Is Design School Worth It?

Attending design school was a decision that I made very lightly. When I graduated from high school and I had to figure out what I wanted to do in college, the only thing in my mind was that I loved to draw and using photoshop to create things. Before even knowing that graphic design was a viable career option, I was already designing things in photoshop and illustrator without even realizing it.

I can definitely say now that one of the reasons why I attended college was pressure from my family and society in general. After school, whatcha gonna do?! To this day, many people still think that the only right path after graduating high school is going to college. Now I know this is not totally true. College may be good for some people, and it’s definitely required for some professions. But for graphic design? That’s debatable.

My mindset today is so different from when I started college. If I had known what I know now, I’m not sure I would have gone through this path. But since I can’t change the past, I figured I could share all the stuff that I learned during my time in graphic design school. 

While I was in college, I figured out things about myself such as: I really don’t like working for other people (meaning: I don’t like to be in a cubicle for 8 hours in a day working for a company that will make more money than they’ll ever pay me) and I’d much rather work for myself as a freelancer. It was also during my time there that I found out about hand lettering and that completely changed the way I looked at my career. 

When I started practicing hand lettering and learning more about the field, I realized that many hand lettering artists out there don’t even have a background in design. Some of them changed their career path from a different field. Some of them are college dropouts. There are many different people with so many backgrounds in this business that I kept wondering if I could also drop out of college and start doing what I wanted to do.

But I kept going, mainly because of my family. And now that I’ve graduated, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about my design school experience. I’m not here to tell you whether you should go to college or not. That decision is 100% up to you. But hopefully, this article could help you shed a light on your own decision. 

My experience in Brazil

Let’s take a step back here. I live in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil so I can only talk about the experiences I’ve had while in college here. The system we use here is a bit different than the US system or any other developed country out there. Let me try to explain how getting into college works in Brazil.

We have a pretty flawed education system in the entire country. Most of our public schools aren’t good. There are only a few handful of them that are really good and those are really hard to get in. You have to do a lot of exams, alongside many people, in the hopes that someday you will get into that approval list.

Because of that, our private schools became the best chance for most people to get a good education. If you have the chance to go to a private school – which in our country is considered a privilege – you can get a decent education. It can always improve, obviously, but that’s not the point of this article.

I consider myself a privileged person – I was given the opportunity to attend good private schools, so that gave me some a good amount of education. And even having attended private schools, I still struggled to get into a good college. In Brazil, you have to take an exam – similar to the SAT in the U.S. We have to write an essay during the exam, but it’s not about what we want to write, they give the same subject matter to everyone and you have to develop your essay from that. Then, if we reach a certain amount of points in the exam, we get the approval to get into college. If you don’t get the number of points asked for, you can still get into a waiting list to either register at a later date or you can also get in on the second semester of the year.

By the way, our school year is different than what it is in the U.S. or Europe. We begin our year in February or March (for public universities it’s usually in March). We get a 2-week break in July, then we start the second semester in August. Because our summer starts in December, we get our summer break from December to February.

Our public universities are mainly funded by the Federal Government, which isn’t always a good thing since money is tight. On one hand, we don’t have to spend money on tuition, but on the other hand, it’s still hard because the government is always pulling out money from education. We don’t always have the best buildings or the best computers (sometimes we don’t even have them at all) but somehow the universities here still thrive. The college I attended is still considered one of the best in the country, still managing to do research and achieve things in many different fields. 

With that being said, I hope this brief summary of how things work in Brazil can give you a clear idea of how things work here. Now that this is out of the way, let’s start talking about the actual pros and cons that I learned during college.

Figure out what you like and dislike

During your college years, you’ll be doing many projects, with different subject matters and different areas from the design world. By doing so, you’ll be able to figure out things you like to do and some of the design areas you really don’t like.  

For instance, I once signed up for a course about brand identity. I thought this was going to be a really boring class because I didn’t like making logos and all the stuff that comes with the branding world. But it turns out I really enjoyed taking this class and the two projects I made during the course. I’m not going to pursue this as my career but finding out that I didn’t really hate brand identity design was a bonus. Of course, my professor really helped because she was the nicest and she even ended up being my advisor for my senior project.

