Recently, I’ve taken a handful of informational calls with young creatives looking for career advice. Fifteen years ago, I was the one asking these questions. Now, apparently, I’m supposed to have the answers. Boy, do I feel old all of a sudden.
Back then, the advice I got was pretty straightforward. Get your foot in the door. Work hard. Learn everything you can. Build relationships. That was more or less the path I followed, and it worked pretty well for me. But creative industries look very different today.
The last several years of corporate life have been especially rough. Mergers, acquisitions, restructuring, layoffs, even more layoffs. I’ve watched talented people lose jobs they held for decades as companies consolidated. Those few individuals who are left end up taking on the responsibilities of entire teams. It’s not sustainable.
And then there’s AI. As a designer and creative director, I have complicated feelings about it. I use it regularly and find it helpful for some things, like editing this blog post. I also find it unsettling that certain skills I spent years mastering can now be accomplished in seconds.
Still, I think AI has made one thing obvious: taste matters more than ever. Making something is getting so much easier. Knowing what to make, why it works, and who it’s for is another matter. But the Catch-22 is that judgement takes practice. You develop those skills through years of experimentation and making tons of bad work. You still need to understand composition, typography, color, and storytelling. AI can speed up the process, but it can’t replace that foundation.
Which raises a question I keep coming back to: What happens to young creatives when the entry-level work that taught my generation those skills starts disappearing? I wish I had an answer. For now, my advice is to learn the fundamentals, embrace new tools, develop your own point of view, and stay adaptable. And be nice to people. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.
Would I still recommend following the same path I did? I’m not sure. I’ve had a career I’m proud of. I’ve worked on projects I love, met wonderful people, and made a living doing something I genuinely enjoy. I wouldn’t trade that experience.
But after fifteen years of watching the business change dramatically, I’m less convinced that a traditional career at a major company offers the opportunities or stability it once did. Maybe the better advice is to pursue the creative work itself, rather than the industry it’s in. And if I’ve learned anything, definitely don’t tie your entire future to the fate of a large media conglomerate.
I wish I had something more reassuring to tell these young creatives. But fifteen years ago, I also never imagined we’d be competing with a computer that can make a movie poster in the time it takes to microwave a burrito.