Mindful Creative Career Planning Guide
Welcome to Rebecca’s Notes (that’s me!) on Navigating your Creative Career Path in Surface Design. In this Cliff's Notes style summary for your career – and no, I’m totally not dating myself here 🤣 – I'm sharing insights for you to ponder as you plan the next steps on your journey in this creative industry.
These tips are meant to help you be mindful whether you’re a designer, artist, or other creative person no matter if you’re at the start of your career, or pivoting down the line with a ton of experience under your belt already. I was fortunate to begin my career with in house entry-level work in fashion and publishing, and over 18 years of diverse freelance work – those early years allotted me hands on experience I wouldn’t have traded for anything. It helped me to move into the future freelance roles that put me on a trajectory to eventually transition into the Creative Director role I hold today.
From those in-house job days early in my career, to freelancing for clients in fashion, accessories & interiors, to selling designs on consignment for women’s fashion prints, to licensing art & photography prints, stationery, and gift wrap with Minted… it’s been quite the career evolution if I do say so myself!
As licensing has become a hot topic in recent years, largely because its proponents have asserted that it’s the best way to work because you maintain ownership of all of your work and can continue to make money on it for years to come. Though this is true, it might not always be the best choice for everyone, and it might not be the best place to focus when you are just getting started.
I constantly hear how the market seems oversaturated, this is mainly because there are a lot of people (and now AI) cranking out patterns and artwork, but don’t be discouraged! Remember: These are not necessarily the best quality or well-thought-out or rendered designs. Taking a bunch of motifs, putting them in a square, and making them repeat does not necessarily equal the most marketable designs.
In the short term, quality is more important than quantity, and in the long run, having a large portfolio of high-quality, marketable, in-demand work is what makes for a successful career. That’s where having in-house experience or spending a good amount of time studying the industry plays such a pivotal role in providing the foundational understanding of the different markets for your long term career planning. Though it can feel fulfilling to make whatever our hearts desire as artists, to make a successful transition from hobbyist to earning a full time income from your creative work, we must always consider commercial viability to understand what is more likely to sell, and why.
There are a variety of ways for you to work and find where you fit in this industry, depending on your talents and strengths. As your skillset grows, focus on improving your craft and keep tabs on the knowledge gaps you need to fill. Be open to opportunities while still knowing your worth. An inflexible mindset can cause you to miss some worthwhile options to earn a sustainable and comfortable income.
Let's dive into strategically and genuinely finding your place!
How would you like to work?
Note: Pretty much all jobs/creative careers will have some level of administrative work. However, based on the level you are at in your career, you may be able to outsource some of those responsibilities. I think it's important to highlight this because even creative careers have some mundane parts in their day-to-day.
In house
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My journey in-house began with an internship my junior year of college, at New York & Co in the technical design department where I learned about drafting sewing patterns and was introduced to surface design. After graduating from RISD, spending a summer backpacking around Europe and working a few non-creative temp jobs, I got my first entry level position as an Assistant Art Director at a Publishing company in their Children’s Sound Book Division working with some of my favorite licensed characters from my childhood. As I worked my way up to Art Director, I felt my interest in Surface Design grow everyday I walked past the Stationery division.
Inspired and wanting to further my education in surface design, I enrolled at FIDM for their 9-month professional designation certificate program. Subsequently, I went on to work at Guess designing T-shirt Graphics, Embroidery, Appliqués, and Patterns for a couple of years before transitioning to a Fulltime Freelancer. These experiences helped me understand the inner workings of the business side of the industry as well as the commercial viability of design. I learned about budgeting, planning, terminology, production set-up, and a wide range of issues that could crop up while working on a project, the insights I gained went far beyond impacting my design skills.
Working in-house also offers the advantage of diversifying your design skills, particularly in adapting to various styles, which is essential for tasks like finishing, augmenting, or creating coordinating designs from purchased artwork. Additionally, in-house roles often entail extensive pre-production activities, including layout/repeats, color separations, creating colorways, and preparing files for production with detailed notes and specifications for manufacturers.
When I worked in fashion they always talked about “the girl" or “the woman:” What she was doing each season? What was the fantasy life she aspired to? All of that played into the theme and mood boards for the season. Seeing how everything was developed into separate designs/products for the collection each season and how ideas evolved to finished products taught me how these particular companies understood their customer.
Some in-house positions may require a certain degree (BFA) or level of experience, while some entry-level positions may just call for a portfolio or require an application project. If you need to gain some experience to get to this level and sharpen your skills, one way is to reach out to smaller companies and designers for apprenticeship training. To work in this sector, you should have some computer knowledge of certain programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and NedGraphics. I also highly recommend being familiar with the Microsoft Office Suite for administrative tasks, as well.
