Watch what's trending on youtube, find tutorial not because its teaching fancy design, but design to solve a problem ..... many mistaken design for making things pretty, a brand or a logo is a representative of a business. You have to think in the perspective of a business and help client solve their business problem, the problem they face is generally public perception, having fancy or pund base logo get more eyes, but get more controversial or mix reaction. Its all about balancing those to achieve desired market effect.

so skill to make something like art or design is good to have, but the priority is business solution. Can use wix website to make your own portfolio page, put your design on instagram or tiktok and ask for public opinion, you'll have critique that would chime in their opinion, sieve comment and keep good criticism. Then pick the most liked design and stick them into your portfolio.

Start small, design for name card, go printing shop or company and leave them your name card, some printing company only do print and don't do design, so they can call you up if customer is seeking those service, once you have customer consistently upgrade to banner, big prints. Then to design package company logo etc.

As a freelancer unless you are some kind of a design god that went viral no one is gonna hire a nobody 30k to do a company logo as their investment and reputation all hang in your hands.

Its nice if there is in house design company that saw your portfolio and interested to pull you in, that is a more advance topic for other time.

You learn faster on the in and out trough a company, but sacrificing creative freedom for experience.

You'll learn much slower self thought, and you also have to sacrifice financial stability in exchange for creative freedom.

If you can join a company that treat you as equal it would be best, but malaysia here a lot not interested about you, they only need you to replace robots.

From my experience client don't give 2 flying fish if you have a cert or not as a freelancer, they want cheap and competitive looking design. Best if it could be trendy too ..... so you can start with SME style kind of business ..... besides giving your card to printing company try to those SME event and past them your card. A lot of small business start with roughly RM3k cost, so don't expect charging them 1 - 2k for design.

Graind to strive delivering quality for a decent and affordable price, then move up the ladder.

Any client that approach you but ask for your cert or design prove is coming to the wrong place anyway, as they are suppose to be paying a minimum RM30k for a team ... not a solo freelancer.

But if you get to join a company in order to progress the company would consider paying your college fee to get a diploma or a degree ...... if they value you. Otherwise the company only want kuli.

As a solo once you are reputable you will have too many request and not enough time to take all those request, that is when you start adjusting your price to shave off some of the burden. Once you have comfortable income going back to college for a diploma or degree is not impossible.

I'm not in favor for those that is going trough a career change in mid life seek diploma or a degree first in order to compete after graduate as the fact is you don't even know if its going to be your absolute career until the end of days and you have to fork out a good portion of your money to get those papers.

Try digging trough the mud first, if you find passion and no pressure even when you get dirt on your hands THEN going back to college for the paper either to officially upgrade or just a good thing to hang on the wall is an option.

Its better to achieve stability financially trough what you think you want to do first rather then proving you can do the job then start working and stuck realizing its not as glamour as you would have liked.

Not all career can reverse like diving in first before getting a diploma or a degree, but creative field had that flexibility. You won't be able to expect to join a big company with a 5k pay in this country as a fresh grad, and majority of your customer here is small time mushroom. At least base on my experience and opinion. Some others might have been lucky or bless to have a different perspective compare to mine.

You can also try fiverr as a gig. Its a trench battle there but its one of the way to kind of test market and skills. Also a small side income to stay alive.

Some may or may not agree, I watch this channel and find certain info useful for those in design field, but not all his stuff works in malaysia, so you need to find the rat tunnel to grow, cause if follow the channel style you might die before reaching that level. But its only my opinion though ..... I survived trough trail and error, shifting out from just design to more of a product design for better prospect.

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