Graphic designs are like a story about the brand, company, or product narrated to the audience through images and visuals. With the rise of digital marketing and increasing competition in the market, making a product stand out is essential. And this necessity is fulfilled by Graphic Designers.
Graphic Designers are like modern artists in today's world. They combine images and literature to communicate and interact with the audience. Graphic designing is a significant part of digital marketing and advertising a brand or a new product and can be a great career option.
So how to become a graphic designer? Apart from practical experience and innovative thinking, what other skills are required to become a Graphic Designer? Read on to explore more about this creative career option.
What Does a Graphic Designer Do?
As mentioned earlier, Graphic Designers create innovative and attractive graphic designs to convey ideas and product descriptions or brand value to the audience through visuals. Graphic Designers work in either a digital marketing firm as a part of a team or work independently part-time or full-time. The Graphic Designer's job is to create innovative marketing visuals or brochures for a new product or a brand for the client. The Graphic Designer has to work to meet the daily or weekly deadlines. They should be compatible with the most complex graphic software and tools to manipulate texts, images, animations, and content.
Skills Required to Become a Graphic Designer
There is no specific educational qualification required to become a Graphic Designer. However, a Graphic Designer needs to be innovative and creative to become successful. Also, completing a graphic designer course can give you an edge over others.
The skills required to become a Graphic Designer are as follows-
-
Creativity
Creativity is one of the essential skills to become a Graphic Designer. The creative idea and innovative design will make them narrate the story of the entire product or the brand through a few visuals.
-
Communication
Understanding the client's need and the target audience and bridging the gap between the demand and the audience through graphics is one of the essential skills of a Graphic Designer. A Graphic Designer is a storyteller who narrates the brand's story or the product to the audience.
-
Compatibility With Graphic Software
A Graphic Designer has to manipulate lots of images, texts, and animation to create a good design. Being able to utilize complex graphic design tools freely is the crux of expressing ideas in the design.
-
Coding
A basic understanding of HTML is an added skill as it lets you understand the work that goes into creating a website. Learning basic python or java language can also boost the profile.
-
Presentation Skills
The final aim of a Graphic Designer is to present the client's needs to the targeted audience. Therefore, the Graphic Designer has to be skilled to deliver the customer's needs to the audience through simple yet innovative designs.
How to Become a Graphic Designer: A Step-by-Step Guide
To become a Graphic Designer, one has to clear all the bases about the know-how about this job. Only relying on skills without exposure to actual projects will not yield favorable results. The step-by-step guide to becoming a Graphic Designer is as follows.
-
Understanding the Fundamentals of Graphic Design Principles
Understanding the basic fundamental principles of graphic design is the first step to becoming a Graphic Designer. Creating a good design involves a lot of planning and expertise in applying design theory and principles. In addition, combining the texts, graphics, and animation to impact the audience needs to be considered by the designer.
-
Enrolling in a Graphic Designer Course
Though you do not need a degree to become a Graphic Designer, enrolling in a course to increase your understanding and expertise in the field is one of the most important steps. A graphic design course teaches the fundamentals of graphic design and improves your skills by providing some mock projects. In addition, many graphic design courses introduce various design tools and software like UX and website design principles.
-
Learning Graphic Design Tools
After enrolling in Graphic Design Course, it is crucial to learn all the basic tools for graphic designing. The most commonly used graphic design software is Adobe Creative Suites. Learning Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign is also an added advantage. Also, learning languages like Python and Java will give you an insight into animation design.
-
Working on Small Self Projects
After learning the basics of the graphic design course and learning the graphic design tools, the next step is to work on a small self-assigned project. Start by creating a design for a real or made-up product or company. Creating logos of a few mock companies or redesigning the existing companies’ logos can help you get some experience with the knowledge you have acquired so far. Working with local non-profits or brands can let you experience live projects.
-
Creating a Portfolio
A portfolio is like your resume. Creating a strong portfolio to showcase your skills is essential for any Graphic Designer. The portfolio attracts your clients or helps create a strong profile for the job.
Types of Graphic Designers
There are three types of graphic designers.
-
In-house Graphic Designers
The In-house Graphic Designers are the professionals hired directly by established brands or big companies. These graphic designers work for new product branding, designing marketing campaigns for the company, or compiling annual reports.
-
Agency Graphic Designers
Certain agencies carry out graphic design work for various companies. The Agency Graphic Designers work in these companies and work for more than one or two clients. Therefore, these Graphic Designers always have to bring out different creativity skills for different clients.
-
Freelance Graphic Designers
These are the Graphic Designers who are self-employed and work with great flexibility. The Freelance Graphic Designers need to market themselves all the time and handle invoicing and quotations for the project. Though Freelance Graphic Designers are flexible, they have to deal with weekly or daily deadlines.
Salary and Career Growth
With the rise of digital marketing, a career in graphic design is blooming. The annual salary for a Graphic Designer in India ranges from INR 1.1 LPA to INR 6.5 LPA with an average salary of INR 3.0 LPA. The annual salary for a graphic designer in the US ranges from $46,000 to $62,000. With increasing proficiency in graphic design software, one can get high-level projects that can help grow in this field. Constantly updating the portfolio also helps in increasing the chances of career growth no matter the type of Graphic Designer you are.
Here is your golden ticket to making a career in Design Thinking. Sign-up for our PGP in Design Thinking & Innovation course and get a chance to learn from UMass Amherst and EY experts!
Conclusion
Graphic Designing is an ever-expanding and blooming field. With a unique creative skill set, one can achieve great heights in a career as a Graphic Designer. Enroll yourself in Simplilearn's Design Thinking Certification Training Course and master the concepts of design thinking—a powerful problem-solving process that involves a deep understanding of customer needs. You can boost your grasp of business strategy and innovation to drive a design thinking culture in your organization with the help of this Design Thinking Training.
