Everytime I go and read about it, feels like its the worse career choice
People always whine there is no jobs, it doesnt pay and most of the time you end up working in a different field

How true is that? or is it just a popular belief and people are just being lazy cry babies?

Depends how much you put yourself out there. Most people that say theres no work is because a lot of them wait for the work to come to them

Post your portfolio to every possible job opening.
You probably won't get a really good pay until you have years of experience

depends on what field, where you study, your internships, your portfolio the most and your references

im not worried at all cause I live in NY which is the biggest place for print business in the united states

but from my friends mobile and web are getting really big

This post was edited by Sena on Nov 12 2014 01:33pm

you can make a living out of selling sigs.

i head travis bought a house with fg earnings

Yeah this is what I heard, if you want something steady you have to go in mobile and web
Would college be enough or do you really need to push it to the university? I aldready have an industrial design college diploma as well

I'm currently employed as UI/UX designer at a mobile software company. I mainly do mobile app layout and graphics and website layout/css/framing, which are definitely in high demand.

I did not go to school for design, but I have been doing design for ~12 years now, started back when I was 14 as a hobby and just stuck with it. I would say the biggest thing for being hired is a portfolio. An employer will use not having a degree as reason to pay you less until you are able to prove you are worth the investment, and nothing sells that more than showing someone your skills.

As for it being a difficult industry to get into, well, it is a 100% skill based industry. I have 4 friends who went to school for graphic design and have the mental outlook that because they have a degree they deserve a better job than I have, none of them are employed in the design field and none of them are any good at design. So, do I put a high priority on spending 50-200k on further schooling for a piece of paper? No. Does that mean your employer will have the same view as me? Probably not. If you think going to school longer will make you a better designer than go for it.

Addressing 'it doesn't pay', I can't say for sure as again this will depend on your skill level, which in this industry is apparent after 30 seconds of looking at a portfolio. I have been over 50k a year for some time which most people seem to deem the baseline for semi-decent pay and I am in a very small area with very low demand, if I moved I could easily make more but that isn't a driving factor for me.

Now, if you plan on going in the mobile design field, my biggest piece of advice is get some knowledge of web languages, at the very least become proficient with html and css. But the single biggest factor in this industry are your results. If you are truly good and efficient, you will get a job.

School isnt as expensive where I live but I totally understand what youre saying

tbh

it really is all talent.

The only thing I've learned in school so far is typography and i have no regrets. It really changes everything you think about in design.

we recently hired a UI expert to design screens for our mobile app.
my coworker is making a video game, and he hires graphics artists. he pays a concept artist 15$/hr and another guy 30$/hr to do the 3D modeling.

this