#WinningWednesday: Design Pros Share How to Trip Over Success
Featured Image: Unplash/Joel Sparks
The common denominator of every graphic designer is the deep need to make their career successful! Furthermore, what separates every designer is how they come to define success, and how they get to the point that they feel they’ve “made it”.
Our Winning Wednesday series celebrates designers at every level of their career, whether they are beginners improving their skills to long-standing artististic influencers in the design industry. Our focus expanded from only Zillion Designs designers to reaching out to other designers in the industry and see what talented professionals will help inspire you. From illustrators and logo designers to typographers and web designers, this round included designers across multiple fields!
Our last Winning Wednesday roundup spoke about the journey designers take to becoming a graphic designer. Today, we’re highlighting the advice designers feel will help you focus your career onto the path of success. What I found interesting is that all of the careers grew in unexpected and unique ways!
Sunita Sharma
Sunita Sharma is a designer for Zillion Designs and believes that designers need passion in order to be successful. Although, Sunita warns that passion can’t be allowed to rule your every thought!
To drive her career along the road of success, she finds that thinking of her family centers her. She feels she is successful because she every design she completes brings her satisfaction because of her compelling motivation to provide her family with a better life. So far, she’s had amazing success!
Artworks Kingdom
Designer Artworks Kingdom feels that success comes down to how inspired you are, and what you do to stop distracting yourself.
Providing for your family is always a good drive, but challenging yourself with every project is the best way to create opportunities for your skills to shine! If you’re lacking inspiration, a stop to the local supermarket will bring you hundreds of new ideas when you glance over product labels. There are avenues of inspiration that are waiting for you to find them around every corner.
Rachel Krohn
Rachel Krohn learned while job hunting that the key to career success involves becoming a well-rounded designer and a graphic design degree doesn’t necessarily mean you are one.
Rachel discovered that design school didn’t prepare her to express creativity beyond what was assigned. After stepping back and thinking about what she was doing wrong, Rachel realized the passionate spirit she had before earning her degree had grown dim.
Travis Lima
Travis Lima finds that it isn’t enough to want success; you need to think of nothing else except the need to design.
Despite having no real portfolio and rejected from design schools, Travis knew that with a little dedication, hard work, and perseverance, he would succeed to overcome his fears and be a designer. His skill grew with his confidence and as a result, he created a portfolio of fabulous designs.
How did Travis succeed? By doing the following every spare moment he had:
– Watch video tutorials
– Work on tutorials
– Read blogs and reviewed case studies
– Bought design books to study
– Practice everything constantly
– Challenged his skills by learning something new every day
Erin Hunting
Erin Hunting drew attention to her work through fan art, but became successful because of her talent of telling character stories.
Erin’s unique illustration style lends itself to odd shapes and pop culture art. Every Friday she draws a new fan art piece to keep her skills sharp and experiment in-between professional projects. Between the Internet forums, social sites, and her website, she creates powerful network connections and continues to grow in skill and exposure.
Kathy Osborne
Kathy Osborne’s biggest tip is to spend time researching both your client and their competitors to facilitate ideas before you approach a client with an idea.
Find similar projects online that others have completed that are effective designs. Pick apart what design elements make it successful and ask; is it readable, balanced, and does it convey a particular emotion?
Bridget Underwood
Bridget Underwood knew that success only comes to those that are excited to keep learning and growing.
However, Bridget is also aware that over time, your ideas of success will change because your career goals can change. While she loves animation, she feels the itch to grow as a cartoonist and illustrator again. Her time in the gaming industry has led her to meet some fantastic artists and people, and gave her an opportunity to grow her skills as a visual storyteller. Her career might be changing, but her focus has never wavered.
Josh Ellingson
Josh Ellingson is a graphic artist with over fifteen years of experience and has found you need to love what you do, and success comes to how well you adjust to a client’s experience with hiring contractors.
On some projects, you’re working with someone who contracts artists all the time, and other days you’re hand-holding someone through a situation they’ve never been involved in before. The level of detail varies project to project depending on the client, but ultimately, the process is the same for all types of clients.
A happy client will recommend you to others, and because freelancing is a business, you need to have good interpersonal skills to achieve success.
Luke Lucas
While it isn’t the sole aspect of his career, Luke has a strong passion for typography and type design, and it all started with a magazine he ran with a friend. Success is all about balancing work and family.
Before venturing into a freelance career, he ran a successful print magazine for six years, which has won numerous awards and created a fantastic reputation of his design skills and project management. It was this reputation that lets him pick and choose projects that he felt would only benefit his career or boost his skills.
What dream or goal comes to mind when you hear the word “success”? We want to know if there is a common theme. Help us by commenting below with your thoughts!
Image sources: with permission from designers.
