Getting older and working in design
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- Ianbolton1
I'm 40 next year and been designing stuff for at least 20 of those. I think I'm going to end it all in the new year. You heard it here first folks!
- when you say end it all I hope you mean design (not yourself)dee-dubs
- he said end it
ALL
It was nice knowing you.O0O0O0 - You already said:
ALL
Don't you dare back out now.sofakingback - PICS
OR
IT
DIDN'T
HAPPENO0O0O0 - Gonna be a has been, not another could've been.Ianbolton
- I'll start a new Suicide of the Day thread anyway. So chill the fuck out.Ianbolton
- We're chill bro.O0O0O0
- And what are you going to do next?Ben99
- Might study. Maybe travel. Who knows? Be good to get a little more freelance work from beyond the grave.Ianbolton
- necromation6
I'm 41 this year... and i will not fade into the night! i'm causing hell and showing these young whippersnappers how you get shit done and when i'm done i burn rubber on my bikes into the fucking sunset!!!
Fuck age... Fuck youth... Fuck work...
Fuck shit up! i've got your back!
- Ben991
- I bring something into the world every day in the morning on the toilet._niko
- ^ genuinely made me LOL this morn. love school yard humourdee-dubs
- I'm being pedantic about a turd joke but that's not creativity, it's just regurgitating what already exists.set
- Now, if you did a shit without eating anything first... THAT'S creativity.set
- Not a bad quote considering he's the only one of these people I don't really like.CyBrainX
- @set if you do a shit without eating thats a biological issue and not being creative is the least of your problems.Wolfboy
- Beardy1
I’ve been in design my whole life. Started off in packaging then got a little studio together with some mates (that lasted a year). Then joined a cool little company and helped them grow for the next 10yrs.
Bumped that and joined another studio for a lifestyle change (who were bastards); left and worked on my own for several years whilst doing some lecture work at the local Uni. Things slowed so I joined another studio recently.. but am now on furlough.I love being creative but it’s always seemed really difficult to make money from design.
Currently thinking of setting up a weekend pizza pop-up, because that’s easy to make money from, right?
- Pizza business are hard work.. buddy in my hometown switched to ice-cream parlours.. he told me it was 10 times easier to run and wished he'd done it years agoSlashPeckham
- From my experience, it's hard to make money consistently as a creative. The turnover is pretty cruel.CyBrainX
- You're still on furlough?! Fuck.Nairn
- ..on and off furlough. Neither here nor there...Beardy
- Well, knowing a few people in a similar position to yourself, I hope you're making lemonade out of a load of lemons! :)Nairn
- cannonball19783
I’m looking for work and have noticed that I am either too expensive (which they tell me) or too old (which they don’t). I wonder if I’ve aged out of working in design. At least in the ways that let me get a job in my field (UX and design strategy).
- Get a skateboard and https://cdn.vox-cdn.…nb
- With you there... grey hair doesn't help. hence just do my own business even if it earns less... and trade stocks/crypto.shapesalad
- monNom1
Most notable painters did their best work in their 60s or something. I wouldn't worry about it too much.
- not the same thing at allBen99
- eh? painting is different than design or an ad campaign.iCanHazQBN
- really? Have you ever painted something? it's almost the exact same process.monNom
- That sounded snarky. I guess my point is that the thinking and understanding gets sharper with age, but you've gotta find clients that value that.monNom
- ^ fully agree with monNomSimonFFM
- bezoar3
Short answer is that I'm moving to something else. almost 40 and it seems that my situation is very similar to those in this thread. 13 years in the industry and decided to take a leap of faith and start a new adventure.
Had to leave the design/ad world. burned out, downer attitude, cynical...etc. due to the chip on my shoulder and fuck wad management. however, i did have passion for the work and met many friends.
So if I'm gonna spend time at something, I'd rather focus on my family and artwork. So after 5 months in Japan, and my wife's blessing ahem, I returned with new attitude and career goals.
Currently apprenticing at a studio prototyping toys and sculpting/casting my own art pieces. Still freelancing when the money is worth it.
BTW nice to join the conversation qbn. been lurking 'round these parts for a while.
- versus4
New here.
38 and have freelanced for 12 years, in-house at various places before that. Mainly identity and print work - never made the transition to digital and now regretting it as opportunities seem to be thinning/priced out by younger guns as mentioned by previous posters. Have identified as a designer my whole working life and have no idea what else I could do.
Am good at design, but no real business or self-promotion acumen is a weakness I acknowledge.
