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No Design Degree Needed to Work in Design
Tuesday 18th October 2011

This month, Sheffield web design agency, Hydra Creative's, Knowledge Base article has been written by one of our Multimedia Developers, Nathan Richards.  He discusses how hard work, skill and determination are just as important characteristics of a successful career in the Multimedia Design Industry as formal qualifications.

I always knew that I wanted to work in the design industry, but I didn't enjoy college half as much as I thought I would. So I dropped out of the design course I was enrolled on, and ended up working full time in a call centre. Although I was doing well in my role, it wasn't the career I had imagined for myself, and so I began my search for a junior position in a Multimedia Design Agency, somewhere where I could start my career from scratch, and get the training and support I would need.

I finally managed to secure an unpaid part time internship role with local Multimedia Design Agency, Hydra Creative Limited, which meant that I was still able to earn money at my other job whilst I built up my experience in the industry I eventually wanted to work in full time. Due to my hard work in the office (and some very late nights once I got home), I found that very soon I was able to bring my ideas to life using digital design techniques – although admittedly with a lot of tweaking! This gave me confidence, and helped me to push forward with my professional skill development, as well as giving me the courage to ask Ryan, the Creative Director, for support to learn new techniques that I wanted to try.

As my skills developed, I gradually found that I could compare a design that I had produced a month or so earlier with a more recent design, and see a marked difference between the two, in both quality and sophistication. This showed me that if you put the hours and dedication in, you can rapidly improve. I spent all the time I could watching tutorials, asking for tips, reading design books and generally trying to improve my work every day, any way I could.

I will be honest and say that if you want to be even just an acceptable junior designer, that you are in for a very steep learning curve, but at the same time, if you enjoy the work and have the passion and drive to improve and do your best, then it's very rewarding to get that slap on the back from the team you're working in for a job well done.

Through sheer hard work, my designs improved enough to get me noticed as a potential future talent, and as a result I was offered a paid position as Junior Multimedia Designer at Hydra Creative. Ryan mentored me personally, as well as sending me on courses for DreamWeaver, and as a result, a year on from my initial unpaid internship, I am now completing professional designs that both myself and our clients are very happy with. I have a full understanding of html, dynamic content, have got to grips with PHP, and am able to build a fully functioning wordpress website within a day – something I didn't think I'd ever be able to do when I was first shown the code a couple of weeks into the job.

Nathan Richards is a Multimedia Developer at Hydra Creative Limited, where his creative talent is put to good use creating designs that help support clients businesses to develop and grow. You can contact him by email at: nathan@hydracreative.com

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