Thinking of retraining as a Graphic Designer

[Coffee45]

I’m from a Nursing background but out of practice for about 8 years now.

I am late 40s, single parent. Looking to return back to work but definitely a career change.

Has anyone retrained as a Graphic Designer? How was it?

What are your potential options?

Length of study / training?

Locality - online or in person?

Costs

Family support? Logistics?

Preferred type of entrant (if any)?

Long term viability / AI competition for entry level work?

Compatibility with your innate skills and preferred way of working?

Don't.

Many designers struggle to get enough work - with AI, easy to use design software such as canvas etc lots of people are doing their own graphics rather than outsource to graphic designers.

I think it might not be the wisest decision. Work for graphic designers is quite limited.

You would need to add digital skills (web design, video making, animation) to have a chance to get jobs in this field.

I work in marketing and comms. I am expected to do anything from social media, website updates, filming and designing posters/publications and so on.

Also you will be competing which much younger people.

I am a bit older than you and I am starting to feel like I have had enough of playing with social media and websites and hear about TikTok all day...

Creative fields in general are really competitive and salaries are not great.

You don’t need training to be a graphic designer. People just want pretty pictures, they don’t care about qualifications. Even employers care about your portfolio more than your qualifications.

Skills based training is more useful than a qualification where you’ll end up writing pointless essays. You can even train yourself via YouTube videos and short online courses. You will need to fork out several hundred pounds to get software such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, then learn how to use it. Some of the more expensive long term courses such as university degrees will give you temporary access to a student version of the software while you study. Learning the practical skills isn’t sufficient - you also need to be an artist.

As a graphic designer you’ll find that a lot of people DIY it, or they go on Fiverr - they might not do a great job but they can’t afford a professional. It’s mostly big companies or agencies who employ designers. There is some freelance work around too, but the agencies tend to soak it up, so as a freelancer there’s no much scope. Work is unreliable. I have graphic design skills but can’t get enough work to live on - I top up my income by teaching.

It’s mostly big companies or agencies who employ designers.

So … where do they recruit their staff from? Freelancers with experience but no formal qualifications, or graduates following an established path? Which??

Depends. Some will recruit experienced freelancers with a good portfolio. Others look for graduates they can train up. Pay is not good regardless. There aren’t a lot of jobs available and they tend to be only in big cities. Jobs are declining even more with AI and services like Fiverr.

It’s digital work so companies in Yorkshire for example will still hire a graphic design agency based in London or Manchester, or even in India or China. If you’re planning to work anywhere other than a limited number of big cities, you’ll find it hard to get a job.

Companies also tend to want to hire a “one stop shop” for their graphics, website and social media. They will go to an agency who offers all of these services. As an individual freelancer it’s hard to do it all, they’re very different skill sets. In an agency the guy who draws the graphics is often not the same guy who takes the photos or programs the website code.

So you’re probably looking at a low paid job working for an agency in a limited number of big cities, or a job in a huge company which has scope to employ their own graphic designer (not a lot of these type of jobs). Or part time freelance work which is unreliable and pays very little, and you’re in competition with people in other countries who are willing to accept being paid a fiver.

You also need to be an artist. I think people under estimate this when they decide to do graphic design. It’s fundamentally an art job. Lots of people have done art degrees then a masters in graphic design.

Don’t get me wrong, I love graphic design. But it’s not a great career choice unless you’re lucky and get one of the few good jobs.

Thanks all for your replies. Very much appreciated.

I really want a career change… something creative… Nursing for over 20 years has really drained me.

I want to retrain preferably online so I can fit around the kids. Ideally in something creative where I can WFH with a day in the office.

Any suggestions greatly received.

I’ve found that creative jobs actually require you to be in the office more. You work as a team so you need to meet with clients, brainstorm and bounce ideas off each other, collaborate, review each other’s creative work and suggest changes, run focus groups and interviews to collect people’s opinions, or maybe you’re building a physical prototype or doing photography. Creativity is not something where you work alone. Something like accountancy is probably more solitary. The solitary type of creative work tends to be stuff like “our team got round the table and came up with this concept, can you draw it up”. Which isn’t creative - you’re just drawing what the creatives have come up with.

To give you some examples of stuff that’s being done by creative people I know:

Running an online shop selling cards and posters they’ve drawn.
Selling customised products, T-shirts and water bottles.

Kitchens. Very few people hire an interior designer for other rooms but pretty much everyone hires a professional to do their kitchen.
Freelance stylist. Working on photo shoots and dressing showrooms and displays.
Virtual reality and 3D modelling. Instead of building a room to photograph for a magazine or website, they will hire someone to produce a realistic looking 3D model on the computer. This is one of the only freelance digital design areas that is actually booming.

@Coffee45 when you say ‘something creative’ you do need to remember that most successful creative people have significant talent, training, resilience and competitive drive.

Which area of the creative arts are you thinking of? Do you write? Paint? Design clothes? Compose? Do you have a portfolio of work you could show to a university, theatre, gallery or whatever?

You need to be much more specific about what you can do. I say this as someone who retrained in mid-life into the ‘creative’ world. I’d already spent a few years building up just enough material to get me into my chosen course. But life since graduation has been terrifyingly cut throat. The industry essentially only wants ‘young’ and ‘male‘. Anyone else basically has to eviscerate themselves on stage, screen, canvas to get any attention at all.

If all this grabs you, go ahead! But don’t imagine ‘something creative’ will be a nice gentle way of earning a living - it won’t be.

Has it changed then?

I studied Graphic Design and it very much was a graduate profession if you wanted to do decent work and not work in a print shop chucking together flyers for local takeaway.

It was and always has been very competive. Lots of bright young things to compete against. Getting your first job generally used to require working unpaid for however long until you can persuade a company to take you on. I don't think it would be a great career choice for a Mum in their 40s.

Start writing.

You can transition into it while doing practically anything else to pay the bills (the playwright Chekhov was a GP). Use everything from your nursing life and put it to work for you. You are lucky in that you'll be able to write both fiction and non-fiction. You could work on a novel set in a hospital with all the drama and behind-the-scenes goings on as well as the on-the-ward/A&E real drama. You can also write a memoir based on your career. And you can write practical non-fiction 'how-to' guides or a short book, e.g. on a specialist area of nursing. You could even consider children's picture books - 'Sophie gets Sick' - a kid's hospital stay/out-patient experience, for example. Or a YA (young adult 12-18 years) novel, maybe based on a few different kids staying long-term in a children's hospital. You can also convert your expertise and memoires into magazine or newspaper articles, or a column.

If you need a gentle start, this will help: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/start-writing-fiction

And this might be worth a look:
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/how-to-get-your-feature-articles-published

Choose the FREE limited access options, don't pay for the courses. Enrol on one at a time and rattle through them as fast as you can before losing access.

And here's some FREE advice from a reputable source:
https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/writing-hub/five-non-fiction-writing-tips-for-beginners/

Good luck!

What about learning how to be an art therapist? It’s a nice overlap of art and mental health care and your nursing background would be a good springboard