With the increase in the types and nature of how graphic design contents are being created and exhibited, new types of software and new techniques are introduced every day, which is why you should take note of the 8 main types of graphic designer in the graphic design sphere and also figure out where to key in yourself ASAP.
I bet you that there are one or two or even tons of graphic design content sitting around you if not so, then, your mobile phone is definitely displaying different types of graphic design content right now.
Graphic design is an essential aspect of modern-day business and marketing. It is the process of using visual elements, such as images, typography, and color, to communicate a message and convey information.
In today’s competitive world, businesses and organizations of all sizes need to stand out and effectively communicate their message to their target audience. This is where graphic design plays a crucial role. This is why today I’m going to be talking about 8 main types of graphic design (salary included).
You know graphic designers have been in high demand lately from companies and organizations who intend to promote their products and services or as well pass information to their target audience when needed through the use of visual communication.
With the effective use of images, texts, and colors, the graphic designer tries to get into the mind of those target audiences to subconsciously make them react in a particular way that finally propels them to take action.
Most times people (including me, back in the days) get it mixed up that graphic design is simply all about creating posters with photoshop and creating logos with illustrator, but we never knew that there is a lot more to it than meets the eye.
Branding/Visual Identity Design
We all know how important it is to get your brand’s identity exposed to the general public or to its target audience to inform them of the kind of product or services that you render. Without brand exposure, no one would even know that your company or product even exists.
Branding/visual identity design is certainly one of the most popular types of graphic design. Graphic designers who specialize in this field use the element of graphic design – colors, texts, images, and shapes to create an identity that represents the face of that brand to its audience.
When we come across the word Branding, we instantaneously think about logos. though you are not totally wrong if you think of it that way, it’s just that logo is just a fragment of the whole branding concept. (If branding is a house, then a logo is just a room inside of it).
A brand gives the customers a reason to go for their own product instead of the product of its competitor, this is because the brand has planted a sense of originality, trust, and promise to what they are going to deliver to you as their customer whenever you buy their products or make use of their services.
Let’s take Coca-Cola and its competitor Pepsi for example. At some point in time, you must have had a bottle or two bottles of these world-leading soft drinks. the feeling and emotion you get when drinking coke will probably differ from the feeling and emotion you get when drinking a Pepsi soft drink. Right? Well, that’s branding doing its thing on you.
Take a look at this coca-cola ad commercial below and tell us what you think of it in the comment section.
and also an ad from its market rival Pepsi below.
This is why some people choose Pepsi over coke or vice versa. Basically, they are good products and might have the same taste but I don’t think so because, speaking from my own consumer’s experience and as a coke fan, I think coke has a better taste and feels refreshing (or maybe the brand effect has got me, XD)
either way, that’s the kind of feeling the brand wants you to get whenever you consume their product or service, they want you to choose their own product over the other competitor’s product with their brand influence.
And this is achieved using the visual elements of graphic design to make this ideal emotion come to life.
Examples of brand/identity design
- Personal branding
- Product branding
- Service branding
- Retail branding
- Cultural and geographic branding
- Corporate branding
- Online branding
- Offline branding
Brand/Identity Designer Salary
As of Aug 19, 2021, the average annual salary for a Brand Identity Designer in the United States is $73,023 a year. Just in case you want to break it down, approximately you get paid $35.11/hourly, $1,404/weekly, and $6,085/monthly.
Marketing Design
On a daily, up to 4,000 to 10,000 marketing campaigns are created in the US alone. That tells you how serious companies and business owners take their marketing affairs to be. They put in so much time and effort to showcase their product on every platform with their target audience in mind.
Those adverts and marketing campaigns you see on the Newspaper, Billboard, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and so on. They are all parts and parcels of the marketing campaign and there is a lot more that goes into it than what you see merely on the screen.
For this reason, companies are continuously seeking strategic ways of getting their target audience to walk into the nearest shop to buy their product or click the ‘Buy’ or ‘Shop Now’ button when it pops up on their mobile screens.