Pros
✔️ Having a certain amount of financial security with a salary, vacation and sick days, and sometimes a health plan, 401k, and other benefits or job perks (employee discounts & stock options)
✔️ Getting paid to continue learning hands-on in the industry
✔️ The chance to work your way up, earning a higher salary with more responsibility
✔️ Coworkers to share techniques and mentors for guidance
✔️ The opportunity to learn presentation skills, industry terminology, and pre-production setup and challenges
✔️ See a wide variety of merchandise being developed from ideation through production, providing a better understanding of scale, design assortment, and range of layouts for products
✔️ Gain an understanding of how to better set up your own work to make it easier to work for companies and manufacturers
✔️ Having a hand in creating a product line or collection and seeing your work in the world in stores, magazines, and occasionally in shows & movies.
Cons
👎🏼Some opportunities can be less creative due to position level, time constraints, and often entail working with artwork from freelancers or bought from studios
👎🏼 Projects are assigned by the creative director often with some input from marketing or other departments, so you don’t usually get a say in what you are working on
👎🏼 Continuous feedback and direction from the design director, various other departments, and sometimes even the owner of the company
👎🏼 You don’t own the work you create – the company does
👎🏼 Often lots of time on-site with a set schedule, and meetings that cut into working time
👎🏼 Usually requires living near the office or dealing with longer commuting times
👎🏼 Sometimes the job can feel redundant after a while
➡️ Overall takeaway: Working in-house can be a really great learning opportunity and a way to grow your skills with plenty of other payoffs.
Freelance
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The vast majority of my career has been freelancing. I started freelancing when I went back to school for Surface Design to help pay for expenses and gain more experience. Apart from a desire to live in SoCal, I chose to study at FIDM because of the potential job opportunities listed through the career center. I already had a BFA and my experience from my internship in fashion and working as an art director in publishing gave me certain skills that I could carry over into doing everything from garment and product flat sketches to illustrations for embroidery and t-shirts.
Freelancing often requires you to be creatively versatile, to have the ability to mimic styles and techniques to finish cut-off artwork, revise artwork, and make coordinates. Sometimes, clients might approach you for your style but a lot of clients are looking for designers that can mainly follow their direction for a collection and interpret their vision.
Some clients will have in-house teams to handle the production set-up and are just looking for freelancers to do the concept development artwork, usually because their in-house team doesn’t have the time to create everything from scratch, or have specific surface pattern design skills like repeats, color separations, and colorways. This is the exception, though, not the rule.
More often in my freelance career, I worked on projects from development through production. For this reason, as a freelancer, it’s important to understand production and how to set-up files for manufacturing. As a freelancer, I created more original work than when I was in-house elsewhere, but I still worked with some bought artwork from studios as well as antique documents.
Communication skills are extremely important! Know the questions to ask to understand what the client wants – sometimes you have to really probe to get all of the answers. And make sure to have a contract to protect yourself and ensure that you get paid.
Pros
✔️ No income ceiling, so you can set and adjust rates as you see fit
✔️ Paid by the project, allotting you the ability to work with multiple clients at once depending on the deadlines and workload you want to take on
✔️ Freedom to set your own schedule and work from anywhere
✔️ Can pick projects that interest you and fit the way you like to work
✔️ Work can be more diverse based on your client list
✔️ Opportunity to build ongoing/repeat client relationships and happy customers can often lead to referrals
✔️ Finding work and clients is often based on portfolio and skills, and less so on formal education
✔️ Seeing your work in the world and occasionally getting product samples of the designs you helped develop
Cons
👎🏼 It can be challenging at times to find the right opportunities
👎🏼 It can take time to build a full client roster and full time income
👎🏼 Irregular income with some clients paying late (definitely use those contracts!)
👎🏼 Buying all of your own supplies/equipment, although you can write these expenses off on your taxes
👎🏼 No paid vacation time, sick leave or company subsidized health plan
👎🏼 Working alone can make you feel lonely and wish for a colleague to discuss issues with and get feedback from
👎🏼 Wearing all of the hats (especially when just starting out): Design, admin, marketing, sales, bookkeeping, legal, invoicing/finding new clients
👎🏼 Typically clients still own the rights to the work you produce for them
➡️ Overall takeaway: Freelancing is flexible but can lack stability, and it can take a while to build up a consistent income stream.
Licensing
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Art Licensing has been something I started dabbling in after my daughter was born. As much as people talk about art licensing being passive income, there is a lot of action and continued action that it takes to build up your portfolio and market your work to find the right jobs to start bringing in some passive income. Designers that have built six-figure+ incomes in licensing didn’t achieve it overnight.
For licensing, it is key to develop at least one signature style that is identifiable in the market. A variety of media can come into play here to set your work apart. You want to strike a balance between fitting in the world to remain commercial while also standing out with your own distinct aesthetic.
