Designing Your Own Career Path: Reflections from a Freelance Visual Designer

Designer and entrepreneur, Carrie Flemister, shares insights about how design has allowed her to curate a unique career path that lets her pursue her passions, and why it’s important to empower other people to do the same. 

By Inneract Project

Carrie Flemister is an entrepreneur and freelance visual designer who brings ideas into reality. She works with a broad variety of clients across many industries to produce branded materials including logos, websites, and more. To Carrie, being a visual designer is all about ideation and the ability to turn people’s thoughts into tangible products for consumers to experience and use. Being a designer has allowed Carrie to custom-build a career path with which she can both express her creativity and embark on the journey of being a business owner.

At Inneract Project, we empower Black, Latinx, and other underrepresented students of color with skills and networks that will teach them how to think creatively, develop innovative ideas, and execute on those ideas to solve problems. Communities of color are severely underrepresented in the design field, but professionals like Carrie are excited to see that change.

In many communities of color, the lack of representation in design has created a perception that being a designer is an unconventional career path. However, design can be a pathway for creative students of color to turn their passions and interests into a stable career full of flexibility and opportunities to scale a business. Perhaps more importantly, increasing representation in the design industry will equip people of color with the skills they need to solve problems that are unique to our communities.

We spoke to Carrie about her journey to becoming a designer, why it’s so important to encourage more diversity in the design industry, and what advice she has for young people to follow a similar career path.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: When did you know that you wanted to pursue this career path of becoming a designer?

I knew I wanted to pursue graphic design after I graduated from college. I attended the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, and my focus was fashion marketing. Once I graduated, I had a lot of friends who knew that I was a creative person and that I had the ability to design certain things on the computer given my history coming from SCAD. A few months after I graduated, one of my friends asked me to design a logo for one of their businesses they were trying to pursue. So I did that project and I realized that I enjoyed it. That was when I started to understand that I could take my creative skill sets and translate them to other things outside of fashion and I began leaning more into graphic design.

After that, I started making college flyers and taking on other small projects as a side hustle. As this side hustle began bringing in more profit, that’s when I realized, “okay I can actually turn this into a business.” In the beginning, I was doing work on visual merchandising in stores, like store displays. So for me that was a world where both my experiences with fashion and graphic design came together. It was nice as I was figuring out my career plans that I could find a way to integrate both of my interests together.

Q:How did the skills you learned during college influence your early career path?

Going to an art school definitely exposed me to the tools and resources that I needed to be able to test out what I really wanted to do. As a fashion major, there were certain classes I had to take to do things like design a window display. So, I’d be learning tools for a school project and then later realize that tool was actually for a bunch of different things. That was like a light bulb that went off because once I got closer to thinking about what I wanted my career to look like, my world opened up to so many possibilities because I had these transferable skills.

The skills I learned as a fashion major helped me not just with graphic design, but also in entrepreneurship. The business I developed post-graduation was called Painted Bagels. At that point in time, I was still at a place where I was figuring out how to get professional work without having a lot of professional work experience. In my college classes, I learned about the importance of branding, so I used that as a springboard to develop ideas to help me get the experience I needed.

Q: What value do you see in IP’s mission to empower the next generation of Black, Latinx, and underrepresented designers of color?

Growing up, I attended both private and public schools so I was exposed to two very different school environments. In both of those environments, even in private schools, I was never exposed to any type of design course, computer digital design course, or anything in that realm that could have sparked my interest. Since we didn’t have any kind of classes centered around design, it was not something that I could ever know was an option. I never knew that it was a career path.

I think to boil it down to a high schooler’s level, graphic design might be too much of an overarching term. But if you drive down the street, 90 percent of what you’re seeing advertised was made by a graphic designer. Because we weren’t exposed to those ideas about design, I don’t think anybody I grew up with even drew the connection that design was all around us. Everything you use from the time you wake up, to the time you go to bed– somebody thought to create, make, and improve those things.

It’s so important for kids to have exposure to design lessons because without it, we don’t recognize how important design is. IP’s programs fill that educational gap for students that I didn’t have when I was in school. I think it’s also so impactful that IP shows its students examples of other working adults. They get to see grown up versions of themselves at places like Google. That’s not an experience I’ve ever had even as an adult designer.

Q: Why do you think it’s important to diversify creative careers and industries even more than they are now?

Because the world is diverse; the world is not one color. The world is made up of so many different people from different walks of life, different cultures, different backgrounds. In order for design to be successful, people need to see themselves represented in that. By employing and hiring people that are diverse, that’s how you are able to speak and communicate with the world more globally instead of just people from your community or people that are too like-minded.

The lack of representation in this industry is part of a long, stigmatized conversation. The good news is I do feel like there’s more conversation around representation and that conversation is definitely changing positively.

Q: What is your favorite part about working in the design industry?

I love that people trust me to come up with ideas for them. I love the autonomy that is granted with my clients’ products and services. A lot of times when I’m working with people, they’re thinking, “this product or this service is like my baby. I’ve been working on this idea for a year now and I’m finally ready to make it real.” I love that people are trusting me to take their ideas and make something out of them. To me, it never gets old to pull up to my computer with a blank canvas and have to think, “what am I going to do with this?” I think that’s what I love the most — taking ideas from scratch and really diving in on them.

Q: Do you have any advice for young people of color who are interested in pursuing a similar career path to yours?

One piece of advice I would give is don’t always feel you have to be formally trained by going to school or having a degree. There are countless resources out there for you to learn and study or even dip your toes in the water to see if this career is something that you want to pursue before you spend money. Exhaust the YouTube video lessons, and look for tutorials on other social media platforms as well. Organizations like Inneract Project are also really great resources for students to sharpen their skills without spending a lot of money.

Carrie started volunteering last summer with Inneract Project to help spread our impact to students of color! Learn how you can help support our work here.