Since graduating I’ve gotten my fair share of emails that go something like this:
Yo Will!
I [know/am] a whizbang superstar design student who is looking to figure out their post-design school potential. Can you hook a [brother/sister] up?
xoxoxo
[ Genius professor / Baller student / Beloved friend ]Well I might be exaggerating, but you get the gist. Anyway, in the past, I’ve tried writing single-paragraph one-size-fits-all design career advice pieces, but they all end up a whitewash of generic careerisms (“Do what you love,” etc. — it’s pretty useless stuff). I’ve also gone looking for some sort of overall guide to framing the concepts of design careers, but I can’t find it — please let me know if this exists!
This ‘primer’ is my attempt to start filling that void by trying to provide a wide-but-shallow perspective on design career orientation. So I’ve spent some time over the past several months putting together the knowledge that I collected from my professional wanderings so far into a primer aimed at undergraduate design students.
Contents
I. Warning
II. Job Shopping Criteria
III. Important Focus Areas
IV. Helpful Resources
I. Warning
It should be noted that while I have some academic and professional design experience, it is not only limited, but also provides notable bias to my perspective on design as a practice, industry, and career. Section IV. Helpful Resources has some good places to cross-reference anything written here. And if something still smells funny, call me on it!