![]() When you work for clients, though, you have so many artistic and non-artistic boxes to tick: satisfy stakeholders, stay within budget, communicate to viewers, respect brand guidelines … projects can quickly become muddied. It’s easy to do great work when you have only yourself to satisfy. As an artist, however, the possibilities and process can be endless.Īs a graphic designer, doing beautiful work against all odds. When you do a math problem, you know when it’s finished-you’ve arrived at a solution, and it’s either right or wrong. And be professional.Īs an artist in general, there are no right answers. If you want to make your passion a career, specialize. My advice to those drawn to the arts: talent and interest are a starting point, not a destination. This is very true for me, as I interface directly with my clients. It also means maintaining a stable temperament-no Van Gogh shenanigans! A working artist has to perform well in both the studio and the boardroom. In terms of output, that means refining your creative process so that it reliably yields quality-true even for artists in “non-commercial” fields like painting. Pretty much every artistic field somehow intersects with the business world, so successful artists also exhibit professionalism. Specializing in graphic design turned my youthful artistic meanderings into a skill set with real-world applications. So, one of the keys to becoming a paid, professional artist? I’d have to say it’s specialization. Those specialties reflect career paths available to today’s artists, and each demands unique skills that take time and discipline to master-none are dilettante-friendly. To me, “art” is no longer even a description of a viable profession-it’s just an umbrella term unifying wildly diverse areas of creative specialty. And artists? They’re unemployable, tortured eccentrics active only when the beret is on and inspiration strikes. ![]() Ha! Yeah, the way art is popularly understood is antiquated: painting and sketching. I learned to be adaptable, and every experience built my confidence. In that first job at a tiny agency, I wore many hats and frequently had to learn new skills on the fly (I once learned basic video editing in an afternoon). That, by the way, ultimately led to a job managing and growing a travel/tourism brand in San Francisco! I wrote and presented pitches for six-figure accounts-and our agency won them! I worked with clients in a wide range of sectors-nonprofit, higher ed, travel/tourism, etc.-resulting in a varied enough portfolio that I wasn’t pigeonholed into any industry, but it also gave me enough experience in each that I could specialize if I desired. What am I? Junior designer? Graphic designer? Gofer? I ask my boss.Īs art director, I was allowed to take the reins on integrated campaigns. A week in, I’m filling out paperwork and need to provide my title. When I accepted a position with a small, regional ad agency, I was simply grateful to have a job relevant to my degree. In my final class in art school, my professor expressly told us not to expect to be hired as art directors as first jobs-we’d start at the bottom, maybe even be the coffee gofer. I tried to declare my major the first week in college, but my adviser made me wait! By the time I stepped foot on campus, I’d already had a taste of professional design. My fate was sealed when, the summer before college, a job as a marketing assistant came to double as a design internship. Halfway through senior year, it hit me: “I think this is graphic design, and I think I love it!” ![]() As editor of my high school’s literary magazine I was also essentially doing art direction - determining the magazine’s theme, overseeing its layout, etcetera. There were all these crazy majors - furniture design! Animation! Fashion! I’d planned to pursue painting, but working on the high school newspaper changed that - I had to design a page in every paper, and fell in love. Graphic design hit my radar when I started receiving catalogs from art schools. By then, I’d been drawing almost daily for 14 years! The summer after 9th grade, I decided to pursue art as a career. In middle school, my hobby morphed into photorealistic drawing (shout out to my art teacher, Joe McHugh!). So thank you to her, the most important person in my life! ![]() She encouraged my creativity and gave me honest feedback from the start. ![]() Before I get into the story, I must begin by saying that my mom, the beautiful Giuliana Singleton, is the main reason I am a creative person today. ![]()
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