Career Culture Roadmap
Last updated
Last updated
This assignment is intended to examine a particular person or group of people whose work or career you find inspiring and try to identify aspects of it that may influence your own career trajectory.
Regardless of how one may define success, no one succeeds in a vacuum. Everyone is a product of their environment and the communities they are a part of. Oftentimes success or skill is presented as having emerged fully formed from obscurity, without any help, or without challenges, but that is never true.
Looking at the career of people you admire can provide insight into a roadmap for your own potential career. Sometimes it can show you what to do and sometimes it can show you what not to do.
The questions you find answers to will inherently be dependent on who you pick. If you pick an artist, a question you might want to answer is if there is a particular art space or residency that people in their scene are involved with. For designers, a question might be whether there is a particular design competition that they have won. Is there a conference that people in their space attend or speak at, like Eyeo? For some people, you might see trends for particular qualifications that many people in their field have. You will likely get the most out of this assignment if you pick someone who is actively working today.
Identify at least 1 person whose work is relevant to yours that you find inspiring. Try to understand how they got to where they are. Read their bios on their personal website, company website, linkedin, wikipedia, etc. Can you find their resume/CV? Where have they worked and what were their jobs? Did they have a ton of crappy jobs when they were starting out or were they successful early on? What awards/ grants/ residencies/ etc. have they been awarded? Who else has been awarded or participated in those things? Have they written academic papers/ journalism/ opinion pieces/ etc.? If so, where have they published? Who is in their network? Who are their collaborators, friends, family, etc.? Have they gotten press? What publications and writers wrote about them? It can be important to understand the economics that enabled them to succeed. What was the average rental price for a two-bedroom apartment in the city they were in when they were starting out? Do you think it impacted their development as an artist or determined what type of products they designed?
Extra credit if you contact them directly. I would recommend LinkedIn or email for most people, but depending on the person it might be appropriate to use social media. However, you may also choose to research someone who is no longer living.
Write a after listening to one of these revision path podcasts where interviews designers, developers, and other creators of color weekly.
Identify at least 3 companies or opportunities (grants, residencies, competitions, etc.) you'd like to pursue post graduation. These do not need to be things you discovered in the previous part of this assignment. If its a company, what is the specific position(s) you'd like to apply for? If it's an art opportunity, how does your work relate to the opportunity? What do you need to do before applying?