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My Story: Journey to a Freelance Web and Graphic Designer
Since a young age, I’ve had a strong desire to be creative. From painting, playing with Lego, cooking, and creating play dough to being yelled off for drawing eyes in the term “look” on my first day of kindergarten, imaginative games were always a lot of fun for me.
Although I might not have realised it on a conscious level when I was younger, playing in order to put something fresh and special into the universe still gave me a lot of pleasure. I entered Blue Sky Graphics because I believed they would assist me in achieving my goal of being a graphic designer, and I was right!
Design, Art, and a Creative Education
My passion of innovation progressed into high school, where I excelled in Art and Fashion Technology classes and started to focus my artistic interests on more decorative arts like drawing, painting, and design.
At this stage, I began to have the inkling that I’d like to do “something artistic” for a living. Although it remained unknown what it was and how this imagination transferred into the field of work. I also realised I wanted to keep doing creative things.
It wasn’t until later that I realised there was a lot more to it, but it was enough to pique my curiosity.
Through the ‘Real World’
I graduated from university with a portfolio full of children’s illustrations after a lot of effort and enjoyable living away from home due to my passions and the path I decided to go through my degree course at the time.
However, I’d learned over time that almost all illustration work was undertaken on a freelance basis, something a new, inexperienced, risk-averse graduate with little experience like myself at the time was not completely happy with.
I decided to gain work experience, so I started applying for as many full-time Illustration positions as I could find. They were, though, few and far between, and my attempts to apply for Graphic Design work were futile due to my lack of a portfolio at the time.
So, in order to pay my way through life and keep my parents comfortable, I took on an administrative position and started to utilise whatever free time I could find to sharpen my tech and design skills. Graphic Design seemed to be a far more economically competitive area, as well as one in which I might gain valuable real-world experience. Determined to make the most of my degree, I set about putting together a concept portfolio.
It was difficult to do with a full-time position, so I asked to work part-time. They initially disagreed, so I sought another lower-paying position and told them that I was leaving. My perseverance paid off, when they later reversed their minds and decided to let me work part-time.
Work Switching
After much thinking and self-reflection, I determined there were four wide fields I seemed to be good at or involved in that I’d like to concentrate on or blend if necessary in my new career:
Craft, art, and imagination
Hands-on, practical exercises
Solving problems
Helping and looking after people
After far further studying, I came up with a range of professions that I thought would suit the bill, including Art Therapy, Personal Training, Artist, Illustrator, and a slew of others. Still, despite much deliberation, three came out for me:
Architecture of the Landscape
Occupational Therapy is a term used to describe the practise of
Primary Education
But I set up job experience for all three of them to have a sense of what it’s like to work in these fields.
Landscape Architecture sounded amazing and was the closest match to my background. It seemed to have a fantastic career direction and outstanding opportunities, as well as the ability to complete a transfer course and be retrained within two years. If I was going to choose an artistic profession, I needed one with a lot of imagination.
After speaking with a few people, it became clear that project management and resource procurement would be a big part of the work. Not wasting my days painting, planning, and having my hands dirty making stuff like I had hoped.
Finally, I pursued teaching or, more accurately, serving as a teaching assistant. I just tried it for a few days at first, but I still enjoyed it. It was really different from what I had been doing previously, and I discovered that I really enjoyed assisting and being among the girls.
After a lot of exposure at a variety of various schools and a lot of thinking, I concluded that teaching and interacting directly with children was what I was most interested in and wanted to try.
Despite the fact that it was entirely different from what I had always done, I was able to retrain in one year and discovered that it was even feasible to do so for an Art specialism!
It sounded great: a respectable and dependable profession with a clear path to advancement. In addition, I get to support people while still doing something I love. My personal experience at the time led me to feel that it was time to lay certain creative dreams and aspirations to rest and follow the more secure and sensible direction that most people in life compel you to pursue.
So, after a year of hard work divided between voluntary experience and paying agency work, I was eventually admitted into the Art specialism PGCE course at Exeter, one of the leading universities for teacher training.
I had a great time returning to university. It’s a lot of fun to spend the days studying and socialising with others who share your interests. At least, not for me.
The only thing was that when it came to beginning the actual teaching placements, I didn’t have quite as much pleasure.
I was so busy and stressing out from the constant lesson planning, report writing, assessment, performing, bureaucracy, and repetitive box ticking that any pleasure I had previously derived from being around children was mostly lost.
Despite early indications that I wasn’t loving things, I persisted. I wanted to give it my all, particularly given how much time and effort I’d put in just to be admitted into the course in the first place. Aside from that, I’d never leave everything in my life; I’d always seen it though.
