What being featured in Graphic Design School taught me about creative confidence

In 2020, a huge amount of my graduate portfolio was featured in the seventh edition of Graphic Design School, which still makes me laugh slightly because I had spent a lot of university worrying I was not actually arty or special enough to be there. I did not even apply to be in the book, I shot my shot and applied for a midweight publishing design job when I was very much still a junior designer, I did not get an interview, which in hindsight was probably fair because I was punching above my weight, but they told me they loved my work and asked whether they could feature it in the next edition of Graphic Design School instead, and I remember thinking that was honestly even better.

They did not just want one project either, they wanted a huge amount of my student portfolio, including sketches and explanations of the thinking behind the work, so considering how insecure I had been about that portfolio, suddenly having somebody want to use it to teach other designers how to design was a lot to process, looking back now, the reasons they were interested in it make much more sense to me than they did at the time.

I think I had gone from not feeling standard enough before university to suddenly not feeling cool, arty or different enough once I got there, because apparently my brain likes variety. I was undiagnosed autistic and ADHD at the time, so I did not understand why certain environments felt so difficult or why I always seemed slightly out of step with everybody else, and after already feeling different at school and college, I went to a really good art university and discovered an entirely new set of standards I apparently did not understand.

Everyone seemed to be into Wes Anderson, while I was into anime and Marvel, and on my first day at university they made us watch The Royal Tenenbaums, which I had never seen before, and I hated it. I remember genuinely wanting to cry and go home because everybody else seemed to understand what was brilliant about it, while I was sitting there thinking the plot did not make much sense narratively, it felt whimsical for the sake of being whimsical and all the characters were miserable, so I immediately felt like maybe I did not understand creativity in the same way everybody else did.

No hate to Wes Anderson, because I understand much better now why his films exist in the format they do and what people love about them, but I am a narrative girl, I am a writer and I am a strategist, so things have to make sense to me and I want to know why a decision exists. Looking back, that was probably already the strategist part of my brain showing up long before I had any idea that was where my career would eventually go.

Why was I always asking what the point was?

Even at art university I felt weird because I was probably too serious for some of my tutors, my work was good but I sometimes felt as though they wanted me to be more artsy or whimsical simply for the sake of being creative, while my response was usually some variation of, but what is the point? I wanted to know what this random artsy thing actually did, why it was there, who it was communicating with and what changed because I made that decision, and at the time that made me worry I was somehow less creative than the people around me.

Other students seemed much more comfortable experimenting for the sake of experimenting, while I wanted everything to have a reason behind it, then the funny part was that when Graphic Design School contacted me, those reasons were exactly what they wanted. It was a teaching book, so they were interested in how I got from the original idea to the finished design, they wanted sketches, development work and explanations because every piece I had made had thinking behind it, and I had spent years feeling as though I was not creative enough only to suddenly have my work used as an example of how to make considered design decisions.

That meant a lot more than I understood at the time, because where I had occasionally felt too serious or too strategic at university, the people putting together a book for other designers saw value in the fact that I could explain why I had made each decision.

Was I actually less creative, or was I just a different kind of creative?

This is probably the bit I understand much better now because I no longer think creativity means producing the strangest or most artistic idea in the room, I care about purpose, I want to know what the design is supposed to do, what somebody needs to understand when they see it and why one creative direction makes more sense than another. I still work like that now, except I finally have better language for it and a job title that actually fits.

That thinking sits underneath my brand strategy and marketing services, because when I create or advise on a brand I am still asking exactly the same questions I was asking at university, why this colour, why this visual direction, why this message, what is it telling the customer and does it actually help the business? Back then I worried that constantly asking what the point was meant I was missing something about creativity, while now it is one of the main reasons people hire me.

Did getting published fix my confidence?

Absolutely not, because apparently having most of your graduate portfolio published in a design book is still not enough when you are committed to being hard on yourself. The feature was brilliant for my career and it helped me get taken seriously, but internally I still felt insecure, then I moved into a more suitable design role not long afterwards and suddenly I was working around senior designers who had years more experience than me, while I was this junior designer who could also say my work had been published in an international book used to teach other designers.

That created a slightly strange dynamic, particularly because I also dealt with bullying and nasty comments from a few senior male designers during that period, so it became another version of something I have experienced a lot in my career, where I was clearly good at the work but still felt out of place in the environment around it. The book did not magically remove that feeling, although it gave me something concrete I could point to when my own confidence was not doing a particularly good job of keeping up.

