FutureBreeder said:
I am looking into a graphic design future in something along the lines of creating bull promotion ads and sale catalogs. I was wondering what kind of schooling requirements businesses have for their employees.
Arethere were any businesses like this located near NE IA?
I am a graphic designer living in Alberta, Canada. Honestly, there are a very minimum number of requirements to get set up in the promotion/sale catalogs business. There are many people who's only claim to the job is that they own a computer with photoshop. I am probably bitter about this because I spent a big chunk of change and 4 years getting a Visual Communications degree from a program known for turning out some innovative thinkers in the field of marketing!! I know Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash, and can code HTML and CSS. If I went back to school, it would be to learn PHP and programming for interactive websites, as I think this would be an asset. I worked at advertising agencies doing marketing for large companies before setting out on my own to get some experience dealing with clients.
Unfortunately, in some parts of the world, there is not alot of money to be made in the promotion of cattle and there are not big budgets for innovative marketing ideas – for good reason. In many cases, the person producing the calf still understands the value of what the designer is doing but they simply can't afford to spend all their profits selling that calf on getting an ad built. It generally takes me 7 - 12 hours to build an ad, and that ad needs to justify spending that amount of money on it. If they can get what I am doing for half the price somewhere else, and they don't cut their profits by half getting that ad somewhere else, it is hard to justify them coming to me to build their ad. I do have some great clients in the field of agriculture, but I generally charge them less than my non-agriculture clients. The benefit to actually going to school to learn marketing and design is that when the price of cattle is in the tank, you can make your living working for clients in the non-agriculture sector and are not forced to switch careers.
Farmers are known for their 'do it yourself' ethos and are often of the school of thought 'why pay you to do it if I can do it?' You will run into this often in your design career. You may be able to work this to your advantage and get as much experience as you can before you go to school. Open up the above programs and play around in them. Many colleges offer night classes in these programs which will give you an upper hand. Start building "fake" ads to get the hang of it. Look to some great designers and see what they do (Ranch House Designs, Arin Strasburg, Stephanie Cronin). Develop a portfolio of work that you can show people to advertise your work, and for goodness sake's, whatever you do, DO NOT work for cheap to get some experience. If you must do work to get experience, do the work for FREE, give the customer a receipt that states the exact amount of what you did, and then mark at the bottom that it was a design donation. They will know the value of what they are getting, and customers that get "free" work know they can't send you 30 rounds of changes and not have you tell them to hit the bricks. Customers who are getting cheap design often don't value what you do, and will send you any number of rounds of changes because after all, they are still paying you.
If I can be of more assistance, please PM me. Good luck!
