For future graphic designers, the first step on the road to getting paid for having bothered to learn Photoshop is the most soul crushing one. It’s bad enough that the road is long and steep and very off-puttingly lined with signs promising good money if you’re willing to just step away from it all and start harassing people about their phone contracts in the middle of the day. Then, the very first thing you do is to ask Google whether there are any “graphic design jobs near me” and get told “sure, sure, pretty close — how close to Chengdu did you say you lived again?”.

Having lived off design work for a good few years, I now know there are roughly four main channels designers might find themselves down: Agency, In-House, Film, or Freelance. In this post, I wanted to briefly introduce what these generally look like, and via internet-friendly bullet points, impart some idea of what it’s like to work at each (because I have, and I have thoughts about it).

When I was 18, I found myself in the peculiar position of studying Archaeology and Anthropology. I guess it shouldn't have taken me by surprise. I’d applied for the course. I’d written my personal statement. I’d attended the interviews. But nevertheless, sometime around the end of November 2012 - perhaps just as I was being handed a bag of mud to rummage through in a lecture - I realised I might have just got this whole university thing a bit wrong. And, thanks to the recent nightmare of increased tuition fees, that wrong step sang to the tune of around £36,000 (plus interest).

So hands up, I've nicked the title of this post from the site I've probably visited most out of all the internet in the world. Designspiration is seriously the absolute best Break In Case Of Emergency Hammer for immediate design needs, and I recommend you check it out when you get a sec. But when you've got longer than an hour to fix a logo, or more time than it takes to drink a cup of tea to nail a layout, where should you turn to spark a shiny new idea? Here I've listed my top six places where I find my nice brain thoughts occur; I’m hoping that writing these down will significantly reduce the time I spend staring at a blank artboard in Illustrator, and possibly help anyone who also occasionally finds themselves in a sinking boat full of Helvetica and standard swatch palettes.

I spend my time as a full-time designer at One tackling a fair few strange briefs. The variety of projects we get in is enormous, and a perk of working for a lovely small agency is that I often get a chance to dabble in all of them.

I’ve been to the Edinburgh Fringe every August since 2012, and usually spend the week wandering around eating all the pastry, drinking all the coffee, and taking every flyer I’m given. The festival is such a great place to pick up some design inspiration that I always come home with a rucksack crammed to the brim with hundreds of pieces of paper, and enough ticket stubs to plaster the outside of my house.

Whether you’re putting on an energetic one-person play, informing people about how to house-train rabbits, or encouraging clicks on your article of the top ten names for Oasis tribute bands (Oas-ish comes in first in case you’re wondering), the job of design is to communicate. Design needs to carry a message. This message is made up of two equal parts: the visual and the words that accompany it. And just like a Brexit voter and your family Christmas dinner, whilst you can have one without the other, they’re much more likely to cause a scene when put together.