What To Expect out of a Design Career

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First, you go to a recognized design school, develop your own brand of post-deconstructionist Swiss-grid page layouts which win all the student awards, and graduate with honors. Then, you do post-grad studies somewhere prestigious - Yale perhaps; hobnob with superstar professors and visiting lecturers.

You intern at a blue-chip New York design firm, do brilliant work, get noticed. After graduation, you're hired on as an art director, then senior AD, then partner... You get your own office with an Aeron chair, Bouroullec furniture, the latest G5 computer with 30" Apple flat-panel monitor, big sunny windows and a door that closes.

Of course you're a brilliant team leader, respected mentor and teacher, volunteering after hours and during the summer to teach design to underprivileged, inner-city kids.

You publish your monograph and have your gallery retrospective. Every so often you jet over to London for drinks with Damien Hirst. You're on the experts panel at several conferences; judge Print magazine's regional design awards; do the lecture circuit when you're not busy tending to your herb garden in Provence...and the alarm clock rings.