thatothertime shifting focus within a field isint an impossible task, its hard due to portfolio and people knowing you for what you do. what @danieldiggle said, work on a few projects for yourself, personally I dont think it matters if theyre real or fake, as long as the fake ones get the same amount of thought and dedication as real ones. if I were to hire someone as a web designer I would look for, if they know what theyre doing, do they know web standards/limitations, is their work decent, clean, etc -- if they can handle that, why not even if all their work is fake? I rather get someone who has style and does things well over someone with tons of experience but sloppy and low quality.
Added 2009-11-05 01:34:54.

danieldiggle You should do test projects in the field you want to get into. Set yourself a branding project brief - it needs dedication to complete something that isn't a real live project, but its the only way to build up the kind of portfolio you need to get into the field you want to. Also bullshit is quite handy, putting yourself infront of people and telling them you can do 'a,b,c' even if you don't actually know how to set up a 'print ready pdf' etc.
Being self taught lets you know that any career change is possible, it's just a matter of re-tooling your skillset and using a little false confidence to say 'yes' i can do that task for you.
Added 2009-10-31 01:10:30.

fernandolins @dajaniel Moving into another area in graphic design — mostly branding and typography, as I said above. I guess the hard part for me is getting people to realize I'm changing focus and want to stop doing this and start doing more of that.
Added 2009-10-30 17:20:05.

dajaniel @fernandolins But the thing is, what would want to move into - another area of graphic design or a complete career change, like becoming a lumberjack?
Added 2009-10-30 06:27:50.

fernandolins I'm going through this phase where I don't want to work another 7 years with what I've been doing so far (interface design and icon illustration), and would like to change directions. Mostly focus on typography and branding. However I've made my "name" in the Mac icon/interface industry and I don't have much of a portfolio of something else to start again. Sometimes I feel like it was an error to get into such an specific area of graphic design, even though I don't regret any of the work I've done so far and had lots of fun with them. Did anyone go through this, could share some tips, or maybe just pitch a few ideas?
Added 2009-10-30 03:06:00.