New Designers, The Road Less Travelled

One of the things I love about the design industry is that you can find so many different routes to becoming a designer.

I recently led a panel discussion with somebody who used to be a rocket scientist and then became an interior designer as well as somebody who studied law and theology, became a mum and then got into interior design and ended up winning a TV interior design competition too.

And then there’s me, who used to be a project manager and business analyst and after an epiphany moment during a millinery course, I became fascinated by colour and I’m now a worldwide authority and consultant in behavioural design with a best-selling book.  

The routes into design I’ve just mentioned are by women I invited to join me on a panel discussion, interior designers Justine Guillermou and Tara Rodrigues, called The Road Less Travelled – Unconventional routes into Careers at New Designers last week at the Business Centre London.

We shared our unique and diverse roots to creating the careers and businesses that we have now.

This conversation is going to be particularly useful and fruitful for you if you’re someone who is an emerging design talent and not yet sure which field to go into, or you want to go out and start your own business, or you want to make a career change into design.  

This conversation was incredibly uplifting and inspiring and we had so many people saying “you’ve really encouraged me to keep going”, “so many great ideas” and “this has really helped my confidence”. 

Here are some of the specific things we talked about in our panel discussion:

• What was the defining moment that propelled us to want to switch careers?
• How we dealt with the response from family and friends?
• What were the challenges we faced along the way?
• We shared some of our career highlights
• And we shared our number #1 piece of advice for someone starting out in their design or creative career.

I’m so delighted that New Designers gave me the go-ahead for this panel discussion because I could tell from the response in the room that we really touched a chord. The audience were so interested to find out about the specifics of our journey that we ended up answering questions in the Q&A time and then for 45 minutes after the discussion had finished.

From someone who’s in the design industry and worked their way up from zero, as most people in business do, it was so fulfilling to give inspiration and real practical ideas to support starting designers, or
people looking to get into the field and give them ideas for the variety of ways they can do that.

Link to the recording
If you’d love to listen to this conversation here’s the link to the free recording. https://www.newdesigners.com/the-road-less-travelled-talk/.

Colourfully Yours,
Karen

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