Fifty and Fearless: One Man’s Leap into a New Career with New Image College
Most people, when they lose a job at 50, start worrying. Pablo Tecson started planning. After years of physical work in the sign manufacturing business — years spent bringing other people’s designs to life while his own creativity sat untapped — he saw an unexpected layoff not as a setback, but as the push he had been waiting for. Six months later, armed with a diploma from New Image College of Design and Technology in Toronto, he walked into his next chapter. And this time, he was not the one doing the cutting and gluing.
New Image College: Simply Unbeatable
It is well known that finding work after the age of 40 — and especially after 50 — is no easy task. And very few people would dare to start learning something entirely new at that stage of life. Yet they really should — because our story today is about a man who, against all the odds and in defiance of every prejudice, walked that difficult road and came out on top. And he did it thanks to New Image College.
Pablo arrived in Canada from the Philippines in 1994. In his previous life he had been a photojournalist — and a very successful one at that. He was assigned to cover the president and senators. That is no small thing. In Canada he managed to find work in his field, but the subjects in front of his lens were considerably less prominent — a children’s photography studio, not a presidential palace. The income, accordingly, was considerably less impressive. Pablo decided to change direction and move into something with stronger demand: the sign and display manufacturing business.
Before long, however, he grew tired of bringing other people’s ideas to life through physical labor. Pablo is a creative person, far more drawn to design than to glue, hammers, and screwdrivers. He watched the designers around him at work and came to a conclusion: if he could master the computer and the software they used, he could reasonably compete for their positions. But how do you find time to study when your life runs on a single track — home to work, work to home, every day of the week? He tried teaching himself in the evenings, but it was hopeless. There is simply too much information, and without someone to guide you and highlight what truly matters, learning all the necessary programs could take years. By the time you get a reasonable handle on one version of a program, a new version has already been released — progress waits for no one. Pablo put down the books once again.
Everything changed in 2006, when our hero lost his job. As the Russian saying goes — there was no happiness, and then misfortune helped. The company he worked for went out of business, and after several unsuccessful attempts to find another position, Pablo decided he could not afford to delay his education any longer. Competing with younger candidates on the job market is tough. But why compete at all, when you can be in a league of your own? Pablo reasoned that if he mastered computer design and combined it with his many years of hands-on production experience, he would once again become the number one candidate.
An advertisement for New Image College caught his eye in one of Toronto’s newspapers. Pablo was intrigued. He visited the college website at www.newimagecollege.com and then paid a personal visit to the office. And so two Pablos met — Pablo M. Tecson and New Image College director Pavel Ilyashenko.
Mr. Tecson did not take long to make up his mind. When it came to the combination of time, quality, and cost, New Image College simply had no competition. His goal was straightforward: finish his studies as quickly as possible and get back into the workforce. He had no time to sit in a university lecture hall for years, listening to endless classes on art history and general education subjects. Mr. Ilyashenko assured the prospective student that he would be taught only what would genuinely be useful on the job. And that is exactly what happened. The program was completed in just seven months. That is already impressive — but when you consider that Pablo covered Graphic Design, Web Design, and Desktop Publishing in that time, and became proficient in Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, CorelDraw, and other essential tools of the modern designer, it is nothing short of phenomenal. None of it came without effort, of course — it required consistent attendance and diligent work on assignments at home.
But Pablo’s calculations proved entirely correct. He found a job almost immediately. The company Sign-A-Rama had been looking for exactly what he offered: a designer with an in-depth understanding of the production process. Demand for that kind of specialist is genuinely high. Just one year later, Pablo was promoted. He is no longer simply a graphic designer — his business card now reads “Graphic Designer / Production-in-Charge.” A happy ending. Pablo no longer performs physical labor or buries his talent. He sits at a computer in a comfortable office while others bring his ideas to life — cutting, gluing, painting.
At the end of our conversation, one Pablo began singing the praises of the other, paying compliments to New Image College — but there was no flattery in it. He succeeded precisely because of his teachers, so why not say a kind word about them? The thing he valued most was the small class sizes. Every student receives not just adequate attention from the instructor — they feel as though they are in a private lesson.
He also emphasized the critical importance of relevance — the practical skills you leave with when you walk out the door. Will you be able to step straight into the workforce, or will you find yourself a helpless theorist? Pablo learned the software through real-world examples — exactly the kind of work he now carries out at Sign-A-Rama every day. He even declined the internship placement the college offers every student, providing an opportunity to work with one of its partner companies to gain experience and a line on their resume. And yet he required no additional training whatsoever at Sign-A-Rama — he arrived as a ready-made specialist. As for tuition costs — they speak for themselves: almost half the price of comparable programs at other colleges.
“It is never too late to learn,” said some wise soul whose name has been forgotten — and today’s guest proved it through his own experience. The real question is what to learn, and where. If your interests lie in creativity, art, and design, the answer is clear: New Image College. Perhaps you will be the subject of one of our next articles, sharing your own success story with our readers. Visit the college online at www.newimagecollege.com or call (800) 264-8110
Bogdan Fadeev bfadeev@gmail.com
