Research other Design Professionals

Part of the Silver Arts Award Challenge is to research career pathways. As well as asking questions of my Arts Tutor Ami I asked my Aunt who also happens to be an Artist working in the design field. Here's what she said in response to my questions:

1) What is your job title?

Design director

2) When did you first start your Career?

September 1998


3) Did you go to College prior to starting your career?

Yes, I did a first diploma in art and design, a National Diploma in Design and a BA Honors in Design


4) What inspired you to be a designer/run your own business?

I was always a creative person and designing & art seemed to come naturally to me. Anything art & design inspired me from portrait photography to architecture.


5) Do you enjoy your work?

Yes
 
6) Were you encouraged to pursue what you love/loved?

Very much so., I started A Levels at school doing Geography, Biology, Art and Sport. I did a year but I knew in my heart it wasn't where I wanted to be, and I didn't really know where I was going with it. I went home one day and told my mum I wanted to go to Art School, rather than sending me back to school she took me to Hastings Art School the next day with my portfolio and got me enrolled on the First Diploma course starting a week later, the rest is history and without that support I would have never of got to where I am now.


7) What's your favourite part of your job?

Being creative & problem solving


8) Do you work long hours?

8 hours a day, with the odd late night


9) How has your career developed?

After working hard I left Uni with a 2:1 and a good portfolio, I had many numerous interviews and I was offered a job. I started as a Junior designer and after a few years of learning new computer skills, programs, typography skills and how the real world worked in design,  I worked on a pitch for the juice drink Five Alive and the client picked my design and that really kick started my career, over the years I then became a middle weight designer, a senior designer and now I am a design director looking after the junior designers that I once was!


10) Is there anything else career wise you would like to achieve?

No, I could go on to own my own company or indeed part own the company I work at now but it's a stressful and highly competitive industry.


11) Do you have any advice or wise words for me?

Work hard, always be as creative as you can, imagination is everything, think outside the box, take inspiration from what's around you, listen and absorb knowledge from people with experience and always be prepared to take criticism it will push you further.

My Own Career Aspirations

Personally, I’d like to be an Anime and Manga illustrator. Creating and designing characters is something I already love doing and I do a lot of this in my spare time. Getting to the point where I will be able to do this as a job takes a lot of work so hopefully at the end of this all I can do the thing I love for a living. To start I have practiced drawing my own characters and am slowly growing better at it.

I have started trying to draw characters from animes and such. I started to learn how to colour in and edit my drawings digitally with Ami so now I do that too. I even made a dress with Ami which turned out amazingly and I am very proud of it.

I have been doing this silver arts award and I have already got my bronze arts award. I have also been building up a portfolio of my drawings and artwork so I one day can show it to maybe an arts college or some kind of arty job that I would like to do.

Hopefully getting this silver arts award on top of my bronze will go some way to helping my career path. 

Here are some of my drawings.

Career Pathways

As part of the challenge I have to think about possible career pathways. I've chosen Illustration as the overall job as that is the part I am most interested in. 

Being an Illustrator is a job and set of skills that could be applied to a large variety of industries. Here are a few of examples of the different industries and routes I think one could take with it.


You could be a fashion illustrator, drawing and creating outfits for models.
    

• You can Illustrate your own ideas and see if any fashion brands likes them.   
• You can Illustrate other people's ideas for them
• You could Illustrate jewelry
• You can Illustrate patterns out for materials
• You can Illustrate clothe magazine covers

 

You could be a comic/manga/book illustrator, using your imagination to draw pictures.

• You can Illustrate characters
• You can Illustrate  the scenes and background
• You can Illustrate  the props
• You can Illustrate the covers
• You can even Illustrate your own characters/backgrounds/props and covers and sell them to people

You can be an advertisement illustrator, creating colourful, eye catching ads.

• You can Illustrate the background
• You can Illustrate the object of which is being advertised
• You can Illustrate the font for the text
• You can Illustrate the animation
• You can Illustrate posters

You can be a business illustrator,  

• You can Illustrate the logo’s
• You can Illustrate the business website designs
• You can Illustrate the a short cartoon on the business and what they do
• You can Illustrate new business ideas