What future employers will want from you...

I have just got back from a meeting with the Director of a Leicestershire based design studio. I was discussing what they look for in a graduate/potential employee. In a nutshell the priorities are:

1. Speed – must work quickly (e.g. 12 highly finished logo options for a client in 1 working day).
2. Know the software (really know it, so they can work quickly)
3. Creativity

I asked how closely these ranked. The answer was very close. They are ALL important.

To paraphrase the Director’s own words: if you don’t eat, drink and breathe design, then the job isn’t for you.

How do we know you eat, drink and breathe design? Because you dedicate most of your time to it. It is more important to you than TV, video games, and generally hanging around. You get home from college and boot-up the computer to carry on working with Photoshop and Illustrator and those other programs, until you are an expert at using them.

From the Director’s point of view new recruits need to hit the ground running and be generating a profit within their first few weeks.

And that’s reality.

This is pertinent to all students. To HND students because they will be next into industry. To Intro, First and National students because now is the time to be learning the software in your own time so you are an expert (that's what I did).

Do you have what it takes?

Failure won't be because you lack talent, but because you won't pay the price to be good enough.

What is the price?

The price is your own time. Lots and lots of your own time.

One more lesson to learn from Ivan Chermayeff, the secret to success as a designer is to find your work more fun than fun.

If design is in your blood, you will be doing it constantly, you will eat it, drink it and breathe it, you will enjoy doing it, and won't ever have to be told or reminded to do it.