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Step One: Recognize Your Design Abilities

You’ve got talent!

You have great ideas about how to communicate something visually. You are interested in computers and like to look at how websites and logos are designed. You enjoy art and design classes. You play with imaging software to make images look better and create your own animations, characters, or fashions. You are thinking about a career in design.

Recognize your strengths

First, you want to recognize what you do well. Is your strength with observational drawing? Color? Telling stories visually? Flash animation? Creating three-dimensional models? Do you learn imaging software quickly? Make a list of your strengths and ask your friends, family or teachers what they think your strengths are.

Think Again: Art or Design?

Think about whether you enjoy executing your own ideas or succeeding others’ expectations for their ideas. If you enjoy working on your own ideas, you may be happier with a career as an artist. Artists make work based on something that they want to communicate, and then try to sell the work.

Designers typically work creatively to fulfill a need of a client such as: A logo, a redesigned home, a dress, a product, an illustration for an article, etc. There is enormous room for personal creativity when working on a design project, while fulfilling the clients desires.