Opinion: navigating through the creative industry dark forest

Recently, I’ve been lucky to get involved in a few mentoring programmes (shoutout to The Arena and the University of Hertfordshire), and I’ve noticed that it’s broadly the same questions that get repeated over and over again. Young creatives appear to have a minimal idea about their career options and how to know what direction to choose.

I can’t say that I was surprised by this. Not too long ago, I was also a wide-eyed design student dealing with anxiety over finding my place in the industry. And let me tell you, this industry is confusing as hell.

Branding agencies look nothing like advertising. Small boutique studios are nothing like mid-size or large branding ones. And then there are production agencies, PR agencies, media agencies, packaging agencies, social media agencies and the list keeps going on. Even no two branding agencies are alike. And of course, there’s also ‘in-house’, which is a beast of its own.

If you can somehow get past that, there’s the dark forest of job titles as well. ‘Art director’ can mean at least five different jobs. Your responsibilities as a ‘designer’ will be entirely different depending on whether you’re in a branding, an advertising or a PR agency. And what exactly are you expected to do as a ‘social media creative’? I’ve barely scratched the surface here.

Most universities do an extremely poor job at accurately depicting the vast array of career options available. It’s not rare for design students to be led to believe that the only viable route is to end up in one of those branding agencies that bag all the D&AD awards and whose projects are regularly flashing all over It’s Nice That. It might not be outwardly spoken about, but it’s implied throughout education.

Don’t believe me? Think about it. When was the last time you heard a university tutor suggesting to research projects made by an in-house design or creative team? (Yes, there are great ones out there). Or, have you ever visited a lecture by a practising professional who studied design but ended up becoming a project manager? You get my point.

I fully understand the lure of ‘cool’ agencies. I’ve been there. Their websites look slick, projects seem fun, and they come with an added prestige of ‘having made it’ as a designer (although who gets to decide that?!). Often (but not always), they even come with a great culture that encourages creativity. Many students are naturally drawn to that, and there’s nothing wrong with tutors and industry professionals encouraging it.

However, what rarely gets taken into account is each student’s particular strengths, interests and lifestyle preferences. For example, ‘in-house’ is not a graveyard of failed design ambitions as it’s often made out to be. Many people thrive working in-house for large companies doing beautiful work while enjoying a culture of regular performance reviews, spending budget, and a healthy work-life balance. Some people thrive in an environment where they’re thrown into the deep end, have lots of responsibilities with little to no supervision, and become great assets to an early-stage startup. Some go freelance straight away after uni (yes, it is possible, but not easy). Others might enjoy design education but make much better producers, studio managers or recruiters (hey there😉).

There’s nothing wrong with the good ol’ ‘award-winning’ agency, but the truth is that it is not for everyone. And not just because not everyone’s portfolio is good enough to get there, but because the day-to-day of being a designer at an agency like this might not be the best option for that particular person. Again, I’ve been there. It took me three years of my career to realise that chasing the best studios that would look great on my CV wasn’t even remotely what would bring any job satisfaction into my life, let alone happiness.

What I’m getting at is that there are lots of options out there. As an industry, we need to get better at communicating to the younger generation of creative professionals what their options are and which ones might fit them as unique individuals.

As a student, I used to go to numerous portfolio reviews. Regardless of who organised them, the advice I often heard was to ‘tailor your portfolio to the job you want’. It is good advice, but it only works when you know what job you want. And in order to know that, you’d need at least some kind of understanding of what’s possible.

Hopefully, universities will catch up to this soon. But until that happens, I encourage everyone in the creative industry to speak openly about their experience, career, and all the unconventional choices made along the way.

At EdenMarsh, we’re working on releasing more educational materials and content that will be aimed at helping to demystify the creative industry to new grads. But in the meantime, please know that you can always reach out to anyone from our team for any advice.