Graphic designers convey a message across through the depiction of colors, shapes, and images in such a way that it grabs the intended audience’s attention.
Much of their work involves creating logos, brochures, magazines, ebook covers, or other graphical designs to instill brand awareness for a company.
They are often times involved in producing advertising and promotional material through the use of sophisticated graphic design software or by hand.
As per survey of 2010, nearly 31% of graphic designers were their own bosses. This shows that people love working from their home and avoid 9 to 5 hassle.
What Does a Graphic Designer Do?
Graphic designers mostly work on advertising projects for different businesses.
They typically meet with the business owners to initially find out the target audience for that advertising campaign.
Then, they try to portray the message that their customers want to send to their target audience through the use of graphical methods.
Their works of art may be used in magazines, printed brochures, websites, television commercials, billboards, and social profiles. Any thing where clients want to say it with pictures rather than words is actually a project for a graphic designer.
Some of their other duties include:
- Designing images that send the intended message
- Selecting colors, layout, text fonts
- Advise clients on marketing strategies
- Present first images for approval or critique
- Change images per client requests
- Submit approved designs and images for publishing
You may be thinking what are essential traits to become an outstanding graphic designer? Well, the answer is simple. It all depends on how must you be able to convert your client messages for grabbing customers’ attention and transform it into a graphical presentation.
This is their natural talent that make them better among others. Obviously, learning and practice have a role to play but their are lot to depend on artistic abilities that can only be get through naturally.
The Workplace
Graphic designers work for a variety of industries. They can work for advertisers, design firms, freelancing marketplaces, public relations companies, printers, and specialty design shops.
They also work in different studios with other graphic designers to get ideas synergies and alternate perspectives on projects.
In these studios, there will be super fast and powerful computer workstations that can handle advanced graphical software and make all processing without any glitches that are required for producing quality images.
In today’s world of the internet, self-employed graphic designers can work from anywhere that has the required workstation and graphical software.
It is due to this reason that a significant number of graphic designers are self-employed. These self-employed designers typically work late night because clients may be in other places with different working hours.
Education and Certification
Graphic designers oftentimes have natural talent, but there are also some certified degree programs where you can sharpen your designing skills and learn techniques to produce graphic art faster, more efficiently, and with higher quality.
A popular accreditation authority for these graphic design programs is the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD).
The most important credential for a graphic designer is the portfolio, and in these programs, a person is taught how to build an effective portfolio—one that will land a job.
It is actually graphic designer’s compilation of the best works. Students get to know how to develop a portfolio that gets to the point yet sends the powerful and strongest message to prospective clients. It is much similar the resume for those seeking positions in other industries.
You can also join different online institutes where you would learn different graphic design software.
Most of the freelancers are also using these software nowadays. There are a lot of such software out there, but you can see graphic design software here which is getting very famous now.
At a Glance:
Please look a summary of graphic designing industry.
- Job Titles: Computer Graphics Designer
- Salary Range: $30,000-$80,000; Median $50,000
- Education/Training Required: Bachelors degree in graphic design
- Desired Skills/Aptitude: Artistic ability, creativity, able to work as part of a team, computer skills, communication skills
- Certification/Licensing: Not applicable in this field
- Locations with Best Opportunities: New York, Washington, Colorado
- Employment Outlook: Increase by 15% (as fast as average)
- Opportunities for Advancement: Opportunities as a chief director, creative designer or supervisor become available with experience and demonstrated skills
Final Words:
I would say that graphic designing is one of the top fields to step in. There is a lot of room for newcomers. You can become a freelancer, start your own agency, or appointed as an employee.
