Starting a creative career has never felt harder – 27 industry voices on what comes next

In 2016, design recruitment company Represent worked on 118 junior roles. So far this year, they’ve worked on 22, an 81% drop.

This is only one stat, but it speaks to a sense of seachange in the creative industries, where junior roles are under real pressure. The reasons are complicated and interconnected – COVID, financial instability, and the rise of gen AI all play a part.

The result is that entry-level roles have been cut, new talent programmes squeezed, and there is an understandable anxiety among people starting out in the creative world.

Creative Lives in Progress wanted to understand what’s happening out in the industry. What will starting a creative career look like in the next few years? And what can everyone – new creatives and the organisations who employ them – do to navigate this situation.

So we asked 25 people – designers, studio owners, recruiters, educators and other experts. We also asked four emerging creatives to share their first-hand experience of building a career at this tricky time.

While our wide range of interviewees brought different backgrounds, experiences and insights, there were a few themes that emerged across these 25 conversations. Each one is worth reading in full, but here are a few of those themes that came up again and again.

The junior hiring freeze won’t last

To start on an optimistic note, several people predicted that we’ll soon see organisations moving back to hiring new talent.

Jan Jensen, chief talent officer at Residence, thinks there will be a “course correct” when companies realise their talent pipelines are drying up in the next couple of years. How & How co-founder Cat How agrees, but points out that creative companies will need to be proactive in redressing the balance. “The industry will have to rebuild the bottom rung on purpose,” she said.

“My experience is that younger people tend to have a better, more intuitive understanding of the emerging technology, and are unencumbered by the old way of doing things,” Ragged Edge co-founder Max Ottignon said. “That’s a huge advantage, and makes a junior employee incredibly valuable.”

Designer Anas Houssein has seen this too, and thinks it will shape how studios work with new talent.

“My prediction is that the strongest studios will build this exchange into junior roles: experienced creatives sharing their judgement, and emerging creatives helping teams explore unfamiliar tools, references and ways of thinking. Learning will happen in both directions.

“For that to happen, studios have to see junior hires as an investment in how the whole team develops. If we wait for people to be fully formed before giving them a job, where are they supposed to learn?”

New routes open up

When junior roles do come back, they will probably look different – words like hybrid and non-linear came up a lot. There may also be new ways of getting into the industry, which would be a good thing.

“At a moment when starting a creative career feels almost existential, something exciting is happening,” said DixonBaxi co-founder Simon Dixon.

“As the traditional routes close, emerging talent has more reason to question why the industry works the way it does. That will create new ways of building careers and dismantle some of the structures we’ve taken for granted.”

Pali Palavathanan, Co-Founder and Creative Director at Templo, agrees. “I can see future young creatives bypassing formal creative education altogether as AI becomes more capable,” he said. “The narrative is often about agencies no longer needing younger creatives but I think it’s just as likely graduates won’t need agencies in the same way too.”

Residence’s Jan Jensen thinks this might “level the playing field” but others are concerned it will benefit people with time, money and connections, further narrowing the industry’s pipeline. “We can’t replace one set of barriers with another and call it progress,” Simon Dixon says.

From making to thinking

Many people predict that AI will take over more of the making, and so creative careers will be built more on judgment, taste and the ability to think strategically.

“I’ve reviewed a lot of prototypes this year that were very impressive and completely pointless,” says Tadhg McCarthy, Co-Founder at Elsewhen.“Making something convincing is almost instantaneous now, but developing the judgement to know whether it should exist still takes time. Knowing what to keep and what to kill is now an essential creative skill, whatever stage of your career you’re at.”

To develop that skill, many believe new talent should make things, launch things and try things as much as possible.

“Go make something that you really love, then go and show it to some people in real life,” says FOOD co-founder Iain Tait. Studio NARI co-founder Caterina Bianchini agrees. “Keep making things. Follow what interests you and get used to explaining your decisions. Your judgement develops as you work.”

For Mina Popa, this self-starter mentality will define the next generation of creatives. “I strongly believe starting a creative career in the next three years will be all about not waiting for permission,” they said.

Learn to write and rethink your portfolio

Across the 25 interviews, there was a wealth of specific advice for those starting out in the creative industry.

Cat How encouraged people to rethink their portfolios, to show “evidence that you can tell good from nearly good, and explain why.” She also thinks more creatives should level up their writing skills. “The habit of hunting for the sharpest true sentence has served me better as a creative director than any piece of software.”

For Uncommon’s Chief Design Officer Lisa Smith, creatives should focus on widening their inspirations.

“Build a life that gives you something to say,” she said. “Read beyond design. Get off Pinterest. Go somewhere unfamiliar. Make something with your hands. Get interested in people who think differently from you. Originality needs more to eat than whatever an algorithm serves up.”

More than anything, we need a new narrative.

“My prediction for the next three years is that starting a creative career will require as much attention to your mindset as your skill set, says Liz Stone, Co-founder and Global Chief Creative Officer at OK COOL

“My worry is that this constant stream of doom risks raising a generation of defeatists, convinced their future is hopeless before they’ve even started. This has to stop.

“You can be concerned and still be curious. Your mindset won’t remove every obstacle, but it will influence whether you try. Don’t let someone else’s doom narrative convince you to give up before you’ve started.”