One thing that I don’t think is mentioned enough in discussions around licensing, is the timeline. The time elapsed from artwork development to being paid can be around 6 months - 2+ years, since you have to first create a collection, then market it, and find the right partnerships for your work – and this is all before the often lengthy production process begins.
Pros
✔️ Freedom to work from anywhere and provide your own creative direction for your projects
✔️ Great if you like working in a set style that is highly marketable
✔️ You (finally!) own the rights to your work and can request production samples
✔️ Opportunities to pitch work to different companies and industries depending on the licensing agreement – this means you can make money from one piece of artwork or a collection repeatedly and for years to come
✔️ No income ceiling
✔️ With a steady stream of licensing deals, you’ll start receiving payments throughout the year that can feel like you’ve won the lottery
✔️ Seeing your work with your name on it out in the world, and getting messages from customers who love your work
✔️ Great if you are a self-starter, bursting with ideas and prolific in creating your work
Cons
👎🏼 Takes time to find your style and build a large diverse portfolio to earn a full time income
👎🏼 Takes time to find and build the right client relationships
👎🏼 Pitching artwork becomes a large part of your daily/weekly/monthly routine
👎🏼 Irregular payments that can take a long time to reach your bank account
👎🏼 You’re buying all your own supplies and equipment
👎🏼 You need to be extra careful with contracts and terms
👎🏼 No paid vacation time and must cover your own insurance
👎🏼 Working alone is still lonely
👎🏼 You’re probably still wearing all of the hats – design, admin, marketing, sales, bookkeeping, legal, finding new partnerships
➡️ Overall takeaway: Licensing combines the promise of passive income with the need for active portfolio development and marketing, offering creative control and long-term earnings for those willing to navigate its slow but rewarding path.
Consignment
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Though I only worked with a studio to sell my designs briefly, I enjoyed working on projects that were typically more self-directed than my client-based freelance work. I think it’s important to note that for a variety of reasons, some companies may only buy designs outright unless you have a large enough of a following and your own brand recognition to establish a licensing agreement.
Many studios will provide inspiration boards, trend direction, and color palettes. Depending on requests from the companies they work with, Some studios might express expectations of having a certain number of designs created per week or month and may request artwork to be color separated or in layers and in repeat.
Consignment works well when paired with other design career strategies at the same time. For example, consider pairing consignment with freelance or licensing because payments can be a little quicker after the sale of a design. Another avenue to consider is selling designs that don’t get picked up for licensing. Sometimes, it might make more sense to sell certain designs than license them, such as experiments that are not in your signature style.
Pros
✔️ Payment is usually processed and received relatively promptly upon the sale of a design
✔️ Often more creative freedom of working in a variety of media and in a range of styles
✔️ Great if you are prolific when it comes to creating new on trend designs
✔️ Freedom to work from anywhere
✔️ Ability to provide most of your own creative direction for your projects
✔️ When working with a studio there is usually someone or a team that handles sales and marketing designs to companies
✔️ No income ceiling, but also can fluctuate
✔️ You can see your work out in the world
Cons
👎🏼 Selling work for a flat fee that is often set by the industry standards, which haven’t really changed in over a decade
👎🏼 If you work with a sales team, they take a percentage of the money earned
👎🏼 You don’t retain the rights to the work
👎🏼 Need to be constantly adding to and reworking portfolio due to trend-based demands
👎🏼 Can take a while to build up a full-time income
👎🏼 The unpredictability of trends and how they will impact your work
➡️ Overall takeaway: Consignment offers prompt payment and creative flexibility but with the trade-offs of standard flat fees, loss of rights, and the need for constant portfolio updates to meet the ever changing trend demands.
Selling products
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I don’t have my own products (yet), but I had a great chat with Tracy Krauter about her product-based business, which she built to over a million in sales around the time of the interview.
We talked about a sustainable plan for the long game, as it usually takes 3-5 years for a new business to become profitable – something to not take lightly when thinking about your cash flow and testing your products in the market. Creating your own product line is an excellent opportunity to fill holes in the market and to truly infuse your personality into each piece, because there’s not just one right way to do anything in this business.
Also noteworthy from our chat was how to navigate minimum order requirements, strategize inventory management, and calculate pricing for various sales channels, as these are critical to ensuring your product’s profitability and sustainability. Tracy shared some insight on the pricing equations she uses when it comes to both wholesale and retail.
Wholesale Pricing Double costs + 15%(rep/tradeshow)
Retail mark up = wholesale x 2.2 + 20 %
Consider selling in multiple ways - both retail & wholesale, for example you can selling fabric, different product skews made with the fabric, and other coordinating products. You should also think about merchandising and how your product lines coordinate, creating your collections in a way where a person wants the entire set and not just one item.
