Designers 50+,
where are you?

If you work with younger people long enough, you start to see yourself as one of them – at least mentally, even if the body does begin to show its age.

However, when looking for career opportunities, I’ve noticed that the tone often seems geared towards younger designers, even if positions requiring years of experience, leadership, or director roles are advertised.

This begs the question: if someone with less than 10 years of experience can be a design director or senior, does that mean those with over 20 years of experience are considered “design gods”?

Also, I don’t care too much about after-work activities (especially if they’re forced on me by an organization rather than being initiated by colleagues) or becoming part of a new “work family” – I already have one at home. Nevertheless, a game of ping-pong or table football is always fun.

These are just observations, and I’ve noticed that finding designers my age is difficult. Where have they all gone? 

Surely they can’t all be directors, managers, “gods” or heads of something. 

Where are they? What are they doing?

So I started researching and looked for terms like “designer 50+” and “designer older than 50”, which didn’t yield many results. There was a nice article by Patrick Argent in Design Week from 2016, some forum discussions on Quora, and “Is It Too Late To Become A Graphic Designer At 50?” on Inkbotdesign.com. My answer would be no, you’re not too old. Welcome to my niche!

Now, there will be two of us, and some of my colleagues will join us in a few years. But seriously, all the others can’t be famous (the only ones visible) or design studio owners.

I will create a LinkedIn group to see if others have the same concerns. I’d love to hear your stories. (Here its is Designers 50+ Linkedin group)

By the way, searching for a header image for this article on unsplash.com was frustrating. There were no free stock images, only an iStock advertisement featuring older models pretending to be designers…