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Without formal training or agency backing, Sutherland turned his passion into a full-fledged design business.
Graphic artist Jordan Sutherland taught himeself web design and his business is thriving. Picture: Michel Bega
He’s been drawing his own path through life ever since he could hold a pencil. Graphic artist Jordan Sutherland’s got a way about him that’s unassuming and quiet, imminently chilled.
Yet there’s a larger than life personality that reveals itself slowly, because he doesn’t need to be loud to be noticed.
This man’s got talent and he knows how to use it. Sutherland is in his early 30s now and he’s still never held a formal job.
Facing failure, finding direction
He was an entrepreneur from the get-go and despite setbacks, he’s curated a personal growth curve that has only headed north, albeit at times with a bit of a plateau.
But every time that happened, he restarted the incline, got up, dusted himself off and just did it. Sutherland was educated at the National School of the Arts in Braamfontein. There, he failed his first entrance exam.
“I didn’t get in the first time,” he said. “They made you draw a self-portrait, a chair, do a painting and then sit for a three-hour creativity exam. I wasn’t ready.”
He did it again after some practice and was admitted. His scholastic career was also where he met his future business partner and, when he swapped his uniform for real world civvies, it was all business.
Business and challenges
Instead of heading off to varsity and sitting through another bunch of years, he wanted to get going. He had a friend who was still in high school but already dabbling in web development.
“We said, let’s start a business. He builds the websites; I’ll do the branding and logos. And just like that, it was a done deal.”
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Sutherland’s parents had a rule though that he didn’t like. “They said if I lived under their roof, I had to work where they told me to. So, I moved out,” he said. “I knew I could work remotely and I knew this could work.”
It did, until it didn’t. Six months into the partnership, his friend, a Congolese national, left Mzansi to visit family in Congo.
“I dropped him at the airport, and 30 minutes later I get a call that he’s been deported,” said Sutherland.
It turned out some paperwork that had allowed him residence in South Africa had been “organised” on the young man’s behalf without him knowing and it got him dispatched.
With Congo’s triple daily power cuts and sketchy internet connectivity at the time, Sutherland’s business partner was out of action for the foreseeable future.
Picking up the pieces
It left him in a pickle. Clients were calling. Sites needed updates. Jeremy wasn’t answering. It was a squeeze that had Sutherland thinking that the whole future he had mapped out was about to be cancelled.
“So, I started again. New company, new name. I just called it after myself. Sutherland Sites,” he said.
A crash course in website platform WordPress later, Sutherland was building websites from scratch, front to back.
“That was about 10 years ago. Since then, I’ve done over 300 sites, full branding packages, corporate identities, you name it.”
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‘In charge of my own destiny’
It’s all been self-taught. The graphic design skills, the web development, fixing glitches and the client management aspects of doing business.
There’s no agency propping him up, no ponytail or tech hype. He had to figure it all out while he was billing for stuff, because he had to eat and he had to secure some kind of future.
“I tried to apply for jobs on the side, but it was not where my heart was. I wanted to be in charge of my own destiny, so I just put my head down, learned and earned.”
Tech changes and existential crises
In the decade and a bit since he started his company there have been massive changes. Technology has accelerated to such an extent that designers, copywriters and many people in the create industry had, and likely would, face several existential crises.
Yet Sutherland reckons there’s no real cause for concern because there’s value in grit, experience and solving real-world problems.
“I think platforms like Canva were a bigger knock to graphic designers than artificial intelligence,” he said. “It gave small business owners the tools to do decent design themselves.”
Presently Sutherland’s working on a project that will help him and other designers and creative folk manage the business end more efficiently.
This, in between a growing roll call of clients, his dry sense of humour and seriously great talent.
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