The Who, What, Where of Creative Tech Part 1 of a 3-Part Series: Who Can Make the Move to Creative Tech?

By Catherine Lang-Cline

When I first came on the scene as a hot-shot graphic designer I entered the workforce armed with a ton of Mac skills, but the world was still clinging to a lot of typesetting and camera work. My first job in an agency had a guy that worked in the corner and laid out everything by hand, cutting, waxing, rolling. I was hired to change this all over to the new technology and everyone was not on board with this decision.

I will never forget how that guy felt seeing technology take over his job. Thing is, we are seeing a lot of the same today. For example, when we started Portfolio Creative we placed a lot of traditional graphic design and copywriting roles, all based in print. 15-years later and we seeing less and less of that and everything is now going digital. So you have a choice. You can learn the new technology or you can wait and see how it goes with the skills you have already mastered.

Before you think that it is too late, let’s start with the skills that you have. Do you…?

Like to create brand guidelines or like selecting the right color palette to capture a mood?

User Experience Designer may your next career. User experience designers do just that. They are hired to create an “experience” for your customer. In a brick-and-mortar environment, a person would be hired to create an experience by designing things for the customer to feel comfortable, hang-out for a while, buy something, and return. In a digital world, it is the experience that is captured online. 

Like the tiny details of a project? Maybe you like to kern or resize or calculate the proper amount of crop?
Front-end Developer could be your perfect match. A Front End Developer is a person that loves the details. It can involve code but overall it making sure that the design of the designer works. It could involve animation, gifs, movies, etc., to all come to life on a project. Something not working? It is you that gets to save the day by fixing it.

Like big-picture thinking and strategies?

Digital Marketer may be a great move for you. The digital marketer strategizes and plans all of the digital marketing. They determine where the company or organization needs to be seen and in what format. They also capture the analytics to see what was working.

Want to create the image and style for a company or brand through color, typography, logos, icons, and other visual elements?

Visual Designer could be your next step. Once brands get designed there needs to be a person that can translate all of this for use in the world. This person loves branding and doing the trouble-shooting to make sure the design and company look is consistent everywhere. The look of the website is a big part of this.

Really enjoy problem-solving?

Web Designer should be something to consider. It might include writing code, but mostly it is figuring out how to make things work. Websites need to work on PC and Mac, but they also need the website to work on pads, laptops, and phones of all sorts. You get to determine the platform the website will be built in as well as how well it works. If you are a solid left brain/right brain person this could be a perfect fit for you

All of these roles are something that we are trying to find every day. The jobs are out here! So the answer to the question “who can make the move to creative tech?” is YOU ARE. Still struggling with finding the new you, contact us at Portfolio Creative because we can help.

Read part #2 here.

Read part #3 here.