Okay, so with this article, we’re going to assume a few important things about you. First of all, we’re going to assume that you’ve already had some education—self taught or not—that has you largely up to speed on how to use programs like Illustrator and Photoshop. Secondly, we’re going to assume that you’re stuck considering the decision to go to design school, or to skip it and instead create your own freelance design business. If you’re on the fence, we’re going to help you out big time.

  1. A Book Means Scholarships and Money: Now, if you’re going to design school, one of the larger reasons to do so is to get an healthy portfolio going. You could easily do some projects at uni to create some works worth showing, but to be honest, work placements are much more important to a potential employer. You may only get three projects a month starting out, but those are paid projects that you created for actual business use. That has a lot more weight to it. Furthermore, if you ever decide to go back to school, you can use those items for portfolio-based scholarship consideration! And that sounds like a bargain to us!
  2. On-the-Job Training is Best: We’ve met a lot of people over the years who have gone both options. Either they’re self-taught and own their own business, or they’ve gone to school and now work for a firm. But no matter what side of the fence they’re on, they say the same exact thing: “Workplace experience was much more important to me than my education.” The truth of the matter is that no amount of degree-oriented training can prepare you for the interfacing that is logo or graphic design. There’s a whole lot of business and not a lot of creativity that goes into the process of owning and making money from design. That’s the sad truth, but if you go to design school, you’ll only be staving off your ability to deal with this. Instead, jump head in and get the full blast! We promise you won’t regret it nearly as much as you think.