bad. At college, you open your design work to your peers, who ask you important questions about your choices, and you’ll be able to see your work from a new perspective. Peer reviews desensitize you to criticism and get you comfortable with taking an objective look at your work. Learning the vocabulary to defend it. If you’re learning on your own, you have to build your own networks through groups and forums. Pick up terms and concepts from disparate books. A university/college education gives that to you with a stamp of approval.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time here, since I think a portfolio is what’s going to get you hired. That said, going to college for a graphic design degree gives hiring managers some idea of the structure that helped shape your design thinking. Not to mention that most colleges structure their projects to be portfolio building machines… if you’re in school, you’re most likely set.

School is *expensive,* time-consuming, and demanding on off hours. If you want to get a job on the side, with school it’s not always possible. Especially a demanding graphic design program.

When I went to fashion design school, I had a lot of mental health issues (being anxious avoidant and depressed leads you to skipping out on regular life some days). Honestly, I was really scared of getting bad class reviews or just seeming foolish, so I’d skip class or projects to protect my ego. Take it from me, it doesn’t matter that I went to “the second-best fashion design school.” I didn’t have the work to back my education up and I squandered opportunities because I wasn’t ready for the responsibility. If you can make school a top priority and are able and willing to go the extra mile, you’ll get the most out of the commitment.

Spoiler alert: YOU CAN HAVE A GREAT PORTFOLIO AND HAVE NO FORMAL EDUCATION.

Being self-taught (autodidactic) is a wild and sometimes dizzying ride, but when you’re finally on track, your accomplishments feel 10x more rewarding. When you progress, it might be because you picked up on a trail from a design podcast that led you to a whole new branch of design to learn about, or because you went down the rabbit hole of a term or problem you didn’t quite understand. Intuition and curiosity gave you that eureka moment, and coming to discoveries mean a lot more when they’re self-directed. Let’s go into the positives and negatives of learning on your own.

Self-learning is cheap. We’ve all used multiple emails as teens for an extended trial version of Adobe products (or worse yet, downloaded it from programs like Limewire). It’s not optimal, but if you have real life or internet friends you can pitch in with, you can get Photoshop for $21/month. Better yet? Try free alternatives like GIMP or Canva to cement some design principles.

You can push your education and specialties further by taking more intentional classes on Skillshare, Lynda, and Creative Live.

One of my favorite things, and the main reason I decided to skip getting a graphic design degree was the freedom. Creating an agile learning environment for my design education allowed me to move on from classes that didn’t serve me or the skills I was looking to build, instead of worrying about fulfilling graduation requirements. Schools force you to take core classes like English, Science, and Math, and if they don’t transfer from your previous college or AP classes, you have to take them again. In other classes, some teachers have a rigid design viewpoint, or just suck as teachers altogether.

Self-led freedom lets you focus on your niche, and hone in on the skills that will get you further. It’s how I learned advanced photo retouching skills, or HTML and CSS. It lets you view gaps in your market and lean into them to provide the highest value to your potential clients.

Cons already? I know, that’s a limited scope on the pros of being self-taught, but other things, like being able to make more money, but a lot of those don’t come until after you’ve passed the learning phase. Let’s talk about how being self-taught might not work for you.

Discipline

While discipline is important in school and DIY educations, it’s far more pivotal in the latter. Being self-taught means that no one is pushing you. There are no stakes but the ones you’ve assigned for yourself. Depending on where you’re at in life, dedication to learning graphic design might be simple. An hour of practice each day seems manageable, and not like a chore. If you place more importance on other endeavors rather than design, making a career transition might take a bit longer.

No credentials/ Heavier Weight on Portfolio

Because you don’t have an institution standing behind you with a sheet of nice paper, saying they cosign your skills, your portfolio has to do the talking. That’s a lot of pressure, but there are ways around that, too. I got my first design job because the owners saw my illustration work on Instagram, and asked me to do scope work to prove I had technical design ability. If you document your learning process, it’ll bring people along and tie them to your growth. Social media won’t do all the work for you, but sometimes creating an audience around you can also soften the need for the *ULTIMATE* portfolio.

Don’t let the fear of not seeming credible force you down a path that doesn’t align with your learning style and place in life. School opens a ton of doors, but as someone who became the design lead of a multi-million dollar beauty company from 0 design experience in 3 years, it’s not always needed. I learned the skills needed to make a stable living as an in-house designer, and if school isn’t your jam, you still can, too.

Did I forget any pros? Want to contribute anything I may not have pointed out? I’d love to hear from your journey, too! Comment below to continue this discussion and give aspiring designers more value. I’m new to blogging, and any suggestions from you are highly valued. Seriously, I’d just be a crazy woman writing alone in an empty room with Stranger Things in the background if it wasn’t for your viewership.

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