Graphic Design Careers

In past few years, Graphic Design has emerged as a very popular career option -- especially for those who are inclined towards art and creativity. We can find Graphics anywhere and everywhere, whether you are watching a Commercial Ad, or walking through the roadside hoarding or purchasing a product of your favorite brand, you cannot escape the various forms of graphic designs.

Why Graphic Design Careers are so popular?

Every business requires branding and has advertising needs. Good-looking, attractive Online and Offline Ads add a lot of value to their brand. Every successful business requires a logo, business stationery, website, brochure, newsletter, corporate report, in-house magazine, etc.
Graphics are much more powerful than mere words. Even simple words can be transformed into eye-catching message using various graphic tools.
Attractive looking graphics are appealing to people and helps in ‘selling’. Don’t we notice a big hoarding with a good image on it or a funny text written in bold in a magazine or an online banner offering a promo discount?
Graphic designers love their jobs, because it involves a lot of creativity, openness to new and innovative ideas, flexible working schedule and a lot of learning along the way.
Graphic design is a very vast field. There are various job titles available for a graphic designer to make his/her career, it could be an illustrator, image editor, animator, web designer, etc.
Graphic Designing is a suitable field for those who want to do freelancing or want to work part-time or work from home. You needn’t be present every time in office to take inputs and work on those.
A graphic designer can work anywhere. What you need is a computer with necessary software in it and an internet connection.
One doesn’t need a college degree (though it is always good to have one) to become a graphic designer. One can also be a self-made graphic designer and learn the tools online. With a little mentoring, one can grow in his/her career.

Tasks and Responsibilities of a Graphic Designer:

Understanding the project requirements.
Estimating time requirements and costs for the project.
Analyzing the competitors and their strategies.
Building design concepts as per the client’s requirements.
Developing and revising designs through research.
Working collaboratively with other professionals, such as software programmers, photographers and other designers.
Proofreading and finalizing designs to be sent for printing and publishing.

Qualifications:

Although a degree in Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) or a diploma in Visual Communication is undoubtedly preferred, your experience and skill set is most important. You can begin without a degree.
Certifications in graphical tools such as Quark Xpress, Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Corel Draw, Acrobat, 3D Studio, Dreamweaver, Flash or Flex can give you an advantage while being hired by a company. Some of them might even enlist this as pre-requisites.

Requisites for becoming a Graphic Designer:

1. Creativity: The prime requisite is Creativity. The candidate must possess an instinctive ability to have an excellent understanding about playing with the elements of visual communication such as colors, brightness, contrast, scale and typography. He/she must know how to best use the elements for developing desirable visual designs. 2. Technical Skills: The second important requisite is Technical Knowledge. By technical knowledge we mean knowledge of the latest tools which are needed to develop and implement the designs. Some latest tools are Adobe’s InDesign, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, Photoshop, Flash etc. Others are QuarkXpress, Illustrator, etc. 3. Business Skills: The third essential skill for a graphic designer is business knowledge. For making recommendations to clients, a clear understanding of their business trends and challenges in very important. The candidate should thus possess business skills to excel in this domain. 4. Interpersonal Skills: The 4th essential skill is people skills. Graphic designers have to work with teams and might also have to deal directly with the clients. Interpersonal skills are thus an essential requirement for this role. In overall, people skills mean decent listening skills, flexibility, ability to work collaboratively and strong verbal communication.

Graphic Design Careers:

Though the main objective of any graphic designer is to combine different elements such as shapes, lines, colors, fonts to create beautiful looking and meaningful artworks, a graphic designer can work in totally different mediums and have distinct career paths.

Let’s look into some of the Graphic Design Careers:

1. Print Design: Print design is a distinct and one of the oldest fields of Graphic Design. Print design means a visual communication printed in a newspaper, magazine, packaging, logo, business cards, brochure, newsletter or any other form of print. A graphic designer in print media needs to create all the above. He/she either work in ad agencies or companies that hire in-house designers. A thorough knowledge of printing is required while creating print graphics. 2. Web Designing: Web designing has emerged as one of the hottest career options today. Every company needs a good website to succeed today. A web designer needs to know HTML, CSS, Dreamweaver, and other web development tools and languages in order to create beautiful and user-friendly websites. Web graphics also involve e-brochures, e-newsletter, web banners, etc. Clean navigation buttons, crisp icons and neat design is what makes a website attractive. 3. UI Designers: A recent field added to graphic design is UI (User Interface) design. UI designer looks after the ‘look’ and ‘feel’ of a software interface which could be a website, application for a mobile or for gaming. UI designers aim at creating user-friendly interactions by using minimum no. of visual elements and eliminating unnecessary objects from the design. 4. Animation: We all are mesmerized by Finding Nemo, A Bug’s Life, Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, Ice Age, Winnie the Pooh, and all such animation movies which have not only attracted kids but adults too. 2D as well as 3D animations in the form of movies, ad films as well as cartoon serials have entertained us like anything. Irrespective of slow economic growth, animation industry is doing quite well and is short in supply of talented animators. A graphic designer interested in creating animated characters and giving special effects, can make a lucrative career in animation.

Job Opportunities for Graphic Designers:

Payscale of Graphic Designers:

Future Scope:

There are around 42,000 enterprises working in graphic designing, ranging from big companies to freelancers. The graphic design domain is incurring a tremendous growth and gaining early experience in this field could be a great advantage to interested candidates. According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics in India, the job opportunities for graphic designers are expected to increase by 13 percent from 2013 to 2018, due to the rise in demand for graphic designers from commercial and IT firms. Moreover, there would be a great need for Graphic Designers due to the increase in projects for media such as websites, smart phones and other technologies. The growth of Internet advertising domain, particularly, is expected to generate a big need for graphic designers.

Also, read related articles on Graphic Designing:

What is Graphic Design? How to become a Graphic Designer?

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