Get out of your comfort zone

By the time you figure out the things you like the most about the design world, you’ll also have to get out of your comfort zone. You won’t always be able to register in classes about topics that you love, whether it be because of conflicting schedules with other classes or because you have to work that day or anything else that may come up with your life during that time!

And yes, getting out of your comfort zone means doing things that you don’t like. But sometimes you might even surprise yourself and end up with a piece that is really worthy-while for your portfolio.

Build your portfolio

Speaking of portfolio, the pieces you create during college are a nice way to start your portfolio. When you’re starting out, you won’t have many things to put on your portfolio and most design jobs and internships will ask to see your portfolio before they even set up an interview.

This is why I think you should do your best to create some amazing stuff while you’re in college cause they’re going to be in your portfolio for a while. Obviously not everything you create will be portfolio worthy and you shouldn’t rush to put in stuff that you made but didn’t like. There were so many things I created in college that I didn’t love the end result, so obviously I never added those pieces to my portfolio.

Learn how to work with a team

This topic is a big issue while you’re in college. When a professor started a class with “you’ll have to separate into small groups of three people”, I could feel the energy in the room getting down. Working with other people can be really hard, especially if you’re in a class with people you don’t know.

If you can work with friends – great! It will probably be a much easier job since you’re friends with them already and you know each other well. But if you end up having to work with people you don’t know, it can be tough because you don’t how they work. Group projects are tough because there’s always gonna be someone who ends up doing nothing and you’ll have to learn how to be a leader and assign jobs to everyone. In the end, I think this is a good thing because you’ll learn how to rely on yourself instead of waiting for someone to assign you things to do.

Learn how to work with deadlines

Professors will most likely give you a deadline to finish an assignment or a project. They won’t accept your finished project at any other time – unless you have a really good excuse for not being able to complete it.

This is going to teach you how to work with deadlines, as you will encounter that many times during your career. You’ll have to meet your client’s or your boss’ deadline all the time in your job, so being able to do just that in college will be a huge help.

Time-consuming

While you’re in college you won’t have much time to do other things. It’s not like you won’t be able to do things you love anymore – it’s just that your free time will be much more limited. There will be much less binge-watching, going out (you know!? if you’re not an introvert person like me) and just doing things for fun. I remember I was constantly thinking about all my assignments, even during conversations. I would be looking at something and get ideas for a project I was doing. My mind was just constantly busy and thinking about all the projects that I needed to finish.

Technical skills

If you think your professors will teach you how to use Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign or any other design program… forget it. I remember many of my classmates saying that they were expecting classes to teach them how to use the software and they would often complain about it. In my case, I wasn’t worried about this because I’d been messing around with Photoshop and Illustrator even before I got to college, so it wasn’t a big deal to me. The professors are more worried about teaching us the theory, how to be creative and solve problems than to actually teach you how to use any computer program. In fact, they would often encourage us to start a project by sketching it on paper first, instead of going directly to the computer. 

Mental health

While we’re talking about busy minds, I would really love to talk about mental health because I don’t think it gets addressed that much. I remember I was in a course once about infographics, something that I had never done before so it was definitely out of my comfort zone. This was a particularly heavy course – we had to do almost 10 full-page infographics in one semester – and that included researching the subject matter, creating original copywriting, designing, illustrating. We were basically doing everything.

The professor was really good but he was also very strict and constantly pushing us to do better and do things out of our comfort zones. One night I stayed up late finishing one of the projects and I just burst into tears because I really wasn’t liking the outcome. I wanted to start all over again because I was hating myself and thinking “well, this is shitty and I’m not a good designer.”

Even my mom got worried about me because this had never happened before. We were both like “what the f-ck is happening?” and I just really wanted to cry and not do anything else. I wanted to quit the course. But I didn’t give up. And later on, I was talking to a classmate who had taken the course one semester before I did and he told me that everyone has a breakdown during this class and that it had happened to him as well.

As college students, we get so much pressure from everyone in our lives – our family, friends, professors – even if they aren’t actually saying anything to us. We can just sense their judgment, looks, thoughts. And the worst of all – the pressure from ourselves. We are constantly being bombarded with so many things. Especially in the days of Instagram – we look at other people’s lives and we don’t understand how could they be so successful, so happy all the time. But that’s the thing: the comparison game we’re playing is not healthy. And it’s hard to get to a point where these kinda things won’t affect us anymore.

