Graphic Designer

In this career guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know about Graphic Designing as a career, from roles and responsibilities, to work environment and roadmap to becoming a Graphic Designer.

Who's a Graphic Designer?

Graphic designers create visual magic by combining art and technology! As a graphic designer, you get to create different types of illustrations, images and graphics by hand or using various computer software. Your creativity and art will be used for product illustrations, website designs, promotional material, branding and more.

Companies and people will use the incredible stuff you create to communicate visually appealing messages to their audience. Your work plays a vital role in conveying information and messages to the audience in an interesting format. In fact, the graphics you see on this website have been created by a graphic designer!

Everybody needs a graphic designer! If you want to make an advertising campaign, you need a graphic designer. If you want to design a product, you ask a graphic designer! If you need book covers, magazines, websites, who will you call? A graphic designer! It doesn’t matter if it’s the government, a private corporation or an NGO, everyone needs a graphic designer.

Responsibilities

What will you do?

Meeting potential clients

You will have to meet your client and have a lengthy conversation with them to understand what they are looking for. You will also have to share some of your work to show what you’re capable of and discuss ideas with the client on what would work best for their needs.

Creating and sharing a portfolio

A portfolio is a collection of all your design work. It could showcase your ideas, college projects, previous work, etc. It gives the viewer an idea of your designing capabilities. Once a client has viewed your portfolio, they will feel confident about your work.

Discussing cost estimates and tentative timelines

Once the client has explained what they want from you, you must discuss timelines and costs with your client. If your client has a certain budget or timeline in mind, you might have to create a design accordingly. Say a client wants an ad designed within two days at a low cost. You will then create a simple appealing design as opposed to an elaborate, intricate one.

Working with designing softwares to create your design

Most of your design work will happen on a computer. This requires you to master some of the basic software like Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Coreldraw, among others.

Being good at digital as well as physical art

Even though most of your work happens on a computer, you still might need to draw from time to time. For instance, you might use your calligraphy skills to present text in a beautiful font that might not be available online.

Designing a variety of elements

Your skills won’t be limited to making book covers and ads. Over the course of your career, you will work on a variety of designs, ranging from logos and stationery design to brochures, product designs, posters and more.

Checking the final artwork before it is published

Once your client approves the design, you will have to create a final, high-quality version for printing or uploading it online. You will have to perform a thorough check on the final artwork, ensuring that all the guidelines have been followed and everything is in place before it goes live.

Working with copywriters, creative directors or sales executives

If you’re working in an agency, you will have to work with different teams to create the final product. The marketing team would help you get the client’s brief, the copywriter will help you with ideas and provide the text for your work, and so on. If you’re a freelancer, you might have to team up with other freelancers for specific tasks as and when required.

Workplace

Where will you work?

Office

If you're working for an organisation, you will work out of their office and follow their work timings. Sometimes, you may even have to extend your working hours to meet a deadline.

Home

Many graphic designers choose to freelance. They choose how many projects they want and what kind of work they want to do. As a freelance graphic designer, you could work from home or even a cafe.

Education

How do you get there?

STEP 1: Class XI-XII/Junior College

The ideal pathway to this career is through fine arts. If not, choose a combination of arts subjects that will help you understand your field better. Start building your skills alongside. Learn how to use Photoshop, Illustrator and other computer software. Take courses in art history or design.

STEP 2: Graduation

Get a Graduate (Bachelor’s) degree in Graphic Design. You could also get a Graduate (Bachelor’s) degree in any discipline and pursue a course, diploma or technical training in Graphic Design.

Pursuing a Bachelor of Mass Media (BMM) degree might help due to its Advertising Design course, but you should ideally do a diploma/course in design.

You can always build a portfolio by designing communication for college events, festivals and competitions.

STEP 3: Internship

As an intern, you may not get very challenging work. But you will learn how the industry functions. You will learn the tricks of the trade. You will learn how to juggle deadlines and handle pressure. And most importantly, you will get to meet people from the industry and build a portfolio! Network well during your internship; it could help you land a job when you graduate!

STEP 4: Build Your Portfolio

A portfolio is a collection of your work. It will feature your drawings, projects and anything else you might have worked on. It could even feature rough sketches of your brilliant ideas. A good portfolio will help you land a job. Start building your portfolio as soon as you learn the basics of designing. Include all your best work, even if it’s for a college assignment or a friend’s birthday card. As you gain more experience, you will be able to build a more diverse portfolio.

STEP 5: Land a Job

Get your first job or first paid project. You could even ask the people you interned with to offer you a job. If you go on a job hunt and land interviews, carry your portfolio with you.

Congratulations, you’re now officially a graphic designer!

STEP 6: Post-Graduation

If you want to do a specialisation or get an edge over other designers, you could get a postgraduate (Master’s) degree in Graphic Design or Visual Communications.

STEP 1: Class XI-XII/Junior College

If you choose commerce subjects for your XI-XII/junior college, it is important that you start building your skills alongside. Learn how to use Photoshop, Illustrator and other computer software. Take courses in art history or design.

STEP 2: Graduation

Get a Graduate (Bachelor’s) degree in Graphic Design. You could also get a Graduate (Bachelor’s) degree in any discipline and pursue a course, diploma or technical training in Graphic Design.

Pursuing a Bachelor of Mass Media (BMM) degree might help due to its Advertising Design course, but you should ideally do a diploma/course in design.

You can always build a portfolio by designing communication for college events, festivals and competitions.

STEP 3: Internship

As an intern, you may not get very challenging work. But you will learn how the industry functions. You will learn the tricks of the trade. You will learn how to juggle deadlines and handle pressure. And most importantly, you will get to meet people from the industry and build a portfolio! Network well during your internship; it could help you land a job when you graduate!