Pros
✔️ You have full control of what products, design, quality, and quantities you make
✔️ You can add personalization to packages when you ship them
✔️ Ability to earn more because of full control of setting pricing
✔️ You get direct access to customer engagement which helps tailor your product line to what your clientele is looking for
✔️ The opportunity to create a positive impact on your community through business growth
✔️ Ability to build your brand identity in a more authentic way
Cons
👎🏼 More risk: covering all the expenses of strike-offs/samples and buying products without guarantee of sales
👎🏼 Minimum order constraints with manufacturers
👎🏼 Really wearing all of the hats like never before: Sales, marketing, product photography, fulfillment, bookkeeping, website/store management, wholesale partnerships, and overseeing manufacturing, until you can afford to hire employees or outsource
👎🏼 Higher expectations of operating during “business hours”
👎🏼 Manufacturing challenges involving lots of trial and error
👎🏼 Time management challenges with splitting time between business needs and creative work
👎🏼 Being dependent on suppliers and distribution channels that come with their own risks
➡️ Overall takeaway: Selling products offers total creative and operational control, potentially higher earnings, and personal touch opportunities, but comes with significant risks, operational demands, and the challenge of juggling numerous roles.
POD (Print On Demand)
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Recently, the Print On Demand space has changed a lot.
Spoonflower is setting weekly upload limits, switching to a digital proofing system over ordering samples, and delisting designs that have not gotten any sales or reached a certain number of likes. Other sites now charge a fee if you want to upload beyond 10 designs or have certain criteria to qualify for a higher level of account.
As with all markets, the POD market comes down to understanding what works best for each site and its customer base. What are they looking for?
With Print On Demand, there is the added bonus of more customization and more niche or unique products that might not be as likely to be picked up by more mass-market retailers. It allows you to experiment with your style, as well as place your work on products.
These sites can also act as a portfolio site for potential clients and licensing partners to find you to reach out for collaborations. I myself tried my hand at POD, especially during the pandemic, selling designs for masks. Although it hasn't been a central focus in my career, given my time constraints, I recognize its potential value. There are people that do earn a decent income from their print on demand shops and having those shops have allowed them to grow an audience for their work which have opened the doors to other career opportunities.
Selling photography, designs & resources (fonts, mock-ups, templates, textures, illustrations) through stock sites like Creative Market or iStock (with different licensing/use terms) is also an option in this space.
Pros
✔️ Great market for more unique, non-traditional, and niche designs
✔️ A good opportunity for customization and personalization without as much concern for ordering samples
✔️ Freedom to work from wherever
✔️ Complete control of your own creative direction for your projects
✔️ Less of an up-front investment
Cons
👎🏼 Smaller commission earnings because of a narrower market
👎🏼 Sites that charge a monthly fee to have items listed, whether you make sales or not
👎🏼 Less quality control – although most will do refunds or replace orders if there are quality issues
👎🏼 Higher worry of designs being stolen or copied
👎🏼 Feeling lost in a very crowded market
➡️ Overall takeaway: POD offers a platform for unique, niche designs with customization options and low upfront investment, but faces challenges like smaller commissions, potential listing fees, and less quality control.
⭐️ Now do your market research and see what best aligns for you. Then, as yourself:
🤔 Where would you love to work?
Do you have a dream company that you would love to work for or with or the dream of creating your own company?
🤔 Who is going to love your work?
Men, Women, Teens, Kids, Babies?
As you plan, remember that flexibility and persistence are key. While it's crucial to set clear goals and deadlines, be prepared for the unexpected. Sometimes, the best path might diverge from your original plan. Trust your gut, and if you feel a strong pull towards a new direction, don't be afraid to pivot. No choice has to be set in stone, and the beauty of creative skills is that they can often carry over into a variety of different career paths and job opportunities.
Acknowledge that new paths bring challenges and learning opportunities. Embrace them, and don't be discouraged by missed deadlines or initial setbacks. These are part of your development and growth. Document your steps, learn from each experience, and refine your roadmap for future endeavors. Your creative path is unique, and it's about finding a balance between strategic planning and listening to your instincts.
As a designer, I know how challenging it has become to figure out how to start your career in the current social media age where on top of finding your place you have to know all of the things like business, marketing, and sales that aren’t typically a big part of the art & design school curriculum. However, though it’s important to learn how to network effectively, how to figure out who your audience is, how to price your work, etc., it’s more important to not let your own knowledge gaps stand in your way as a barrier in starting your career.
You don’t need to have everything figured out before you leap! So, have the patience to take it all one step at a time, the freedom to pivot or change paths, and above all enjoy the journey!
Here's to a future filled with creativity, inspiration, and success in all our artistic endeavors!