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Anonymous03/04/25, 19:57No.459830Fuck Graphic Design
I feel like I’ve wasted 15 years of my life, and my career has led me nowhere. At 35, I should be at my peak in terms of earnings and health, yet I’m a nobody. I keep ending up in shitty companies where I’m expected to do everything while getting paid less than gate keeper. For the past 10 years, I’ve designed websites, logos, mobile apps, print materials, books, t-shirt prints, labels, packaging, product photography, social media content, 3D designs, modeling, animation, and simulations. If I had focused on one thing from the start, I’d be an expert in a specific field by now and making decent money. Unfortunately, the harsh truth is this: if you are able to do anything that means you are good at nothing. When there are job listings for simple graphic work, they don’t want someone with 5+ years of experience. If they do want someone with 5 years of experience, they expect an expert in one particular niche. Today, no one even wants to spit in my direction. No one is looking for a 35-year-old guy who has done everything (but nothing specific) because they have 100 young, dynamic grads fresh out of college to choose from. The competition in the big city is just too strong. For the past 5 years, I’ve been working from home part-time, and somehow manage to pay the rent. The MS diagnosis broke me. Depression, no friends, far from family, always making excuses. If it weren’t for my wife earning well and help from my in-laws, I’d have nothing. It feels like everyone around me is doing fine, earning well, and building great careers - except me. I’m feeling down, I’m sick of this fucking city and its weather. I just needed to get this off my chest.
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Anon03/05/25, 16:37No.459833
I am thankful I noticed it early and specialized in food packaging design. You can so something similar, I mean, if you are good on, idk, websites and apps, overplay your hand on how much have you worked on them on your resumés so it looks like you are an expert.You can also dominate AI tools then cover some "AI expert" role in a design studio, (this role is 90% soft skills). Or you can also still switch to coding. Data analysis, BI expert and some other roles can incorporate your knowledge of design to it. Btw, once I talked with the head designer of a huge bank in my country and basically she said that she would love to have a designer that know programming or the other way around as the roles clashed frequently. I mean, it is one person in a foreign country of yours, but I think you can use think about it if you want to learn how to code.It was nice to hear you. But when you are fine, think about what you want a trace a plan with short steps so you can update your successes.
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Anon03/06/25, 05:25No.459841
you have 10 years experience on how to get shit done.
what do you enjoy making the most? just build a freelance business around that
move out the city if you can, it's true, it makes people very sick.
career types do well in corporate culture, you sound more like a rebelfreelance motherfucker as my main man MC Ride would say
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Anon03/09/25, 09:36No.459856
dont care desu
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Anon03/09/25, 09:38No.459857
kill urself faggot :^)
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Anon03/09/25, 22:14No.459861
If you think this is bad, just wait until AI comes in full force, it will render 99% of designers useless.
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Anon05/02/25, 04:29No.460213
Generalists like yourself do well when they spread their wings and use their network of vendors to roll over into consulting gigs. Granted it's risky but if you do a little research in that direction, you may be surprised with the results.
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Anon05/11/25, 10:09No.460270
Ah yes, 35—seems like the cutoff for the fool’s phase. If you haven’t made it by now, it’s over. Welcome to the club.
Experience is a fools argument...of wasted time.
Means you don't get it and are just older.
What ever, doesn't matter.
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Anon07/04/25, 19:50No.460732
Can't you design logos as freelancer? I've met several who started with zero and earn much more than 100k within few years. Are you good? Why not try it?
>narrative design
I recently learned the word or rather concept. Explains a lot, really. It's of course subjective, but it does exist imho. My question is, how can I reverse engineer such a narrative when I only have the design? Is that even possible? Let's say I have the BMW z1, how to find out that the narrative concept was?
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Anon07/04/25, 19:54No.460733
>No one is looking for a 35-year-old
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Anon07/27/25, 01:51No.460932
I've read everyone's posts. Buncha masochist retards the lot of you.
OP, you need to learn marketing. You need sales skills. With those skills you can frame everything you've said into a sales pitch that gets you what you want. Read the book "Positioning" and you will better understand your talents and experience, as well as your craft. Look into the books by marketing experts like Seth Godin.
This will be sufficient in changing your outlook and reversing your career course away from the ditch.
Learn copywriting, improve your storytelling skills. You're gonna be fine.
A lot of you would benefit from goal-oriented therapy.
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Anon08/01/25, 06:56No.460974
You should start a small publishing company… maybe comic books or something like a cooking magazine… OWN IT!, PUBLISH IT!!! SELL IT!!! So we can Buy It!
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Anon09/01/25, 01:33No.461796
>MS diagnosisI'm sorry to hear that, brother.
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Anon09/13/25, 19:56No.462044
>Sudden business
Just make something dude
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Anon09/24/25, 20:08No.462204
Ever thought of giving private classes or getting some teacher's degree so you can get yourself a comfy teacher's job? I'm mainly an illustrator but i've dabbled in graphic design and right now i'm teaching high schoolers about graphic design and some of them are light years ahead of me in terms of design. It isn't a good paid job but the turnside is that there aren't many work hours, so you can do a side hustle while having some steady income without wanting to kill yourself from doing the 9 to 5
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Anon11/04/25, 12:19No.462632
OP ready Mastery by Robert Greene. Until you do this, keep complaining and eat shit
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Anon11/06/25, 01:32No.462653
the first anon who said specialize had the right idea. if you've been a generalist for years the good news is no matter what you decide to go for you probably already have some portfolio fodder and transferrable skills you can use.just to give you an example of an absurd specialization that's actually real, look up fictional ui design. there's people who literally just make the ui's inside sci fi films and video games and stuff like that. anything out there that exists and is graphics based, someone designed it, they probably specialize in it, and they probably get paid a ton to do it. you want another weird one? heraldic design. it's actually still used by a ton of organizations and there's firms hiring all the time. there's a ton of graphic design jobs out there people don't even know exist.so figure out a niche and go all in, you have like 30 more years of a professional life ahead of you. there's never been a better time to pivot.
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Anon11/16/25, 23:15No.462830
>The MS diagnosis broke me
Wish you the best man. RIP my gamer bro Scoobs
So what are you good at and would actually want to focus on to get better at in the future? Why? Forget money and know your role now and what you're striving for in 1 year, 5.
Anyways post hand I want to see something...
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Anon11/16/25, 23:26No.462831
same fucking situation. Had a good run. Made almost 10.000 dollars per month as a 3D artist. Now i cant find any fucking position. Doing high-end and web programming for fucking 2000 per month and not that works now.
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Anon02/03/26, 20:51No.463610
OP update: I was looking for a job over 4 months. Found something kind of related to my skills. Office looks like shit, medium money, flexible hours, boss with ADHD, doing social media, product photography and bunch of shit not related to my experience but at least I am able to pay the bills. Not good not bad.
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Anon02/24/26, 04:45No.463772
>15 years
oof ive been doing it for 8 and desu good results there's plenty of days where you feel like its a dead end and most days ... it is BUT like other anons are suggesting make your own work literally everyone has to these days
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Anon06/08/26, 02:07No.464405
Hello /gd/ anons
I am sorry to find you in despair. I'm looking for artists and a trading card game I'm working on, and want to use people from here as much as possible.
If there is anybody interested in work, I would be looking for things like
>packaging designs
>card frames
>promotional material
>logo
I don't know how much these types of service would cost, but want to avoid using AI while using artists from here as much as possible.
The art for the cards themselves I already have worked out for now using public domain traditional art, but if a kickstarter campaign is successful enough I intend on redoing the set 1 cards with custom art
