I thought learning design on my own would be enough to get clients

Watching the trends and feeling lost

I was looking at the recent Seven-Eleven bibimbap packaging collaborations with Sung Si-kyung the other day. They really went all in on the traditional patterns and the gujeolpan shape. It’s funny how marketing works; even a convenience store meal starts looking like a high-end design project when they focus on the packaging patterns. Then I scrolled past an article about an art exhibition where the graphic design was handled by a dedicated coordinator using Maya. It felt so far away from my reality of trying to figure out if I actually need a degree to survive in this industry. I keep seeing these polished, massive projects, and here I am, still wrestling with my own portfolio files.

The reality of trying to teach myself

I’ve been trying to learn graphic design on my own. I thought if I just put in enough hours with Figma and learned some UI/UX basics, I’d be able to just start reaching out to people and landing freelance gigs. But it’s not just about the software. My files are a mess. Every time I open a new project, I realize that my naming conventions for layers are non-existent, and the way I organize my project folders is basically a cry for help. I spent about three hours yesterday just trying to figure out why my vectors weren’t snapping correctly, which is honestly embarrassing for someone who wants to call themselves a professional. Maybe I should have just signed up for one of those expensive illustration academies instead of watching random YouTube tutorials at 2 AM.

Designing for brands versus designing for me

I saw the Shilla Hotel gift packaging, where they used the ‘s’ and ‘r’ consonants to make a pattern inspired by their stone walls. It’s elegant, sure, but it makes me wonder how much of that is actual artistic talent and how much is just having a massive budget and a team of consultants. When you’re doing it alone, you don’t have a consultant. You have a flickering monitor and a cup of lukewarm coffee. I wonder if the clients I’m hoping to find even care about the ‘artistic’ process or if they just want something that looks like it belongs on a shelf next to the trendy stuff.

Is a degree the only way out of the cycle

I have this lingering doubt about whether the freelance route is actually feasible without a formal background. Everyone online tells you that your portfolio is what matters, but when you’re building that portfolio from scratch, you don’t have the guidance to know if it’s actually any good. I keep oscillating between feeling like I’m making real progress and feeling like I’m just hitting a wall of incompetence. Maybe I’m just overthinking it, but it’s hard not to look at these professional collaborations and feel like there’s a secret language I haven’t learned yet. I wonder if I should just stop overanalyzing the packaging and go back to practicing my grid layouts, or if I’m just wasting time on a hobby that I’m trying to force into a career.