I still look at the work and think it was not good enough

This is probably the most ridiculous part because I do not even have that old portfolio publicly available anymore, I still have some of the original files and pieces, but I look back at them now and immediately see everything I would change because I am a perfectionist and I have had years to become better since then. Obviously the work of a junior designer fresh out of university does not look exactly like the work I would make now, because if it did I would be slightly concerned about what I had been doing for the last several years, but my brain is very good at skipping that part and going straight to thinking the work was not good enough.

Meanwhile, a large amount of it is sitting in a bloody graphic design book, which is probably evidence that younger me deserves slightly more credit than I naturally give her. The book has almost preserved that period of my life for me because I probably would not have done a particularly good job of preserving it myself, I might have left those files on an old hard drive and gradually dismissed them as student work I had outgrown, while instead they became part of something people around the world have used to learn graphic design.

Even if I am not personally in love with every piece now, the work did something useful and other people saw enough value in it to publish it, so I think I have to let younger me have that one.

Why did the book matter so much at the start of my career?

Being published gave me authority very early because not many junior designers could say a large amount of their portfolio had appeared in a book teaching other designers how to design. I had internships and experience already, but the book immediately gave employers another reason to pay attention to my work, and I got a more suitable design role not long after it was published.

I was not very strategic with the feature at the time because I think I mostly shared it on Facebook and carried on with my life, whereas now I have it proudly on my website because yes, I was published as a junior designer and that is worth mentioning. I think creatives can be particularly bad at deciding that an achievement no longer counts once we have moved beyond the work connected to it, because our standards keep changing and the project we once loved can suddenly feel embarrassing once we know more, but your standards changing does not mean the recognition was meaningless.

Why does this make more sense now that I am a creative strategist?

Looking back, I can see the beginnings of what I do now all over that experience because I was never particularly interested in design as decoration, I liked design, but I also liked writing, ideas, communication and understanding why people responded to things. I wanted creative decisions to have a purpose and I wanted to know what they were actually doing for the person seeing them, which is basically the same way I approach branding and strategy now.

I did not graduate saying I wanted to become a creative strategist because I do not think I even properly understood that career path at the time, but the way I thought was already heading there, and the exact thing that sometimes made me feel awkward in art school eventually became one of the strongest parts of my work.

What do I tell younger creatives who feel out of place?

I still offer consultations and speak to younger people about the creative industry, particularly people who are neurodivergent and already feel as though everybody else understands something they do not, because I know exactly what it feels like to think you are not creative in the right way. I spent years comparing myself with people whose interests and creative instincts looked completely different from mine, while assuming their version was somehow the correct one.

I wish somebody had explained to me earlier that there are lots of ways to be creative, because you can be strategic and creative, you can care about whether something sells and still care deeply about design, and you can absolutely be the person asking what the point is when everybody else seems perfectly happy doing something because it looks interesting, sometimes that question is useful, and for me it eventually became a career.

See also: What rebuilding my business taught me about sustainability as a neurodivergent founder

FAQs

What is Graphic Design School? Graphic Design School is a book that teaches the principles and practice of graphic design, using examples to show how designers develop ideas and make creative decisions, and a large amount of my graduate portfolio, including sketches and development work, was featured in the seventh edition published in 2020.

Do you have to be artistic to become a graphic designer? Graphic design involves creativity, but it also involves communication, problem solving and making considered decisions about how something should work, and I spent university worrying I was not arty enough while the more strategic way I approached design eventually became one of my biggest professional strengths.

Can being published help a junior designer get work? It helped me enormously because it gave employers independent evidence that other people in the industry valued my work, while being able to say my portfolio had been featured in a design teaching book made me much more memorable at a point where I did not yet have years of professional experience behind me.

Does professional recognition get rid of imposter syndrome? It certainly did not for me because I still questioned my work even after being published, although recognition can give you useful evidence when your confidence is struggling and sometimes actually believing that evidence takes much longer.

What being published means to me now

I think I appreciate being featured in Graphic Design School far more now than I did when it actually happened, because at the time I was still too insecure to fully understand what a lovely opportunity it was. I had spent university worrying that I was not arty or special enough, then a teaching book chose a huge amount of my portfolio because the work was considered, purposeful and had real thinking behind it, which feels particularly significant now that strategy has become such a large part of what I do.

Even now I can look at those projects and start picking holes in them, but I also have to acknowledge that they helped people learn design and preserved a version of my work that I might otherwise have dismissed and forgotten, so I am hugely grateful for that. It now feels like one of the earliest clues towards the career I eventually built, because the thing they wanted from me was the thinking behind the design, and that is still the part of creative work I care about most.

If your own business has experience, expertise or recognition that you are probably underusing because you have already moved onto the next thing, my free Business Visibility Playbook helps you look at the authority already sitting inside your business and whether potential customers can actually see it.