I also think working alone has been my downfall and put me in a very dark place mentally. I would urge younger designers not to isolate themselves if possible.
The stories here of people making moves into different areas are inspiring, thank you.
- < agree with working solo comment, can get very isolating at times.dee-dubs
- Ben990
i think this is the most important thread i have ever read on QBN ever.
- everBen99
- exactly, first thread ever that didn't start or end as a jokeArchitectofFate
- this is a really serious topicBen99
- Many of us have been here since the start of "digital" and will be the first gen to retire in it. We should be writing a book or memoir!formed
- ^ Im surprised there hasn't been more written about this in "creative" pressdee-dubs
- ArchitectofFate - agree matenylon
- cannonball19784
Damn. Go the job and everything I asked for. It seems like when you put your anxieties and needs out into the universe, it sometimes does provide.
Also, having been looking into work over the last few weeks, there seems to be a small groundswell where wisdom is becoming valued in the consulting sector for design. That's something you can't fake and that comes with age. So that is reassuring.
- Ben991
I'll turn 38 next March.
I'm into graphic design and related stuff since 1999, it's been 16 years.I feel I've never completely become expert in any particular area of creation. I'm ok at illustration, i'm ok at graphic design, i'm ok at photography, i'm a beginner in web design stuck in basic-mid css+html.
I have a comfortable job since 15 years where I do lots of various thing, but all those thing are basic stuff created rapidly for TV. Never been in an agency to create serious elaborated stuff. 99.99% of the stuff i create at work will never be in my portfolio because its all basic shitty stuff. All my portfolio is made of personal projects except a few freelance jobs i'm doing at home after work. But i like my job, pays well too.
I know i will never find any job like the one i got right now. Its unique. If i ever lose that job i will be in front of a wall. I have zero idea what I would do or what I want to do.
Graphic design doesn't excite me as much as before. I was creating stuff non-stop a few years ago. Now, since a few years I only got a creative rush like 1 or 2 time a year... and it last a few weeks or couple month. Rest of the time i dont feel like creating or i dont feel what i try to do looks good.
Creating stuff for clients that tells you what they want and gives you 500 words to fit on a business card. I'm fucking tired of that shit. Creating stuff with shitty logos and shitty pictures that doesn't fit the canvas size and ratio, i'm fucking tired of that shit.
And everyone is a designer these days. The profession has been diluted in all those "Website for 50$" and "Logo for 5$" websites...
So, yeah. Getting older and working in graphic design is not cool for everyone. It's really motivating and cool when you're 22 years-old. But now at 40, its another game and lots of us are starting to get confuse and unsure about certain aspects of all this.
- sarahfailin1
the light inside has broken but i still work
- Continuity0
At nearly 42, I recently started a new CD in one of the bigger ad agencies here. At one point I was starting to worry, cos I know this game is for the kids, but I managed.
Don't know how long I'll keep this up for though; I've been looking at my life and really asking myself if this is what I want to devote 8 hours of each day or more to.
Yay, existential crises.
- a new CD job*Continuity
- I doubt the age thing applies if you're at CD level or above but best of luck either way.CyBrainX
- It kind of does. Even at that level, there's a sort of ageism that dictates things. There's also the fact agencies don't want to fork money out. It's mental.Continuity
- I spoke with a recruitment agent once that told me lot of agencies go for <40 CD as they want the youth/trend to be creative face of their company.dee-dubs
- ^Continuity
- sounds like its going well if only working 8 hours a day.fadein11
- Closer to ten or eleven.Continuity
- eryx0
I was looking for a tread to post this in because I found a different career path from being a flash developer up until about 4 years ago. I was fired from my agency and tried to make it as freelance developer. I devoted a lot of my time to leaning new programming techniques but after utterly failing at Flex I decided to throw in the towel.
I started my new career at 32 years old and have been at it for almost 3 years. I work in the NDT industry. The work is very physical and has to potential to be very dangerous but I do get to take pictures all day.
There is a large amount of certifications that you have to pass in order to move forward in this career but once you start moving forward it becomes more interesting. Pay also starts pretty high, I made almost three times as much as I did when I was under salary at an agency and paid more in taxes than I made in income as a freelancer.
There are some things that I miss from my old career. I miss not being part of a large project that I can point to and say “I programmed that”. The sense of accomplishment when you solve a difficult problem. I also miss the new and exiting ideas and techniques that I was exposed to on a daily basis. The people I worked with were informed, cultured and for the most part non-violent.
