SELF-TAUGHT DESIGNERS AREN'T INFERIOR

As someone who started off my design journey by teaching myself, I can tell you first hand that I have always felt/was treated and told that I was inferior because I did not go to school for it and chances are if you are a self-taught designer you've experienced this before:

• When speaking to others and stating you are self taught, the tone of the person changes immediately to one of disappointment.

• Assumptions that because you are self taught you must be terrible at it.

• "Oh so you're not a professional?"

• "You have to have a degree in order to get paid those kinds of prices."

• "You can't charge if you never went to school for it."

• "You're not a real artist."

• "Well going to school makes you better at it"

• "You should give people your work for free since you're not a professional yet."

I am here to let you know that the opinions above do not define your worth and I promise you there are people out there who will treat you well and hire you based on your experience and skills regardless of how you acquired them.

I have been doing Graphic Design for about five years (at the time of writing this) and I personally always feel like I have to prove myself to others just because I've never been to an institution.

Design found me in secondary school, I made little things for others on things like Microsoft Word and Publisher and then I found out exactly what it was I was doing, started researching and showing myself the industry tools (Adobe Suite) and never looked back.

I took one short course to further my studies in learning Photoshop and Illustrator when I finished school but other than that I read a lot of articles and watched a lot of videos.

I will say there is a way to go about teaching yourself and that some self-taught artists do sometimes do things backwards but if the end result is a great design that is in the correct formats and it is the way it's supposed to be, I don't see the reason to judge someone's process.

Now I will admit that there are people out there who claim to be "self-taught" but they really get in the industry for the money (or promises of money) who know nothing of (and don't care to learn) about the craft they are getting into which may contribute to the reason why self-taught creatives don't get respected but that's for another blog post.

In my opinion, self-taught creatives (like myself) who actually take the time to learn everything about the craft the same way they would in school, have a lot of patience because they are learning everything on their own. They are critiquing themselves constantly, and all while juggling negative opinions of others (including people in the same industry).

People forget that not every individual is the same and that things may be different because of the following:

• School is not for everyone - Not everyone can learn in a school setting and some people prefer to learn without the stress of being in a school.

• School is not affordable for every household - School is not cheap and not everyone has a financial support system that will help them get into art school.

• Art is rarely respected - as a profession the creative industry on the whole is not respected so can you imagine a child from a household who doesn't believe that Art is a profession, asks to go into art school. What do you think the answers would be?

• Self-taught does not mean they are not capable - I will never understand why people think just because a person taught themselves it makes them less than someone who went to school. It just means this person learnt on their own time, at their own pace nothing else.

To close I just want to send a message to my self-taught colleagues.

Please know that you are worthy of the clients you receive, you are worthy of the payments you charge. You are not stupid for learning on your own, you do not need to earn a degree to be a professional and last but not least, YOU ARE A REAL ARTIST and YOU BELONG!.

I know sometimes it's hard to be a creative and it is even harder when you teach yourselves the skills and people do not appreciate you for it or make you feel less than for it but the truth is that again you are deserving.