I may have mentioned earlier that the Minneapolis area is lousy with design students. It stands to reason that it is also lousy with design schools, which will soon be regurgitating their latest meal into the local market blinking in the light and wondering where all the good jobs are.
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I'm serious. Figure out some way to put off graduation until next year. Two years, if you can fund it.
If not, be prepared to work a lot of jobs where you are unhappy and not doing much design. Put up with these jobs. Try not to complain that you went to design school, dammit, and you got a design degree, which makes you a designer and not some receptionist at an ad agency. Or in sales at a printing company. Or whatever.
If you hold out for the dream jobs, you will waste precious time where you could be networking with coworkers in a related industry, which is where you'll find your next job. And the one after that. And so on, each job getting you closer to landing that dream job as a creative director at some hip, well-paying ad agency.
The alternative is to start your own design business immediately. Do not be tempted to charge too little for your services as you will eventually starve and seek employment elsewhere. Read up on what it takes to start and run a business (The Creative Business Guide to Running a Graphic Design Business, lengthily though aptly titled, was indispensable to me) and be prepared for a lot of work. But it's better to starve now than to starve later, and if you're thinking about going out on your own do it while you're young and your mistakes will be less expensive.
Above all, never complain about the lack of design jobs. Get out there and find something in the field, get some experience and use that as a place to jump to something better. Eventually you'll stop jumping and you'll discover that you actually like what you do. If you're lucky you'll remember why you wanted to be a designer in the first place.
On a related topic, I'm planning on going to PIVOT, the 2008 MCTC Portfolio Show. Student shows are often hard for me to see. In the one hand you have a lot of substandard work that feels student-y; knowing that someday they will be pretty good if they keep at it doesn't make looking at bad design any easier. The other hand contains the really talented students, the ones who are better now than I'll ever be. Those are the hardest to look at, because the design is so good and will only get better with experience. And they're just graduating.
My only hope is that I'll eventually get to hire some of them, and make their lives hell until they quit for a better job elsewhere. I should change my name to Salieri Design.
My spellchecker wants that to be 'Salary Design' and I can't blame it given the current economy. Good luck, class of 2008.