My new career has some interesting challenges, I am sure that it would not be for everyone you have to have some very thick skin to deal with very thick people. Working in -40˚C weather, wildlife, insane hours, dangerous material and humping the camera through the mud are definite drawbacks but job security, monetary compensation and the ability to move forward into many different off shoots of the same core career tend to negate them pretty quickly.
All in all I am happy that I changed careers but I still miss what I use to do, I think that is why I keep coming back there, so that I can kind of still see what is going on...... and COTD.
Here is my camera:
- thanks for sharing. camera looks interesting -- are you exposed to much radiation?Gnash
- some, lots of safety procedures you have to follow. Makes it interesting.eryx
- I imagine there is little work for flex. I would have learned flex if I was smart/dedicated enough. In hindsight I'm glad I was stupid/uncapabl to learn it.hotroddy
- good wkmans comp too i supposebklyndroobeki
- Ben993
I feel like we're in a helping group like those, lol
- bort3
Man it's nice to hear other people are also thinking about this stuff. This has been on my mind for a couple years now. I'm in my mid 30's now and work in digital design. Mainly marketing websites and little apps.
I've reached a point where I don't think I can handle working in client service design anymore. The fear of ageism is definitely a huge motivator to get out of design altogether and the nature of client work has really worn me down after all these years.
Moving to the product design side is a definite possibility but I can't help but think ageism would exist there too (perhaps to a lesser degree than advertising and design studios).
I've very seriously been considering leaving design altogether in the next year or so and moving into a field like electrical engineering or healthcare. It's kind of scary giving up something you've worked years to build but sometimes you just gotta take your medicine and make the leap.
- I wouldn't change careers unless you really wanted to. Ageism is probably more likely in groups that are more conservative than ours.CyBrainX
- jaylarson2
Dylan Thomas, 1914 - 1953
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.- i've gotten into photography these days to supplement my income as an art director/designer—jaylarson
- i make way more as an ad/d but the work can be slim these days. too bad, i'd like to be more of a design director than a CD, dunno if i'll get bored or morejaylarson
- gigs as a photographer where i can jump ship and shoot full time.
it's like watching the tides & knowing when to jumpjaylarson - <THISnecromation
- dee-dubs0
Another interesting thing I'm noticing from a lot of these replies is many references to darks times and/or battling depression.
I remember once reading somewhere (around the time Robin Williams committed suicide and there were many articles on mental issues) that "creative" types are much more susceptible to this kind of mental health issue due to introspective thinking and thought patterns associated with being creative.
"Psychologists have been fascinated by the potential link for decades. The earliest and most rudimentary studies examined eminent people across fields including literature and the arts.
These studies found that creatives had an unusually high number of mood disorders. Charles Dickens, Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O'Neill all appeared to suffer from clinical depression. So too did Ernest Hemingway, Leo Tolstoy and Virginia Woolf. Sylvia Plath famously took her own life by sticking her head in an oven while her two children slept."taken from :
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/2…Apologies for kinda going off topic as it is not career related but also seems relevant. Seems we are have picked a tricky career path to maintain over long period of time and we are also likely to really be mentally affected by it too.
- all creative fields suffer from this - look at music. self medicating, self destructive behaviour is rife...fadein11
- no offense but this is v.old news.fadein11
- still in topic with the discussionBen99
- is it the career choice that preceeds this? or is it an internal malaise that leads someone to be creative?monNom
- creative brains have a tendency to be v.introspective / reflective / over analytical - which leads to a propensity towards depression / self destructivefadein11
- behaviour. Creative brains end up in creative fields (obviously).fadein11
- consider diet, lifestyle, mostly.yurimon
- martinadolfsson0
Really interesting discussion, I'm a photographer and feel like I'm facing many of the same issues, - not only am I getting older but the industry has gone through a massive change over the last decade. In order to survive past 45 I'm trying to diversify my business into a commercial side for commissioned and licensing work and a more experimental arm where I'm working on longer projects such as books, short films and app development.
Working in a fiercely competative environment -I think the only way to stay relevant past a certain age is to work on short and long term projects parallel. Hope I doesn't sound like a jerky motivational speaker, just my two cents.
- My brother in law, a photographer, just got laid off and is now working towards getting his teaching credentials.Knuckleberry
- What is your specialty? I'm a photographer as well.epigraph
- I'd imagine photographers have been moving into video as well.CyBrainX
- Yes, a lot of people are definitely trying to learn video. However, clients doesn't seem to have figured out how to produce captivating video content yet.martinadolfsson