Suppose you want to become a graphic designer. In that case, you need to develop marketable talents, such as proficient sketching abilities, command of design tools, and a thorough comprehension of design principles and concepts. You must be able to complete projects from start to finish, which includes coming up with ideas, coming up with specific designs, following the delivery and installation of assets, and more.
Building a solid foundation of fundamental abilities, learning through practice and experimentation, and producing a significant body of your creative work are the best ways to become a graphic designer, whether independently or as part of a degree program. We’ve developed a step-by-step guide to getting started that examines two potential routes: obtaining a degree in graphic design or learning graphic design independently through self-paced online courses.
Path #1: Obtain a graphic design degree.
We’ve all heard the tales of individuals who dropped out of college and went on to found businesses that altered the way the world functioned, like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. These examples support the notion that you can succeed without a college degree if you have a lot of hard work, a solid portfolio, and some natural talent. Wrong.
Even if not every position in the design sector needs a graphic design degree, some abilities are incredibly challenging to pick up on your own. You can learn more about best practices and how to build skills, techniques, and information by earning a graphic design degree than by reading blog posts and watching online tutorials. You can locate your first job and improve your career by developing a network of industry connections while in college.
Path #2: Take online courses to learn graphic design
Unfortunately, in today’s world, having a degree from a famous university does not always imply that the holder is qualified to perform great work. Employers and clientele in many arts and design-related sectors give your portfolio more weight than your educational background. As a result, more and more people are choosing to learn graphic design online at their speed rather than enrolling in college.
Additionally, there are fantastic chances to learn graphic design online. Almost anything can be learned online, including how to become a graphic designer. The majority of online courses are very cost-effective, allowing you to learn at your own speed for a small portion of what you would spend on traditional college courses.
Begin With the Foundations
You should always start with the basics, no matter if you decide to acquire a degree in graphic design or learn the craft online. This includes discovering various drawing techniques and materials, experimenting with color, becoming proficient with computer programs like Illustrator and Photoshop, and more. If you wish to work for yourself as a graphic designer, start by honing the following core abilities.
Learn the fundamentals of drawing
You must have the fundamental skill to write down your ideas before you can approach the commercial aspect of art. While some people can draw naturally well, others find it difficult to create even simple line drawings. In either case, drawing skills are essential if you want to design things like websites and logos.
Many graphic designers start each project with a series of “thumbnails” (miniature sketches that depict fundamental layouts and concepts) before selecting their favorite ones to become “roughs” (detailed layouts that illustrate the concept). They present these rough sketches to clients as well as to other staff members at their company, such as the creative directors, account managers, and art directors. You need rudimentary drawing skills and trained clarity in your sketching to be able to express your point of view succinctly.
A colorful font and a few graphics are not enough to qualify as graphic design. Instead, effective layouts and design can be handled scientifically. To produce an appealing design, you must invest a lot of effort into choosing the right picture, layout, space, visual structure, and proper font.
Clients don’t like to pay for empty space, so graphic designers must take that into account. They also need to think about how to make headers and subheads uniform in size while still fitting the available space on the page. Designers need to understand how color and imagery affect people and how to utilize that knowledge to steer users (and customers) in the direction they want them to go.
Discover the Foundations of User Experience
UX, or user experience, is a crucial component of visual design. User-centered design, a strategy to create websites and applications based on the demands of the users, has evolved into user experience (UX). Designers of the user experience must comprehend human motivations and online behavior.
Since UX stresses a human-centered approach to the design process, designers must understand the fundamentals of UX. This is especially important for graphic designers who work with websites and other digital platforms. For instance, a website needs to be made so that users may traverse it with ease. If user experience (UX) isn’t taken into account, visitors could get frustrated and quit the site right away if they can’t discover the material they’re looking for.
Learn about best practices for web design
Users only give your digital advertisement or website a few seconds to see if it captures their attention or satisfies their demands before deciding whether to stay on it or go. Increased engagement time, click-through rates, and visitor retention are facilitated by understanding best practices for content, structure, layout, and visual aids. You also need to understand how to make sure that pages load quickly, how to design for mobile devices, and how to use responsive elements to customize every part of the user experience.
Study effective copywriting
Strong writing abilities are frequently required of graphic designers, especially those operating as sole proprietors, to guarantee that the client’s message is compelling and understandable. Graphic designers often take on the role of copywriters by writing descriptions, text blocks, headers, article titles, CTAs, and even meta descriptions for brochures, point-of-sale, collateral, websites, and digital ads because visitors frequently skim content to decide if they want to spend time reading it.
Writing should be clear, grammatically correct, and consistent with the brand’s voice to improve engagement, foster interest, and increase visibility. The graphic designer most likely contributes to choosing the voice most appropriate for the brand’s target audience if the company lacks a defined voice.
Recognize the Software
The fundamentals of graphic design are just the start. Maintaining competency, updating skills, staying current on industry advances, and utilizing new technologies in the creative world are all ongoing goals for graphic designers. You must possess a high level of proficiency with the software applications the sector uses to succeed.
Any graphic designer should at the very least be familiar with Adobe Creative Cloud software, but you should also learn how to utilize other applications tailored to the sector. How proficient graphic designers are with their program directly affects how quickly they can produce things and how creatively they can approach their tasks.
Photoshop is the program to use if you need to edit or change an image. Photoshop uses rasterized images that support pixel editing. Because of this capability, Photoshop is only appropriate for photographic imagery; it cannot be used to create logos, fonts, websites, or any other visual design. Photoshop can be used to replace specific elements in an image, such as a face, add a background, or correct photographic defects.
To edit photographs at a truly professional level for your customer, you must comprehend and use Photoshop’s many editing tools, such as healing brushes, lasso tools, feathering, and burning. A skilled designer won’t rely on stock photos because they are frequently impersonal and don’t advance the brand.
Adobe Illustrator® training
You’ll probably utilize Illustrator to finish a project when a client requests a logo or an illustration. Since Illustrator uses vector graphics, each line and curve is a precise mathematical point. In contrast to raster graphics, which can only be scaled up, vector images can be made of any size. Website design and any other graphic task that demands precise lines and shapes work well with Illustrator.
With various sophisticated line, gradient, and coloring tools in Illustrator, users can build intricate drawings that can later be adjusted, enlarged, and colored to suit any need. For instance, a logo made in Illustrator may be used on a billboard and a business card without losing clarity or resolution.
Discover Adobe InDesign
A desktop publishing tool called InDesign, which works on both Windows and Mac computers, enables users to prepare for print output from the beginning of a project. While Photoshop and Illustrator can be used to create simple page layouts, InDesign gives you complete control over a publication’s text and visuals.
Each page is created using InDesign using various features, such as defining the bleed area (the edges where color bleeds off the page), inserting photos, setting up text columns, and adding unique layouts like cross-heads or callouts, and incorporating interactive elements like links and buttons.
