An Artist in Reality

The truth about being an artist is that you work more for free or pleasure, than you do for money. Most of your time is spent trying to convince people why they should pay for your art, than actually creating the art. Establishing yourself is a very slow upward crawl, and you never, ever, stop working.

Artists: The misunderstoods of society.

Can we call it a career? Because too often we think of artists and we think it’s a lifestyle. When a stranger ask me, “what you do for a living”, and I respond, ‘I’m an Artist’, I feel so judged. I can almost hear the disappointment in their, “oh that’s interesting” response. But when I say “Graphic Designer” it’s almost like a light bulb goes off in their head, with responses like “that’s a wonderful profession.”

What’s the difference? I’m not just a graphic designer and I hate being labeled by my job. Graphic Design sounds like a luxurious job, and the reality is it’s not. Designers work all the time, are unappreciated and never make as much as they are worth.

The more I’ve worked in the field, the more cynical I’ve become about my job. I would never suggest it to anyone, and if you do decide that this is something you enjoy doing, do it as a hobby and never a profession. I’ve had many, many jobs and the most overwhelmingly common thing in all of them, is that the pay is shit. You can learn to deal with people, to correct errors, to perfect your technique, all this time making you a more valuable Graphic Designer, but at the end of the day, that expensive degree from an international university means nothing. You’re still going to make as much as that accounts clerk with high school qualifications.

So skip the fancy art school, and just be the accounts clerk, you get to go home at the end of the day and binge watch episodes of Archer, you get time to go to the gym, you get so much free time you’re gonna have to find a hobby, like designing.

I met a doctor, who was a doctor 9 to 5 and a photographer the rest of the time. He could afford this hobby with his well-paying job, he had a fancy camera, lights and the space for a studio. He was a smart man. Why didn’t I study hard to have a job that would pay me plenty more? Doctor, Lawyer, Scientist – something that paid highly, so I could afford to help my uncle out with a flyer for his school’s bazaar.

Instead, I make shit, then I work for free, especially when you have those people that say “design a tattoo for me” or “design a logo for me”, anyone that ask for a tattoo design, isn’t serious, that’s a fact. And it’s a 50/50 chance that that part-time DJ that asked you for a logo is actually going to pay you. Those are the same assholes that go to the drive thru, order, then change their minds and leave before they get to the pay/pick up window.

Recently, no one wants to hear me rant about how much I hate working. Because I can go on, and on, and on. Which is how this blog came to be. But truthfully, I like being an artist, and I couldn’t possibly be anything else. Sometimes you get good clients and sometimes you get bad clients, sometimes you get paid and sometimes you don’t. But at the end of the day you get to be creative all day, you get paid, though it won’t be much, you get paid to be a creative, and that in itself is rewarding. You will have bad days, even weeks, but when you see that bus drive-by with your design plastered all over it, you forget what an asshole that client was and how worth it it all seems.