How I got my first design job

I've been contacted quite a lot recently by third-year students of graphic design. They know the industry is a difficult one to penetrate and want advice about the best way of securing a job. I can only describe the path that I followed, and perhaps give a few pointers as to what potential employers might be looking for.

This will be a bit of a story - summarised points at the end for those of you with attention deficit disorder.

It seems I spent about a third of my childhood drawing and painting. I was naturally good at it. I was also naturally good at science and maths, and had an early obsession with colour relationships and the way things fit together. I think most graphic designers have this holy trinity of curiousity, geekery and anal retentiveness. At the age of 10 my teacher would take me out of maths lessons and get me to help design posters for him on the awesome Commodore Amiga the school had just purchased (yep, I'm that old).

After my A levels, I completed a year's Art Foundation at the Glamorgan Centre for Art and Design Technology, where students explore all manner of creative avenues. It was here I first encountered Adobe Photoshop, and glimpsed its awesome potential. After the foundation year I didn't really have a clue what to do, and so sulked off to Australia for a few months. It was there that my uncle put the idea of writing for a living into my head, so I came home, enrolled on a Journalism degree at Falmouth College of Arts, and promptly set about discovering how media interact with their audiences.

This is a pretty important point. People are often surprised when I tell them that my degree is in journalism - it makes no difference, and I would argue that a good journalism course might actually be better preparation than some of the insipid design degrees I've heard about. It's vital to understand how a company, individual, political party, newspaper, whatever, presents itself to an audience; how a visual message is subconsciously communicated. Understanding these theories and practise in working with them is paramount. You can make the prettiest page layout in the world but if it appears irrelevant to your target audience then you, sir/madam, are a piss-poor designer. I'd have a basic read of Louis Althusser and his State Apparatus stuff if you like a bit of theory here. You may not like the way the Daily Mail looks, or Woman's Own, or Nuts magazine for that matter - but there are cast iron reasons why they look that way.

This, I feel, is one of the areas where many design courses seem to fall down. Portfolios I've seen have the students designing to their own audience. They're all surfy and urban and such like. I'd like to see a bit more work practising design for, say, mid-market hotels, cattle-feed merchants, old people's homes.

And here is where reality bites - because,  unless you are actually David Carson and luck out with full artistic control of a surf mag, in your first agency job you will be working for clients who are, let's put it this way, unglamorous. Helmet manufacturers. Chemical suppliers. Local councils.

So anyway, I've skipped a bit and rambled and ranted, as is my wont. Towards the end of my degree (in which I'd done more Photoshop, got good at it, learned Quark and surprised the tutor with my layout ideas) I bought the Media Guardian every week and slavishly applied for every single job I could find that was vaguely related to journalism and wasn't in London. I got one reply, from a small agency in Cambridge, and won the job of 'communications assistant'. I did a bit of PR-writing stuff, a bit more Photoshop, a bit more Quark. My boss took me to printers so I could learn how the reprographic process works (this is something else design students NEED TO KNOW and about which they are usually clueless) and how to design in the most cost-effective manner. Our clients gave us more and more design work, and I gradually got better at it. I learned how to deal with clients (years of shitty jobs in the customer service industry helped, too - if you want to learn to pacify an irate, possibly dangerous boor then for heaven's sake, be a barmaid for a while); how to pitch, how to justify design decisions. My boss gave me business cards with 'graphic designer' typed on them (oh that sweet sweet moment!). We took on a talented junior whom I supervised (sort of). And then, after three years, my then partner got a job in Gloucester, so we moved to Cheltenham and I went freelance.

That's it. It's as random and convoluted as that. Here's the advice I'd pass on from my journey:

• Sorry to piss on your bonfire, but pretty much forget your degree. It's a beginning not an ending. They don't teach you much of any real use: that's what life is for. A bit of humility about it goes a long way. Confidence is, as they say, a preference, but a willingness to learn is most impressive.
• Brush up on your spelling, punctuation and grammar. "Oh, but I'm a Creative. That stuff doesn't matter!" Yes, it does. People will at best think you slap-dash and at worst think you stupid. Read this. (I am aware that every little error I've made in this post will now be flagged up).
• Learn how the reprographic process works, and why for the most part, you can't have three Pantone colours, gold foiling and dye-cut holes in every project you do. (Clue - it's bastard expensive).
• Learn how digital printing works, and how to design for its limitations.
• Try to get work experience in a large agency if you can afford the time (don't ask me - I work out of my spare room). Be as helpful as possible.
• Pay attention to all forms of media, even the lowliest. You will work on some lowly stuff at first - get used to the idea. For the most part, this really isn't a cool job. For the most part, you will be altering phone numbers on business cards.
• Learn that your job is to keep the client happy. They are paying you. Do not take anything personally. If they don't like what you've done, get back to the drawing board and quit your whinging. Having an artistic temperament will do you no favours whatsoever.
• Work on personal projects. Buy yourself a domain name, get yourself a Wordpress site and get yourself known on Twitter and such. Be careful what you publish - it's there forever (note to self: quit the political ranting).
• Offer to do pro-bono work for local causes to build up your portfolio. However, just because they're getting you for free it doesn't mean you get to impose a design on them. It's always a negotiation - no matter what your fee.
• Put your heart into your work, even the smallest jobs. Every little bit of work has a lesson for you. Learn it.
• Be nice to people. Get them to like you. And don't take yourself too seriously.

I'll add more as I think of them, but this'll do for now.