Nuggets of advice for fresh design graduates

If you're just about to graduate: congratulations! Years of hard work have paid off and now you're a certified graphic designer. You might even get a piece of parchment with your name printed on it if you're lucky. This doesn't mean the hard work's over though – in fact, it's just begun.

Taking your first step into the big wide world as a graphic designer can be intimidating. Armed with your qualifications and design portfolio, it's now up to you to start carving out a career. But there are some things design school won't have prepared you for. Scary things like taxes and tricky things such as work ethics.

15 things they didn't teach you at design school

To help budding designers on their way, Dann Petty recently took to Twitter to offer three pieces of advice for creatives fresh out of university, and asked his followers to do the same.

His followers didn't disappoint. Petty's tweet promptly took off, with hundreds of favourites, retweets and replies tackling all sorts of areas of the design industry. Covering everything from budgets to networking recommendations, the thread quickly became a treasure trove of hard-won design knowledge.

We've featured a selection of insightful tweets below to help you on your way to design greatness. They're only a snapshot of the range of responses, so be sure to head over to the thread to read all of the replies.

Got some advice that isn't in these tweets? Why not join the conversation and leave your thoughts to help new designers start their career?

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