Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

Dear jvansipe,

If you already have some creative talent you might want to volunteer your services to local non-profits and voluntary groups. This way you'll begin to build up a modest but useful portfolio of real work.

If you're new to the idea of design you'll need to present evidence to whoever's running the design course at your college that you know something about the basic concepts of layout, composition, and flow. This means you'll have to put together a portfolio of designs, sketches, and rough layouts.

These pieces of work don't have to be highly finished. The critical thing is that you offer evidence of your ability, thinking, and ideas. You've got to be able to show that you can solve visual problems in fresh, unique, and interesting ways.

If you want to become a creative (an art director, designer, or copywriter) you'll need to look at design courses or classes. But
it's important that you understand that wanting to be creative and being creative are two different things.

Your notion of what's creative and your creative director's notion of what's creative may be miles apart, and if they are, you may have problems. The thing to do is to look at marketing and design material you like and admire and to figure out why it works (and why it does not). This will help focus your attention on how to effectively solve visual problems.

Don't expect to start off being brilliant. Creative genius is a rare thing and to become good at something takes years—with greatness taking decades! The key is practice. Get into the habit of carrying a small note book or sketch book and make use of it. Jot down ideas for headlines, copy, and layouts and soon you'll have a notebook full of scribbles, some of which might be useful. When you've filled one book, start another and keep at it.

The more you exercise like this the fitter—creatively speaking—you'll become. I hope this helps.

Good luck to you.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

I understand your question completely as I found myself in the same position less than 2 years ago. Let me tell you my story and maybe it will help. I graduated from college in May 2008 with a Bachelor's Degree in Advertising and a minor in Marketing. Like you, I had a high interest in the creative side of advertising and graphic design. Unfortunately, the advertising and marketing programs at my school were strictly strategic and I was in my last semester of college so it was too late for me to switch my major or minor unless I wanted to continue school. So I started doing a lot of things for my family and friends. Using my creativity I threw parties, designed invitations, wrote fun stories to email to people I knew, researched creative marketing and guerrilla marketing and of course just sat on my computer and just played around with different design programs to get my creativity flowing. I even just went on youtube and started looking for fun commercials and creative campaigns done by national companies...I found this extremely motivating. After this I felt well equipped to at least try my hand in an internship. I did an unpaid internship in graphic design. It was the perfect experience and my coworkers were very understanding that I was there to learn. The one suggestion I would have when looking for jobs or internship to gain experience is to look at smaller businesses that do their own in house marketing and graphics. I wouldn't suggest you look at the big advertising agency and the big city nearest to you when you are just looking to learn and gain experience. Now that I have completed my internship, I am working full time at marketing and graphic design and I love it. It was definitely worth the months of the unpaid internship. Financially it was hard, but was totally worth it. I am doing so many things at work now that I didn't learn in school and believe me it can be done!!