Not necessarily, but it depends on how you learn and what you're willing to figure out on your own. Color theory, typography, composition, a lot of the foundational stuff can be self taught. There's no shortage of resources and if you're the kind of person who can build a curriculum for yourself and stick to it, you can get pretty far without a degree.
What school gives you that's harder to replicate on your own is standardization. How to properly export a file. How to work in the right color space for the right application. The practices and expectations that are baked into professional workflows that nobody writes down anywhere because everyone in the industry just assumes you know them. That's the stuff that trips up self taught designers when they start working with clients or studios.
If you're going the self taught route, find a mentor. Someone working in the industry who can fill in those gaps and give you real feedback on your work. Design is subjective and taste driven, and a lot of it you can develop just by paying attention to what you like and learning how and why it works. But having someone in your corner who knows the professional side of things is worth more than any online course.
Just make stuff. The number of students who have actual client work before they graduate is pretty slim, and nobody hiring a junior designer expects otherwise. Personal projects, spec work done on your own terms, reimagining brands you think could be better. If you made it and you're proud of it, it belongs in your portfolio.
The one thing worth saying here is that exposure doesn't pay the bills, and that applies even at the student level. If someone is asking you to do real work for them without paying you, that's a different conversation. But if you're building something on your own time to fill out your book, that's just part of the process. You have to have something to show before anyone will give you something real to do.
You probably won't. Imposter syndrome doesn't really go away, it just gets quieter the more experience you accumulate. The question of whether your work is good enough is less useful than the question of whether you can take honest feedback and do something with it.
If you want a real read on your work, ask working professionals or clients. Don't ask your mom. You'll never get anything useful out of someone who wants you to feel good about it.
The thing we noticed most with students coming up is that proper crits don't really happen the way they used to. Getting your work torn apart in a room full of peers is one of the most valuable things design school can give you, and a lot of programs have softened that process to the point where it doesn't do much anymore. Learning to separate yourself from your work, understanding that a critique of the design isn't a critique of you as a person, is a skill that will serve you for the rest of your career. And if someone is pushing back on a decision you feel strongly about, you should be able to explain your reasoning and defend it. Good design knows when to break the rules. The difference is being able to articulate why.
Less than you think. Not a single client we've worked with has ever asked about credentials before deciding to hire us. The conversation always starts and ends with the portfolio and how you present yourself. The degree is for you, not for them.
That said, what you learn getting there does matter, which loops back to the school question. What you're actually paying for is the standardization, the crits, the years of making things and getting feedback on them. Whether that's worth the tuition is a question only you can answer.
These are just the questions that come up most in the getting started phase. If you have a question you want answered in a future volume, send it our way.