Graphic designers who specialize in the marketing design aspect of graphic design try to create an effective graphic design marketing strategy to enable them to increase the value of sales of a company. These designers try to capture the attention of their audience (with the help of colors, texts, images, and videos). With these graphic design elements, they propel their target audience to subconsciously purchase a company’s product.
A marketing strategy might be focused on a particular category of people, it could be in terms of age, gender, occupation, or even lifestyle.
While marketing graphic designers are always seeking a strategic way to penetrate the mind of their target audience to make them purchase a product, it is still noteworthy to know that they are generally problem solvers, with good communication skills and design versatility.
Examples of marketing design
- Poster design
- Banners
- Billboard design
- Social media ads
- Signage design
- Powerpoint presentation
- Vehicle wraps
Marketing Graphic Designer Salary
In the United States, the average annual salary of a marketing graphic designer is $48,266/yearly. For a more detailed breakdown, it is an average of $23,20/hour, $928/weekly, and $4,022/monthly.
Web Design
The internet is a great place where so much information is stored viz, entertainment, sport, history and so many more. Since its invention on January 1, 1983, the internet has taken so many structures, forms, and designs. With the broad nature and types of graphic designers, we have today, the web designer is one of the most important.
Web design has five core aspect that makes it fully effective, these are – Layout, Color, Graphic, Font, and Contents
Every website you visit today has a unique style of design that blends in with its niche, they represent their brand’s function as they are made up of structures, compositions, colors, fonts, and images that ultimately intend the give users or visitors an unforgettable experience.
You can check out this web design UI site for web design inspiration that will help develop your skill as a web designer.
Web designers try to use the client’s brief to create an effective design. Basically, they follow the same steps as every other graphic designer would – the designer meets with the client in person or virtually, he collects the necessary information or the client’s brief and he uses the information gotten to design a web page that suits the client taste and also the target audience user experience and accessibility.
A web designer uses the right colors, fonts, images, and every other necessary graphic design elements needed to create an appealing and responsive web page.
For example, if a web designer is designing a web page for a jewelry brand, a bunch of classy and luxurious aesthetics have to be put in.
The designer needs to make use of fonts that look classy example is the serif family type of font which can also be mixed with San-serif fonts or maybe a script font for the heading title, the color used should be able to depict a kind of royal or classy appearance.
But in all, he should remember that it’s a website design and its primary aim is to be responsive to users as they scroll through It. It shouldn’t be an overkill or underkill, it should just be as easy as it could so as to give the user a better web time experience.
Web Designer Salary
As of Aug 21, 2021, the average annual pay for a Web Developer in the United States is $75,073 a year.
Just in case you need a simple salary calculator, that works out to be approximately $36.09 an hour. This is the equivalent of $1,444/week or $6,256/month.
UI Design
One thing is to have a company or business and another is to have an app or medium of interaction with that company. Absolutely every nice app and website interface you see was designed by a graphic designer (both the good-looking and the bad-looking UI).
UI which means “user interface” is a term in graphic design that is rapidly gaining attention in various companies and businesses. Without a doubt, as a company, you need to have a medium where your customers can easily get in touch either through your website or through your app.
A UI designer is a type of graphic designer who specializes in the design interface layout of an application or web design. UI focuses on the display of images, texts, buttons, search bar, color, and every other component needed on an app or website. He also tries to make an interface to be visually appealing, responsive, and also understandable to users.
UI designers are given the responsibility to be able to create a user interface that is exciting, that is themed for a group of people, and also able to accomplish the function the brand or company expects it. However, easy user experience is the top priority that every designer should look out for when creating a UI design for an app or website.
Just in case you have a burning desire for UI designs, you can check out this site for awesome UI design inspiration
User Interface Designer Salary
In the United States, the average annual payment of a user interface designer is 104,879/yearly. For a more detailed breakdown, it is an average of $50.42/hour, $2,017/weekly, and $8,740/monthly.
Publication Design
Publication design is very important to the general public to help get information through– newspapers, magazines, storybooks, journals, and so on. It is the traditional medium of passing information to the general public and has been used for many decades by publishers, companies, government organizations, and institutional bodies.
However, in recent times it has taken new styles of passing and storing information digitally viz: E-books, PDF files, etc.
