Are You an Artist? Then You Could be a Copywriter

You’ve completed your art-education. You had a great time at University dedicating your time to your artistic practice and using your specialist media to interpret briefs. The crescendo builds into a sea of working holidays, boozy student nights and staying up till daft o’clock to finish dissertations; then it’s results time (where your former peers drink to celebrate or to drown their sorrows) and then the cliff-edge pinnacle; where your family get share your victory with you for the graduation ceremony!

What comes next? Probably nothing, unless you are realistic enough to have planned months in advance what your agenda will be immediately after university.

Derailed

The sense of being derailed and lost can be quite overwhelming initially for a number of reasons.

All good things must come to an end: Time at university as an art student is an indulgent one. I loved the freedom to focus on my own practice without having to worry too much about money. When this is over, pardon the melodrama, but we mourn! It is time to think how you can apply your art-education in a professional context. And at the risk of proving the pessimistic parents right, there really “isn’t many art-jobs out there.”
The “real world” (of employment) can be quite harsh compared to university and you can feel that your time at university has not really prepared you for “real world”, not even in artist jobs, as a lot of advertised jobs are senior positions that clearly state, e.g. that they want a candidate with a billion years’ experience in exhibition curating / public commissions!

So, What Next?

The time spent at doing an Art Degree can sharply hone many traits and these traits can be applied to all kinds of jobs. I eventually found employment as an Activities Coordinator in a Nursing Home, and I very often organized and hosted activities of a creative nature. I was also a Volunteer co-ordinator where I designed posters to advertise volunteering opportunities (amongst other things), and most recently I have been doing some copywriting.

So how does an art education equip me for copy-writing?

Research: All the hours spent researching artists, movements, and questions posed by your own artistic curiosity is time spent gaining valuable knowledge that will always stay with you. You spend so much time doing this that it becomes second nature. This skill is important if you’re doing copy-writing and SEO copy-writing as you often spend time researching products to write informative articles.
Writing: The time you spend writing essays and dissertations gives you great practice at developing fluid writing skills
Artists’ meandering train of thought: We artists are an eccentric bunch with our idiosyncratic ideas. A friend of mine once said that my train of thought is similar to that of a ball in a pinball machine; erratically veering from one subject to a diversely different one; the link between both being quite tenuous. But this is what makes creative writing. The first draft of anything you write should be unrestricted and experimental with the idea of editing it later; because only then can you include different angles in your post that you probably wouldn’t have considered had you tried to operate within the confines of what writing ‘should’ be. This blog initially had waffle in it about pigeon-feathers. It’s a shame it has no relevance to this post! (I’m joking, but you get the idea)

Having been through the life enhancing and educating halls of university, I would still recommend getting the professionals in for your copy-writing and even more so for your SEO copywriting.