Do You Need College to Be Successful in Graphic Design or Web Development?

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In the age of the internet, learning a new skill or embarking upon a completely new career path is easier than ever. And graphic design, UX design and website development are definitely near the top of the list of skills you can easily learn on your own. All you need is a computer and access to the internet and nothing is stopping you from becoming a professional from the comfort of your own home.

So, with such incredible knowledge just an online search away, is college necessary? Better yet, is getting a degree in fields such as graphic design or web development even relevant in this day and age? Will it help you get clients, secure a job, build a career and make money? Well, the answer is - it depends.

You definitely don't need a college degree to be a fantastic designer. You don't need it to build websites like a professional web developer. You don't need it to be a great UX designer, or a 3D artist, photographer, videographer, video editor... the list goes on and on. But, to be fair, it isn't going to hurt your chances of advancing in your chosen creative profession either. College can be fantastic at providing you with the basics. Those incredibly important first steps taken towards learning how to professionally use software and hardware, along with all of the theoretical things you need to know.

It's also great if you're unsure of how to get started, or if you're somebody who struggles to put in the effort required to learn things without someone or something pushing you to do so. The first year or two of college will very likely give you a great foundation to build on.

But, personally, college taught me nothing really useful about working with clients. Or even how to price my projects, how to make more money, how to create proposals, how to write contracts or a lot of other things that you desperately need to learn in order to be successful. These are the things that college just can't teach you.

On top of that, clients really do not and will not care where you learned the things you do for them. College degrees mean pretty much nothing when working with clients and they definitely don't matter when it comes to making more money as a designer or developer.

Still, the real question is whether or not I could have learned all of the things college taught me on my own. And the answer to that is a resounding yes. I know I could, because I did exactly that. Website development is something I learned completely on my own and it's far more technically complex than graphic design. Which I also improved in, massively, since working with clients. Nothing really beats experience and the only way to get experience is to put in the time and effort required to get it.

And you can learn anything you need to as well. The internet is a massive library of knowledge that will allow you to learn pretty much any creative skill you can think of. If you're young and financially able to, I would say go to college. Take advantage of a structured system designed to teach you the basics. But if you're older, or if you can't afford to go to college, either because it costs too much money or because you don't have the time, don't worry about it. You're going to do just fine without it. Trust your ability to learn and educate yourself. Being self-taught is a superpower, not a disadvantage.

CHAPTERS
00:00 - Intro
00:25 - My college experience
01:37 - Learning on your own
03:27 - Clients, employers, money and college degrees
05:57 - Teaching yourself
07:41 - Other benefits of college
08:35 - College won't help you unless...
09:25 - The verdict

#graphicdesign #webdevelopment #college

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