It took almost two years after graduating from college for me to realize why I was struggling so much to find a job in a city where new communications positions cropped up daily. The Friday was cold and gray, so the three of us meeting at the church that afternoon were all bundled up in over-sized sweaters. We piled in to the church office to get some work done while the cleaning lady bustled about changing trash bags and sweeping the floors.
One of the girls was a graphic designer. She was applying for jobs and debating between a part-time job in the printing industry or holding out for a full-time position. I told her about the time I applied for a writing position with a business consulting company. I went through the entire interview process and really liked the company, only for the gentleman from HR to call me and say the team really liked me, but they were looking for someone with graphic design experience, and they hadn’t figured that out when they wrote the job description. You might want to look at communications jobs, I suggested to my friend. A lot of these companies seem to want graphic designers more than writers.
“These companies are looking for unicorns,” she said. “They want a good graphic designer AND a good writer, and they don’t realize that most people aren’t both.”
I shifted in the plastic chair and nodded. I could feel the imaginary lightbulb going off over my head. The reason I struggled so much finding a job was that everyone wanted a unicorn, and no one in the English department knew that was what the companies were looking for. Had I known, I might have used my college electives on graphic design courses instead of business and photography. As it was, I had great editing and tutoring experience, and the jobs available in town either paid very little or required a minimum of five year’s experience. So, when I found this ad on “design hacking” by Click Funnel Design School that required no graphic design or coding experience, I was hooked. This trick could be my break!
The Pros
- I found the ad for the “design hacking” webinar about 10 minutes before it started. I jumped out of bed, ran downstairs, fired up my laptop, and grabbed a notebook. Thankfully, when the webinar started, it came through as a YouTube recording. This meant that when the cat started demanding his breakfast, I could stop the video without missing any information.
- Ms. Jones had a really neat concept that seemed to actually work. The concepts seemed simple to implement once you learned how to use ClickFunnels and add in design elements.
- Perhaps the best thing about Ms. Jones’ course is that building a solid portfolio and attracting clients is built into the course. I got the feeling that Ms. Jones really set her students up for success instead of passing on concepts and leaving it up to the student to figure out implementation.
The Cons
- While the webinar was very detailed and engaging, Ms. Jones really didn’t give an actionable info in the free “training.” It really was just an introduction to her course and an overview of how the course worked.
- The information in the course is also specific to Click Funnels and funnel-building software. This focus on Click Funnels limited how the person building the site could use it for their business. The site would really be for sales only and probably wouldn’t have much continued content or community outside of an email list, which again became more sales and promotion.
- On a semi-side note, I personally dislike that ClickFunnel website domains are 80 miles long and have “clickfunnel” in them. They just don’t look as professional to me as a simple, clean domain.
What I Tried
- When I upgraded my site to a business page, I changed my theme to “Natural,” and I loved it. It felt so earthy and peaceful to me. Over time, though, I started getting comments on how hard the gray font was to read, and I couldn’t find a place to change that. So, I gave in to the inevitable push for modern minimalism. Following Ms. Jones’ suggestions, I looked at major company’s websites and tried to follow their modern style with my website design.
- While I didn’t learn any actionable graphic design tips from Ms. Jones’ webinar, I did get more analytical about design. I used her “hacking” idea and started looking at the logos and interfaces of more successful businesses as a source of style inspiration.
Initial Conclusion
Ms. Jones had a great personality and was really entertaining to listen to. I was so excited for this course and thought I had found a shortcut to graphic design, but it was so relegated to ClickFunnels that it really didn’t work for my needs. If you are an entrepreneur who doesn’t want to blog or offer a large variety of products, Click Funnels and Ms. Jones’ Click Funnel Design School could be a great resource for you. However, if you are looking to build community engagement and need two way interaction to grow your brand, this course is not for you. Instead, look at the designs of major, modern corporations and use that as your inspiration for building logos and websites with the resources available to you.