The Adobe Creative Suite is the industry standard for a reason. Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, if you're going into print or brand work you need to know these. That's not up for debate.
But the toolkit is expanding. Figma has become standard for anything touching UI or web. Notion is showing up in more studios as a project and content management tool. Webflow is becoming a go-to for studios that want to build and manage sites without handing everything off to a developer. And if a client needs something built in Canva because that's what their team can actually maintain, knowing your way around it isn't beneath you. Nobody cares what software you used if the work is good, because the skill lives in the thinking that produced it.
There are also legitimate alternatives to the Adobe suite entirely. Affinity has a solid product lineup. DaVinci Resolve is industry level video editing for free. If budget is a constraint or you just prefer a different workflow, those are real options. Just come in with the understanding that studios and clients will have their own tools and there will be times where you need to adapt. That's not a problem as long as you're flexible about it. Use what works for you, just don't let it become a limitation.
This one comes down to your appetite for risk. Freelance gives you creative freedom, letting you choose your own projects and the people you work with. It also means inconsistent income and taking on the business side of things, invoicing, contracts, and taxes, on top of the design work itself. If you can handle the hand to mouth stretch while you build a client base, the upside is real.
Working for an agency or in house gives you stability in the form of a steady paycheck, benefits, and colleagues to share the load with. The tradeoff is that you're probably going to spend a good chunk of your early career doing production work: resizing assets, updating templates, executing someone else's vision. That's simply part of paying your dues before you move into more senior creative work.
Neither path is wrong. They just require different things from you. Know which one fits where you're at in your life before you commit to it, because trying to freelance when you need financial stability is a stressful way to learn that lesson.
One more thing worth saying. Not everyone is going to end up as a creative director or art director and that's fine. Production design is real work that pays real money and there's no shame in it. The industry needs people who can execute cleanly and consistently just as much as it needs people driving creative vision. Only a fraction of designers who graduate end up in senior creative roles and pretending otherwise doesn't do anyone any favors. Know what you want, but be honest with yourself about where you're at and what the path actually looks like.
Not right out of the gate. Early in your career the goal is exposure to as many types of work as possible, brand, print, digital, packaging, whatever comes your way. Your niche will generally find you over time based on what you gravitate toward and what you're good at.
That said, hyper specializing too early can box you in. If you only ever do restaurant branding, your network shrinks to restaurant owners and the people who work with them. Being able to design comfortably outside your wheelhouse keeps more doors open and makes you more valuable to the studios and clients you work with.
Over time your work will naturally start to reflect a point of view and that's when a niche actually works in your favor. It develops gradually, well after you've actually started working.
Vol. 03 will cover the business side of being a designer, pricing your work, spec work, and why exposure doesn't pay the bills.
If you have a question you want answered in a future volume, send it our way.