I don’t do very well under pressure – but does anyone actually do well under pressure? I just think some of us can handle it better than others. If there’s one thing I hate it’s when people are looking at me while I’m working and pressuring me into finishing or doing something. So you have to think to yourself, will you be able to handle all the pressure? I heard this from a professor “well, when you’re at a job, you’ll have to deal with multiple clients, multiple projects, and you won’t be able to have a breakdown.” Yes, that’s true. But we wanna be able to work without burning out. I think that’s the biggest difference between my generation/younger generations and older ones. We have different thoughts about working our asses off than the older generations.

Design is subjective

One of the things I learned early on during college is that design and art are incredibly subjective. Some things will appeal to you, others won’t. Sometimes professors will give you a direction in which to go to for a certain project and you won’t agree with it. If it was up to you only, you’d be doing something totally different than what they told you to do. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s possible. I’ve had that happen a couple of times, and you can’t help but do what your professor is telling you to do, just so you can please them.

This is also where I learned to never show two different concepts for a piece. They’ll most likely not choose the concept that you like the most. I’ve had that happen before where I showed two different concepts and my professor was like ‘go with this one’, choosing the one that I didn’t like very much and I only created it so I could show more options, to show that I was really working my ass off. But now I’m more comfortable presenting a single design concept than multiple ones. I’d rather work on a really good concept and only show that one than working on many others just so that they can choose the one I didn’t really like that much! 

Money

As I said before, I didn’t have to spend any money on tuition because the college I attended in Brazil is funded by the Brazilian government. But I know so many of you reading this will probably have to spend lots of money (that you don’t actually have) to attend college. And that means going into debt to pay for your education. I’m sure that will weigh in on your decision. I know that I wouldn’t have gone to college if I had to pay a huge amount of money.

Not only you’ll have to go into debt to pay for college, but you’ll also have to spend money printing all of your class projects. Most times you’ll have to print the same project over and over again to get feedback from your teacher until the final deadline. I remember I used to print so many projects because up until the final deadline, you can make as many changes as you want to – or as many as your professor tells you to.

You’ll also have to spend money on books, should your professor ask you to read a certain one. You’ll have to spend money on food, water, really all the basic stuff. So all of this needs to get consideration. As a broken college student, you won’t have much money to spend on anything else.

So…shoud you go to design school?

Like I said before, I’m not here to tell you if you should go to college or not. That decision is up to you. But I do think you should ask yourself these questions: are you going to college because you want to or because of outside pressure? Do you really think it’s 100% necessary for you to have a degree in graphic design? Do you learn better in person? Are you going to college just to try and see what you like? Do you wanna land a job in a big company that requires a degree?

Also, keep in mind that having a college degree doesn’t mean you’ll get a job as soon as you graduate. This is one of the things that bugs me the most. People who think that college is everything will often tell you that you can’t land jobs if you don’t have a degree. Sure, big companies will probably only wanna hire you if you have the right qualifications, but they’ll also NOT hire you if you don’t have a portfolio that they like. And there’s a lot of people out there making a living without a design school degree.

With all that being said, I don’t think it’s 100% necessary for anyone to go college anymore just so you can get a degree in graphic design. There are so many different resources nowadays that can teach you plenty of things. Free resources on the internet. Online courses. Books. There are so many ways to actually learn design theses days and I’m not only talking about software tutorials.

There are many people who were made for academics. Some people actually love doing research, writing papers and eventually teaching at a university. I learned a bit late that I wasn’t one of them. And obviously that are professions that really require a degree (medicine, nursing, engineering, law, etc) but that’s not the case for graphic design at all. This is why I think that if I had the mindset that I have today, I definitely wouldn’t choose to go to college. I would’ve choose to do my own thing and start my own business and freelance career – which is what I’m trying to do now after graduating.

Take all these pros and cons, make a list of your own if you need to. Think about all of this while trying to make your decision. Think about your feelings, your needs, and not what society is telling you to do. If you feel like you need college, then, by all means, do it. Education is never wasted. I will take everything that I learned in college with me forever. But if you feel like college is not for you, then that’s ok too!

Are you struggling with this decision right now? Do you have any other questions about going to design school? Please let me know in the comments if you do!