From Office Manager to Designer.

In an industry often shrouded in gatekeeping and unpaid internships, timelines like Emma Hand’s can feel impossible. We’re told career changes take years. We’re told you need a university degree to be taken seriously. We’re told to play it safe.

Emma’s story proves otherwise. It’s a masterclass in calculated risk, strategic portfolio building and decision making. Here’s how she did it.

Before Shillington, Emma was working as an office manager. It was stable, practical, and predictable. But she knew she wanted to become a graphic designer, so she enrolled in Shillington’s online graphic design course part-time.

As the course neared its end, specifically the intense portfolio phase, Emma hit a hurdle that’s common for career changers: the notice period.

“I’d been in my old company such a long time that I had a three-month notice period,” Emma explains. “I knew it was going to be quite hard to get that entry-level job and ask someone to wait that long for me.”

Most people wait for an offer before handing in their notice. That’s the safe advice. Emma did the opposite because she recognised something important: availability is an asset.

This wasn’t reckless. It was strategic. By clearing her schedule, Emma could treat her portfolio like a full-time job, even though she was technically studying part-time. She removed the safety net so she had no choice but to commit.

The lesson: Sometimes, safety is the biggest risk to your progress. If you want to learn graphic design online and transition quickly, you need to create the space for it to happen.

When you’re applying for your first design role, your portfolio is often sitting in a stack of hundreds. To stand out, you need a stopper. A project that makes someone pause and look closer.

For Emma, that project was her comedy festival campaign.

The brief challenged students to create an off-screen element, something made physically then brought into the digital world. While it’s tempting to stay comfortable inside Adobe Illustrator, Emma went in a different direction. She bought foam clay and started sculpting.

“I created these little faces, making them have little personalities, giving them funny little teeth and eyes,” she recalls. “Then I set up a little photographic studio in my room and used a nice little backdrop to give it some vibrancy.”

She didn’t stop at making them. She photographed the faces, retouched dust and lighting in Photoshop, then built a modular design system around these characters. She extended the brand into a booking website, social media carousels, and merch.

This project did the heavy lifting in interviews because it showed craft. It wasn’t just pixels pushed around a screen. It was proof she was willing to get her hands dirty to solve a visual problem.

“They like it because it’s something a bit different,” Emma says about the feedback she received. “It’s not just like, ‘I’ve illustrated something in Illustrator’. You’ve stepped away from your computer to actually make something.”

Making strong work is only half the battle. To land the role, you need to explain why it works. This is where a lot of new designer portfolios fall short. They look great, but the designer can’t articulate the decisions behind them.

Emma’s approach was different. She didn’t choose a typeface because she liked it. She chose it to solve a specific problem.

“I wanted to pick a typeface that helped balance the faces,” she explains. “The faces are a very big energy in this project and I needed a typeface that didn’t overrule that or fight with them, but also could stand up against them.”

She picked a heavy display typeface with subtle character details that mirrored the personality of her clay models without competing for attention.

When a creative director hears a new designer talk about tension, balance, and hierarchy, they aren’t just seeing a portfolio. They’re seeing someone they can collaborate with.

Design education often teaches a neat, linear process: mind map, thumbnails, black and white drafts, colour, final.

In real life, it rarely works like that. Emma’s success came from adapting her process to the project.

Because her primary assets were colourful, physical photographs, black and white layout stages felt redundant. She went straight into colour because that was the core material she needed to evaluate.

Instead, she worked modularly, moving elements around and refining through a process of elimination in her work in progress files.

Showing those WIP files in interviews was a smart move. It proved she wasn’t copying trends from Pinterest. It showed iteration, judgement, and problem solving.

The lesson: Authenticity beats perfection. Employers want to see how you think, not just the polished final.

Emma’s portfolio also tackled the elephant in the room: AI.

For a fried chicken shop branding project, she hit a resource wall. Food styling is hard, especially when you’re working alone and learning fast.

She took her own photos of real chicken to lock in the composition, then used Adobe Firefly to generate a more styled result.

“This was a perfect example of how I would use AI in my workflow.”

Crucially, she’s clear on ethics. For a student portfolio, it can solve a resourcing problem. But in the real world, especially in food advertising, it can quickly become misleading.

“If you use AI in this instance, it’s false advertising,” Emma says. “Because that is not real chicken. It doesn’t exist.”

That nuance is what studios are looking for. Not hype, not fear. Practical judgement.

Emma landed her first role in an in-house marketing team around five to six weeks after graduating. It was supportive and structured, a good soft landing for a new designer.

But she’s ambitious. Coming from video production, she missed the pace.

Within weeks, she secured a second role, moving into agency work focused on branding for events. She wanted varied briefs, higher pace, and faster growth, so she went after it.

If you’re looking to learn graphic design online and replicate Emma’s momentum, you don’t need luck. You need a strategy.

• Create a stopper project
  Don’t just design screens. Build a project with a differentiator. Make something physical. Use clay, paper, paint, or photography. Off-screen craft signals originality in a sea of digital sameness.
  
• Master the why
  Never present work without rationale. Practise explaining your decisions. Why that colour? Why that typeface? Why that layout? If you can articulate your thinking, you become easier to trust.
  
• Show the mess
  Document iterations. Save your work in progress files. In interviews, walk through what you ruled out and why. It proves critical thinking, not just taste.
  
• Be strategic with time
  If you can, clear the decks. Emma’s decision to quit her job was risky, but it bought her focus. Treat your portfolio like a 9 to 5.
  
• Embrace AI, but don’t hide behind it
  Use AI tools to solve real constraints, but be ready to discuss ethics. Show that you’re in control of the tool, not the other way around.
  
• Don’t wait for permission
  Emma graduated in July, started her first role in August, and moved again soon after. The industry rewards people who are ready to work. You don’t need years of permission. You need a portfolio that proves you can do the job.