Become a Graphic Design Teacher
So you graduated with your degree in graphic design, but what do you do now? Only the very best (and luckiest) artists get hired to create art for a living, so if you’re not the cream of the crop, you’re out of luck, my friend. There’s one option that can be more open, and that is teaching graphic design. Sometimes this involves just coaching an artist who’s just starting out in how to use Flash and Dreamweaver, but it could also mean standing at the front of a lethargic art class and explaining to students why it’s bad to use X-acto blades for purposes of self-mutilation, or how they shouldn’t dump plaster down the sink drain. Sounds captivating, doesn’t it?
Unless you’ve got a master’s degree in art, you probably won’t be teaching any college courses; colleges and universities often require something higher than a bachelor’s degree before they let you become a professor. If you have no college degree, you will most likely not find a teaching position, no matter how incredible your portfolio may be. So, that means you can either teach online college courses or go back to high school – the temple of perpetually-flowing hormones and drama that puts soap operas to shame – to wrangle a couple dozen students to try and get them to do something creative. This could be asking for a lot from an age group that for the most part thinks elbow grease is something you can buy from home improvement stores. In most art classes many of the students will merely goof off because they needed an elective and they figured the art class would be their naptime and they can just doodle something on a paper bag and hand it in two weeks after it’s due. But there will also be students with real talent and passion, and they’re the ones who make the job worth it. Instead of teaching in person at a high school you may want to try teaching online, which is probably one of the more brilliant work at home ideas, comparatively to the many scams that can be found out there.
To teach graphic design is to bestow upon complete strangers knowledge that you paid to have drilled into your head for several years. As with any teaching job, such a career will be very rewarding if it’s what you really want to do and if you can handle 30+ teenagers at once. You’ll probably feel the desire to punch something some days when dealing with high-schoolers or jr. college students. If you don’t feel you can fight the urge to strike, you might want to look into a career more suitable for someone with slight anger issues…like pyrotechnics.
Graphic design instructor jobs, like any other graphic design jobs, are very hard to obtain. There’s really no shortage of any kind of designer – in fact, there’s an overabundance of professional artists and not enough jobs for all of them. So, if being a graphic design teacher is what you really want to do for a living and you find an open teaching position, then go for it. Or maybe you can make some money teaching monthly Adobe Creative Suite tutorial classes. A final word of advice is this: do not teach as a fallback job. If your heart is not set on educating ignorant people how to be like you, you will make yourself and your students miserable.
Posted in: Jobs for Graphic Designers
