I'm trying to weigh my options in terms of career interests and wanted to get some input from the coli brehs.
Basically input about the type of work that surrounds creative careers from the perspective of a coli breh. I assume it can be hard to be black as a creative (like all other career paths)
I'm a creative director. What do you want to know?
In my experience, there are some serious drawbacks to the creative/design world.
There is a stupid amount of upfront grinding you need to do in order to even compete. the field is very competitive and fools that are "passionate" about design do work for free or peanuts.
You need a nice set of work to even get started somewhere and you need to know a lot of software and have a lot of technical skills. Whether you're a print designer or web designer there's a bunch of stuff you'll need to teach yourself to become competent. That's true for most careers but the problem with design/creative work, as opposed to something like accounting, is there is something ineffable about taste and design skill that is much harder to learn and master. People overvalue talent. In fact I don't think you need to be talented to work in design but getting competent takes a long time. Like becoming an accountant while sucking at math. You can learn it but it'll take time.
Also, the industry changes very rapidly. The web changes technologies incredibly fast, design fads come and go, new software is released, etc. you need to keep growing as a designer otherwise you die. Whereas many fields use the same basic skills now as 20 years ago. Try being a web designer with skills from five years ago let alone 20.
Getting paid to be creative is really draining year over year. If I never had to open photoshop again I'd be happy.
The are definitely some pros to the field though. If you're a hard worker and good at teaching yourself stuff, everything I said above can work in your favor. I have no training in design and have scrapped my way to my position by teaching myself stuff. There's no way I could become a comptroller or HR director without degrees in those fields.
The people are also a little better and more interesting and the work is often new and challenging. There is also more freedom. You can freelance or have large gaps in your resume and no one will care if your skills and portfolio are straight.
If I had to start over I'd probably try to work along side creative departments without actually being a creative, something like media analyst or project manager. But of course I'm burnt the fukk out right now and if I started as an analyst I would probably wish I could do creative work.
