I Have No Right To Call Myself A Designer
My name is George, and I’m sixteen years old (a few months off of seventeen, if we’re being pedantic). I live in a little town an hour’s train ride from London, and spend six hours, five days a week at my town’s sixth form college studying for my A-Levels. On a Tuesday afternoon, because I love the language (and to avoid rugby!), I volunteer to teach French to primary school children. I jog and keep a social life alive outside of college. I’m also a designer.
I often get nervous telling people, particularly other designers who are older and more experienced I am, that I’m a designer. I haven’t recieved a day of proper design tuition in my life. Surely I have no right to call myself a designer? I’m just a kid with a laptop who’s interested in design.
So what makes someone a designer? I get paid to do design work, and I like to think I do it well. I run my own business as a designer, helping small businesses in and around my town with branding and web design. For a year and a half now I have been working in-house with an American firm. I have business cards with “graphic designer” written on them. Yet there is still that feeling in the back of my mind that no, I’m not a proper designer — how dare I call myself such a thing? I’m just a hobbyist who makes a bit of cash on the side doing what he loves.
One does have to ask then — at what point is someone allowed to call themselves a designer? I have big plans to open my own agency after school but for me, actually studying design full-time is out of reach and off the table. If I never have a piece of paper saying I can design things, am I ever actually a designer? Perhaps this feeling will never go away and I’ll spend my career with this thought in the back of my head. I’m sure there’s a name for it. It’s kind of like impostor syndrome, but on steroids.
I know that the design community is overwhelmingly a kind and welcoming place. I’ve spoken to other young designers like Sean Campbell and it’s exciting to be part of the future of an industry I love. But there’s always the fear of what will be said behind my back about myself and my work. I’m often told that my age works against me, so my solution to that is to simply work twice as hard to offset any preconceptions people might have about me and my work as a designer. Lots of exciting opportunities are popping up for me that a year ago I would never have dreamed of being in reach at my age, but there’s still a little voice there that’s telling me that I shouldn’t be getting these sorts of opportunities yet — I’m sure that lots of people, no matter how far into their careers they are, will agree.
I’ve learnt three things so far as a “designer”:
- My age does work against me, but it’s down to me to consistently show that actually, it means next to nothing.
- Impostor syndrome is a real, real bitch.
- The student discount for Creative Cloud is a gift from the gods.
Despite these feelings of unworthiness, of insecurity, my confidence in my work is growing. I enjoy criticisim and am genuinely enjoying the way my skillset grows every day. Even though I’d say I’ve got a fairly good grasp on the fundamentals of design, I’m still learning, and I’m incredibly grateful for the people who trust me with their design work, giving me this invaluable opportunity to grow every single day. I’m learning how to communicate with clients, how to work as part of a larger design team, and what it takes to run a business.
Above all, I’m just really, really excited about what’s to come for me and my career.
