Success Is What You Make It

Success in the creative industry does not depend on obtaining a degree.

It doesn’t depend on a certificate or diploma either, for that matter.

It is true that a proper education in the creative fields provides benefits seldom available elswehere: untold hours of practical and theoretical work; a relatively free reign of concept exploration and discovery; uninhibited access to knowledgeable and passionate professors; fantastic deals on art galleries, museums, magazine subscriptions and other tools of creativity; all these and hundreds of others are points in favour of a proper education in design.

However, the measure of a career’s success — while undoubtedly aided by such a rich playground of experimentation — can be proven through the simple experiment of taking a class out of the classroom and putting them into the wild of an agency or studio setting. Those that succeed will not necessarily be the most talented or the most polished, but instead, more often than not, the ones who swim will be the ones who work the hardest. There’s a place for talent, but talent without dedication is wasted.

The crucial contributing factor to creative success therefore doesn’t come as a result of the chosen school, but as a result of the intangible traits the ideal student already possesses: dedication; passion; integrity; talent. These traits embody themselves in such a way that, while a proper education is a fantastic opportunity, it’s not crucial in deciding whether a creative will be successful or not. That decision comes from within.

The Creative Industry

The creative industry is rather unique, in that it’s a career path that revolves around putting in “extra” effort. It’s certainly not a 9-to-5 job, and the creative person’s reward for the number of 50-60-hour work weeks they log is the satisfaction gained from doing what you love, working on something creative and, in a perfect world, making a difference. However, a creative hasn’t necessarily “made it” once they’ve begun working as a junior; being a student of the industry is not something that stops once school is finished and a full-time job has been secured. It’s an ongoing process which not only makes you a smarter creative, but keeps alive the reasons why we entered the field in the first place, regardless of your educational background.

From a practical perspective, being a lifelong student of the industry can take many forms, depending on your creative field. From continually experimenting with new technologies to reading magazines and watching television to view ads in their rightful place, the possibilities are endless to notice, register and self-analyze why a certain piece works or not. It’s a strange quirk of the business that, once you start noticing whatever it is you’re looking for, you’ll also notice the potential for further, unexploited possibilities.

Every couple months, I sit down for a meal with an old family friend, who is one of Canadian advertising’s icons and, incidentally, one of the nicest people I have ever met. One of the first things he asks me is what things culturally have I done since we last sat down: what movies have I watched, plays I’ve seen, books I’ve read, music I’ve discovered, etc. His point is that not only are all these different sides to life a wonderfully engaging and enjoyable way to spend your time, but they build up such a rich cache of knowledge and emotion that it can’t help but burst through your work by contributing to a much richer, livlier palette of culture to draw from. In short (and to be redundant), creativity is what makes the creative world go ’round, not necessarily a mastery on technical details (though more on that later), and cultivating technical knowledge — while important — is best left to secondary importance behind the cultivating cultural curiosity.

Cultivating Curiosity

Cultivating curiosity is perhaps the most important trait a creative can have at all, as it ties into so many other avenues of improvement, from those discussed today to many other individual and unnamed possibilities. An open mind is the most valuable tool of all as it not only builds up a cache of popular culture references and touchpoints — key to building relevance with the end consumer, customer or client — but it also enlivens the creative mind by providing an infinite number of ways in which to build a mental toolbox of what inspires, what provokes and what leaves unimpacted.

The acts of reading and writing could also not be stressed enough as benefits to any career, especially a creative career. We’re in the business of visual communications, and what differences there are in medium between writing and design are nullified by the universal goal of communicating an idea. Reading is crucial to developing a language and vocabulary, a word bank which can be brought to life later as metaphors, similies and synonyms expressed through visuals.

Writing, meanwhile, helps you learn how to express yourself, for esoterical reasons (communication is a universal concept; it’s the outputs that change) and for practical reasons (explaining your concepts to a skeptical client, as an example in Adrian Shaugnessy’s How To Be A Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul indicates). The act of habitually explaining your thoughts and exploring wider concepts — with no greater vehicle for that than a blog — not only helps to flex your creative muscles, it also is an invaluable aid to solidifying your own beliefs. It’s a wide, broken world out there, and the act of mentally sorting through the clutter to re-assemble the shards in a meaningful way can do wonders to your mental prowess, and through it your creative abilities.

Night classes are also an invaluable additional to the self-taught method of creative education, rounding out what work you’ve accomplished on your own with a practical education not as easily available outside of a school. For designers and advertisers, the colour theory and form lessons of a painting class; for photographers, access to studio equipment; for creative writers, invaluable brainstorming sessions; for everyone, invaluable feedback and project assignments. Night school offers up the benefits of a proper education without requiring full-time dedication to a program, allowing you to round out the gaps in your own education.

An Everlasting Path

Working outside of your daily routine by reading books and industry magazines, listening to podcasts and giving yourself ongoing creative side-projects is undeniably a harder way to learn about the profession. But, far from being the necessary evil to avoid attending school, it’s in fact a preferable option; or at the least a career-spanning benefit.

It proves whether or not you’re really passionate about this career, and proves to employers that you have exactly the level of dedication they’re looking for in a new hire. As soon as you “make it” into the profession, it still requires working some evenings and weekends at your craft, because guaranteed that for every person who you’re better than, there’s three others who are better than you. The difference is made up in effort.

It’s my firm belief that the game-changing, difference-making, crucial point of separation between one candidate and another is the all-encompassing passion for their career which the great ones possess and the rest aspire to. If you’re that person and you’re working as a barista as you find your way through this self-education process, you’re not a barista who designs things on the side: you’re a designer who makes coffee on the side while you bone up on the basics.

Fortune favours the bold and the busy. The road is long and hard, and who knows what turns it may take. Opportunities will arise which you don’t anticipate which will take you into an entirely new direction. Be open and look for opportunity as it is out there. If you believe in yourself, absolutely nothing will stand in the way of your eventual success.

Success is no longer measured solely by salaries and vacation time, which makes it the ideal time to proceed exactly as you want. Success is how you define it, and success is what you make it. The opportunity is yours.