STEP 4: Build Your Portfolio

A portfolio is a collection of your work. It will feature your drawings, projects and anything else you might have worked on. It could even feature rough sketches of your brilliant ideas. A good portfolio will help you land a job. Start building your portfolio as soon as you learn the basics of designing. Include all your best work, even if it’s for a college assignment or a friend’s birthday card. As you gain more experience, you will be able to build a more diverse portfolio.

STEP 5: Land a Job

Get your first job or first paid project. You could even ask the people you interned with to offer you a job. If you go on a job hunt and land interviews, carry your portfolio with you.

Congratulations, you’re now officially a graphic designer!

STEP 6: Post-graduation

If you want to do a specialisation or get an edge over other designers, you could get a postgraduate (Master’s) degree in Graphic Design or Visual Communications.

This stream won’t help you make an entry into this field.

What skills would you need?

Communication Skills

Communication Skills

It’s harder than ever to get people’s attention, what with so much information being thrown at them. But, people cannot resist a good story. Every good marketing campaign has a story to tell their customers and relate to them on an emotional level. Marketers who tell great stories through their marketing campaigns are always in great demand.

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Technical Skills

Technical Skills

You will be frequently using accounting software and other financial tools as many CAs need to work with technology to analyse data and prepare financial reports. build this skill
Time Management

Time Management

The best - and worst - part about marketing is that there is never a dull moment. But this also means that there is NEVER A DULL MOMENT. Be prepared to be working on several tasks at once. That means that there are times when you will have to put certain projects on the backburner. You will have to know how to prioritise so that you don’t lose out on any opportunities.

Social Skills

Social Skills

You will be working on a lot of cool projects and will be meeting a lot of potential clients and customers on the job. And so, a big part of your job will involve interacting with these people. You could be great at coming up with ideas, but that is only one part of your job. You will need to talk and meet people, build a rapport with them, to establish your credibility. Especially if you’re a freelancer, you will need to have certain social skills.

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Promotion levels

How do you make it to the top ranks?

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Intern

One of the first roles you can work as is that of an intern at a firm or independently.

Junior Designer

You can probably begin your career at an ad agency, design firm or any other creative organisation as a junior designer. Here, you would probably execute your seniors’ ideas and offer your own ideas in brainstorms. If your ideas are good, you might just get to bring them to life as well! At this stage, you should learn all you can from your senior designers and other team members.

Senior Designer

Once you gain enough experience, you will be promoted to senior designer. You will then get to attend client meets, present your ideas to the client and either design them yourself or get a junior designer to execute your ideas.

Creative Director/Art Director

Once you’ve worked for around 8-10 years, you could become an Art Director or Creative Director! You’ll have a large team of senior designers under you. You will handle all the big projects, or choose the ones you want to work on and delegate the rest to your team members. You will also have a say in the kind of clients that come in, the overall design quality of your job and the brand image of your organisation.

Freelancer/Independent Designer/Entrepreneur

You could also choose to freelance after working at an organisation for a couple of years. You should be able to network well and find interesting projects if you wish to become a freelancer. You can also start your own design agency and offer exclusive design services to clients.

Scope

Pursuing your career locally VS abroad

You will have good scope in India as a Graphic Designer. Whether being part of an in-house Design and Marketing team or working at a startup that’s delivering projects for domestic and international clients – a skilled Graphic Designer will find a place. Many multinational Advertising firms have a strong base here. India being an outsourcing powerhouse has many firms working on assignments for domestic as well as International clients. National Institute of Design at Ahmedabad is a premier institute in the field of Graphic Design offering various design-related courses from Bachelors to PhD. Apart from NID, Symbiosis Institute of Design and Pearl Academy are other prominent institutes in India. Fees range from INR 1 Lakh to 12 Lakh, depending on the institute.

With a refined appreciation of the arts, Graphic Design courses are popular in Europe. Countries such as the UK, Italy, Germany and Finland, among others, have very good institutes offering Design courses. In colleges outside the UK the medium of instruction may not be English. Some of the top colleges for Design in the UK are University of the Arts London, Manchester School of Art and Wimbledon College of Arts among others. An important part of the application process is your digital portfolio or video showing a gallery of your creative work, and samples of your rough sketches. Course fees for international students are in the range of £17,000 to £23,000 per year.

Payscale

How much would you get paid?

The exact number will depend on where you’re working, your education, skill-set and internship experience.  But, here's can a general idea.


Specialisations

What are your career options?

Art Director

Fields as varied as Films, TV, Print Media, Publishing, Product Packaging and Advertising need an Art Director. As an Art Director you would be responsible for ensuring that the aesthetics and visual style match with the objective of the assignments you would be working on. Being a leadership role, this requires the ability to inspire and guide a multi-functional team, to understand each individual’s skill and create a cohesive unit.

Game Designer

As a game designer you will visualize and bring a game to life by creating a storyline, designing the character, user interfaces, etc. While software development will be done by developers, knowledge of the technical aspects will be an advantage. There are also specialized courses in Game Designing that you can consider adding to your existing skills.

Industrial Designer

As an Industrial Designer you will bring together skills in engineering and art to produce objects that are aesthetic as well as functional in everyday use. Most of the objects that you see around – be it a detergent bottle, the shopping carts in supermarkets, and ergonomic chairs – they all are creations of Industrial Designers. Bachelor’s degree in industrial design is an appropriate course to get into this field.

UX/UI Designer

A User Experience / User Interaction Designer’s core focus is to make products and technology usable, enjoyable, and accessible for the end users. UX designers tend to work as part of a wider product team, and will often find themselves bridging the gap between the user, the development team, and key business stakeholders. A full-stack designer has a range of skills including UX and UI design, coding, project management, UX writing and an understanding of the development process. Specialized courses can help you bridge any gaps.

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