Start it up man!
When someone says they want to be a graphic designer, they are not saying they want to align text or follow brand guidelines.
They are saying they want to research art, explore culture, and produce a complete campaign that expresses an original idea.
To reach that, many people end up taking a graphic design degree, hoping it will lead them to their dream.
But in reality, the degree often leads only to technical jobs within existing systems, where the work is small and predefined.
Only a few people with degrees actually get to lead full campaigns or direct creative work in the way they imagined.
On the other hand, someone without a degree can start by picking small projects, learning in the process, and slowly building a body of work.
This person may win attention by doing actual work, while the degree-holder may get stuck inside a narrow hierarchy with no real upward space.
The creative top is a thin layer, and most people never reach it, no matter how qualified or hardworking they are.
In such cases, it is wiser to do the work on your own instead of relying on an institution to make space for you.
Even if you have a general degree like an MBA and want to do something very specific like build a business, the story is the same.
It would make more sense to just start the business directly than to take a detour through consulting or corporate work for the sake of credibility.
These are not connected routes. They are different games.
Thinking that one game will automatically prepare you for another can be a serious mistake.
If you want to play a particular game, you must start playing that game directly.
Degrees often qualify you for execution-level roles, but your dream was never to stay at that level.
Your dream was to do the whole thing
Idea, design, delivery, and impact
All under your own direction.
No one is going to hand that to you inside a system built by others for their own outcomes.
You cannot take control of a system that was never built for you to control.
If you want full control, then you must step outside and build your own structure from scratch.
Credentials never lead directly to top-level freedom, because they are designed to serve systems. Control of them is totally uncorrelated with that.
You will not reach the top just by slowly rising in many cases.
Many systems do not allow that rise at all.
There are 100s at bottom for few at top
Mathematically not possible that everyone with aspiration get to rise.
To build a creative career, the only real qualification is the act of building itself.
A person who creates complete things will always learn more than someone who is trained to do small tasks inside someone else’s framework.
A person who builds the full product from beginning to end becomes qualified for more than a person who only contributes to a small part of someone else’s product.
Even in fields that look related, the rules and rewards are completely different.
Being a lawyer will not make you a better criminal. Law school teaches you to argue inside the system.
A criminal must understand the system, but navigate it freely, without following the rules.
In the same way, getting an MBA does not make you an entrepreneur. One studies the system, the other navigates it.
They may deal with business, but they play different games.
If you want to be the person who leads the full creative or business journey, you must begin by acting like one.
Not by waiting for a turn to be at after playing at lower level.
No credential qualifies you for creative freedom.
Only your own action does.
If you delay the action and spend years collecting badges and promotions, you may never end up doing what you actually wanted to do.
So play your game.
Play the ball
Start it up.