Publication graphic designers work hand in hand with book publishers and journal writers to enable them to create effective layouts, colors, texts, and of course appealing images that will be used for their design.
Examples of publication design
- Book cover
- Magazine cover
- eBooks
- PDF documents
- Newspaper
- Directories
- Catalogs
Publication designer salary
As of August 22, 2021, the annual salary for a publication graphic designer is $66,183 yearly. To break it down, the estimated salary is $31, 82/hourly, $1, 273/weekly, and $5, 515/monthly.
Motion Graphic Design
Motion graphics are basically graphics that are in motion. Motion graphic designers use color, text, images, and illustrations to create pleasant and effective designs that are pleasant to the viewer.
Motion graphics have been on the rise lately and companies and brands have been exploiting its benefit in making cool animation from still images viz; gifs, logo motions, and infographics.
They are a smart and effective way of showcasing ads on social media, explaining infographics, or even making a logo come alive and be more attractive to viewers. And also, compared to revenue spent on creating some ad videos for products and services, it will be smart to go for a motion graphic type of ad that cost lesser.
Examples of motion graphics
- Logo motion design
- Advertisements
- Promotion videos
- Apps
- GIFs
- Banners
Motion graphic designer salary
As of August 22, 2021, the annual salary for a publication graphic designer is $68,923 yearly. To break it down, the estimated salary is $33,14/hourly, $1,325/weekly, and $5,744/monthly.
Environmental Design
The environmental aspect of graphic design has to do with effective planning and application of graphic design elements that are visually charming, that is capable of giving meaning to their viewers at a particular location or area.
Environmental graphic designers use colors, texts, images, and shapes to express an idea visually. Moreover, environmental design is also used to give directional information to users in an area.
Let’s take for example -If you are in a subway station waiting to board a train, while waiting, your attention gets grabbed by a striking artwork on the wall, and throughout that day you are likely to have the picture of that artwork stuck in your head. That is a good example of what a good environmental graphic design is and the kind of long-lasting memory it should give to the viewer.
So, a graphic designer who specializes in environmental design should have a good sense of how graphic design works in different environments, the sense and feel of how that graphic content and how it will have a positive impact on people, although he should also have the core principles of design at the back of his mind while designing and those principles are – Balance, Hierarchy, Alignment, Repetition, Contrast.
Environmental graphic designers can find themselves working hand in hand with architect planners, interior and exterior designers, convention event planners,s, etc.
Examples of environmental design
- Metro branding
- Signage
- Stadium branding
- Office interior branding
Environmental designer salary
As of August 22, 2021, the annual salary for a publication graphic designer is $59,260 yearly. To break it down, the estimated salary is $28,49/hourly, $1,140/weekly, and $4,938/monthly.
Packaging Design
Every product found on a rack inside a store has a unique style of packaging. After the brand is done producing its products, the next step is the packaging process before they let it out to the consumers to buy them.
Packaging is one of the most important steps in the marketing process. The packaging of a product sends out a message or even could tell a story of a brand, it has a very strong impact on customers or the target audience for which it aims.
“A good product with bad packaging has a threat of having low sales compared to a bad product with good packaging”
Packaging designers use this way to express the brand message to the general public, they are able to do this with the use of colors, texts, images, illustrations, or images.
A brand packaging design could portray a product to be that of class, luxury, for kids, or for the juvenile class. A brand packaging message should have the same idea and values just as the brand itself without a logical rationale or much thought process.
Packaging designers are expected to have knowledge of how to apply mock-ups. Mock-up placement is a way of viewing and knowing how the packaging design is going to look before printing it out in the real world, a popular software for this purpose is Adobe Photoshop.
Package designer salary
As of August 22, 2021, the annual salary for a publication graphic designer is $71,135 yearly. To break it down, the estimated salary is $34,20/hourly, $1,368/weekly, $5,928/monthly.
Conclusion
Hopefully, with the list of the types of graphic designers we have listed out, you can now confidently position yourself at the right spot where you feel is okay and start being creative. Always practice what you learn about graphic design from time to time, only through practicing will you get better and stand out in your field.
Be creative and see you at the next one.