Starving Artist Versus Thriving Artist
Many people are under the impression that an arts degree means you’ll be sipping instant coffee in a windowless basement apartment the size of a closet, trying to hawk charcoal sketches to strangers on Etsy for gas money. While this may be the experience of some self-identified starving artists, it’s far from the rule. Some arts degrees can command salaries that would make your scoffing uncle in accounting raise an appreciative eyebrow. Other arts degrees, well—let’s just say that you might be better off keeping them as a passion project rather than a primary method of earning a living. Let’s start with the good news.
1. Graphic Design
You’d be surprised how many companies are desperate for a decent graphic designer. Logos, product packaging, UI for apps—if it’s visual, someone’s paying for it. While artificial intelligence is upending graphic design, there remains a demand for skilled designers. As with most professions in the arts, there is a tremendous glut at the bottom and a select group of top-performing talent charging eyewatering hourly rates.
Nikita Kachanovsky on Unsplash
2. Architecture
This one’s a little trickier than the others in that you can’t just moonlight as an architect, you need a license. If you’re ready to put in the time to get your certifications, and you have a penchant for design—and aren’t hopelessly inept at math—you can secure a spectrum of work from designing houses those over-the-top shopping centers with indoor ski slopes.
3. Industrial Design
Think furniture, appliances, and anything else you’ve ever picked up at Ikea and thought, “this would look great in my living room.” Companies love industrial designers who can blend aesthetics with functionality. The catch? You’ll occasionally have to battle it out with marketing people who think lime green is a functional color choice.
4. Film & Media Production
Streaming platforms didn’t kill this field, they supercharged it. There has never been more content being produced, and while not everyone’s going to be the next Spielberg, talented production managers, cinematographers, and editors are booked solid. It’s definitely one of those feast-or-famine professions, but once you’re in the loop, you’ll have steady work.
5. Communication Design
This is like graphic design’s slightly more corporate cousin. You’ll work on branding, marketing campaigns, and maybe even political messaging, depending on the sector you find yourself in. Good communicators are basically magicians—making the boring look irresistible and managing to convince the public to buy the message and often the product behind it.
6. User Experience (UX) Design
This is another field that is having to regain its footing in the face of the seismic changes brought on by AI. And yet, we’re not yet at the point where we no longer need talented people who can make apps and websites usable without needing a 47-page instruction manual.
7. Illustration
We’re not talking about doodling unicorns for your cousin’s Etsy store. This is serious commercial work—children’s book contracts, advertising campaigns, and even medical illustrations for university textbooks. The more technical and advanced your knowledge, the higher the fee you can command.
8. Interior Design
If you can make a hotel lobby go viral on Instagram or turn a corporate office into something that doesn’t feel like a fluorescent holding cell, you’ll always have clients. The wealthy, especially, never seem to run out of rooms to redecorate.
9. Animation
This goes far beyond Disney and Pixar. There’s advertising, gaming, AR/VR, explainer videos for tech startups—basically, any industry that needs moving pictures. Animators who have storytelling chops combined with technical skills will always be in demand.
10. Arts Administration
Although this may sound dull, it’s the backbone of museums, theaters, and cultural organizations. You won’t be painting in the back room, you’ll be designing the exhibit displays, hiring talent, and managing budgets often in the millions of dollars.
Now that we’ve explored the arts degrees in demand, let’s look at the ones that don’t hand you a ready-made career path.
1. Art History
Unless you plan on pairing it with museum studies, a teaching career, or conservation, pure art history is a tough slog. Sadly, most fine arts degrees will amount to a very expensive certification to have strong opinions about the Renaissance.
2. Creative Writing
For those who feel passionate about writing, putting pen to paper isn’t an option but a need. But unless you’re combining it with marketing, communications, or teaching, the degree itself is honestly more for your personal enrichment than for the career prospects you can command with your degree.
3. Fine Arts
A BFA can be amazing if you specialize in something marketable like illustration, digital art, or ceramics with commercial demand. But the general fine arts career path? That’s where you end up selling prints at weekend markets and explaining to scoffing shoppers why they’re $200.
4. Photography
Commercial photography can certainly pay well, and talented wedding photographers can also command impressive fees. But pure “art photography” without a plan for monetization will mean having to hustle for exposure at exclusive galleries, which means you’ll spend more time networking than actual shooting.
Nicolas Ladino Silva on Unsplash
5. Drama Studies
This isn’t acting, this is studying it. It’s like taking a degree in watching other people play sports instead of playing yourself. If you feel compelled to study the theory of acting, consider pairing it with something else more practical unless you’re content doing community theater.
6. Music Theory
This is the one of the subjects you study if you love music but don’t have any desire to perform or produce it. Sadly, few employers care about your in-depth analysis of Bach’s counterpoint unless you’re going into academia.
7. Sculpture
Beautiful? Yes. Marketable? Usually not. Unless you land big public commissions, it’s an incredibly exclusive niche that you’re unlikely to break into. Even established sculptors sometimes have no choice but to teach to pay the bills.
8. Comparative Literature
While this may be a fascinating degree that’ll make you the brightest member of your Tuesday evening book club group, it won’t have the recruiters on LinkedIn knocking at your virtual door. As far as job postings go, there aren’t many mandating that you have a comparative literature degree.
9. Theatre History
Much like art history, this is for those who are deeply passionate about the topic. While the available career paths are almost entirely limited to academia or curation, you’ll have something interesting to talk about at parties.
10. Painting
Painters can make it big but only if they also have relentless marketing skills, patience, and maybe a hefty trust fund. Otherwise, most grind away for years in obscurity before landing consistent income.
