At the tender age of 33 I decided to go back to college and study Graphic Design, it’s probably one of the biggest and best decisions I’ve ever made.
Having being present in the work place since the age of 18 I found myself (along with thousands of others in the country) out of work due to others mistakes, but we won’t go into a conversation about years of neglect by our lovely little country’s governments. That’s a completely different kettle of fish I could well delve into one day...
I first caught the Graphic Design bug when working in my dream job. Working for the football club you have supported as a young kid is most men’s dream, I was lucky enough to be in that position. I started working for Bray Wanderers Football Club and marketing and commercial manager and soon found out that the role was far more wide ranging. As part of the job I was asked to update the clubs website and “look after” the match day programme. I soon realised that “looking after” the match day programme was nearly a full time job in itself. “looking after” meant is was a Graphic Designer, Journalist, Researcher, Press Officer, Statistician, Proof Reader and Editor all rolled into one, quite an under taking for one person to say the least.
Having never done anything like that before I took to it like a fish to water, I started to look up tutorials online on how to use packages like Photoshop, Illustrator and In Design, I read books and asked friends in the business for advice, I soon became consumed with wanting to know more.
I won’t talk about the following 3 years (or seasons in football language) but I felt I did a damn good job for the club, as well as having great success on the commercial side of things I single handily brought the clubs dated image into the 21st century and redesigned the website, match programme and all of the clubs branding. I had really caught the design bug.
Then on a sunny December afternoon, BOOM! It all came crashing down, the club had been struggling financially for a while and players had been asked to take a pay cut, a couple of the staff’s hours had been cut so deep down I knew I was next in line for the chop.
In the following months of looking for new employment and finding temporary positions I kept thinking about going back to college to try and take my growing love for Graphic Design on further but was always held back by my age, or at least I felt being over 30 was too old to start a completely new direction in my life. After much soul searching and weeks upon weeks of talking with loved ones, I finally decided that I would to what I wanted to do and pursue a career I would be happy in. Graphic Design.
I haven’t looked back since and am loving every single minute of my new life, so to those of you who think you are too old to try something new, think again! Stop coming up with excuses and reasons why you can’t do something, as a famous American sportswear company says “Just Do It”.
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