The Artist to Corporate Pipeline - Keeping Positive as a Creative Entering the Workforce

As a senior in college trying to enter the workforce, I've faced a lot of challenges and dealt with stress lately on what "path" I am meant to take. The "dream job" has been more of a vague vision, but I have more of a clear understanding in my varied digital interests. Even though much of my professional work and studies revolve around creative things like photography and videography, I've always hesitated to label myself as an artist. But an artist, by definition, is what I strive to be - A person who creates art.

I've taken pride in using my skills in the art of storytelling. Using video editing to manipulate and convey certain emotions to an audience based on what music is playing, the pace of cuts, etc. has always been a fascination to me. Using this as a medium of creative storytelling has become one of my greatest passions and joys, and it has since made me hope for a career in post-production and film. However, what I have realized, and what many of my peers have realized, is that film is a highly competitive field and not the easiest to climb and grow into. So, I have joined many the creative student in searching for jobs such as marketing professionals or creative directors in business.

I recognize that many people in these positions have had this goal in mind and have worked hard to become these marketing specialists and similar jobs. I am simply speaking to the those who might've had possibly a bigger dream or goal in mind and are afraid that applying these skills in a business setting may be a loss of identity or a settling of some sort.

I'm realizing this blog post may end up reading more like a personal reflection or a diary entry rather than an professional essay, but I believe that what I say about this will resonate with more people than expected and that others would love to know they aren't alone in this feeling. I know I certainly feel more comfort talking about it with my fellow digital media majors at school.

Adding a business minor onto my digital media major felt like I was creating a fail-safe for myself. I knew I wasn't truly passionate about business, but I knew understanding it would be a beneficial skill that could be used with my creative skills. I never planned to fully rely on it or aim for a corporate job. Now I am a senior and my resume is filled with corporate experiences, a position I didn't expect to be in at this point. For a while, I've struggled with coming to terms that I will now be using my artistic capabilities in fueling the capitalistic practices of today's society. So much of art and school dedicated to teaching artistic practices is focused around self-expression and experimentation. Shifting that mindset to now branding, sales, and applying it to marketing analytics felt almost like a betrayal to the anti-capitalistic bubble I had put art into.

Something that has helped me greatly in this time of transition has been the reading of Deresiewicz's The Death of the Artist and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur. He does express a concern in the growing power monetization has on art, how art is now "content". However, he also makes a point that this switch to a more commercialized form of art consumption is unavoidable with the growing importance of the internet. His "death of an artist" is more so stating the death of the isolated, genius artist, and that today's definition of "artist" must evolve with time too.

In a way, his essay has given me a much more positive outlook on this transition. The internet gives my art a way to directly reach an audience, storytelling is still a very useful tactic in connecting with a target audience, and rather than self-expression, I now express the mindset of a company/product/service. I really appreciate Venky Iyer's article on his switch from film to digital marketing. As he put it, I did have to "leave the cul-de-sac" and embrace uncertainty. Looking at it as new opportunity rather than a sacrifice has changed the whole experience. Our society and the way art effects and applies into it is evolving, and whether or not we want to, us artists must also evolve with it.