Is Graphic Design Hard As A Career For A Non-designer

Are you thinking of venturing into the graphic design world because you believe you are creative and probably will do well in the field? Or probably because of an incredible digital artwork you have seen a designer create on social media? And now you ask yourself ” is graphic design hard as a career for me “.

Is graphic design hard to learn For a non-designer

Well, the truth is that graphic design is not hard and is a fun-filled career for anyone who is creative and a lover of art, and luckily graphic design is not hard to learn even without a formal education. As much as every other career requires you to put in the time, commitment, and effort so does graphic design require you to do the same and be attentive to details and learning. 

As a career, you need to be persistent and committed, learning the theories and principles of graphic design, practicing, and always checking out new styles and trends in the graphic design industry.

The amazing thing about taking a graphic design career is that you don’t need a college degree in graphic design to become a good graphic designer. You can also be a professional graphic designer all by yourself without any formal education in graphic design.

All it requires is your creativity, commitment, and determination to learn and understand all of the graphic design theories and concepts.

Some of the world’s most famous graphic designers were self-taught. The likes of Paul Rands, Ethel Reed, Leo Lionni, William Bernbach, Alexey Brodovitch, Raymon Loewy, Wally Olins, etc. 

However, that doesn’t mean you can not sign up for a college degree in graphic design in any of the amazing design schools across the globe. 

Sometimes, organizations and companies would rather hire a graphic designer with a formal education that is backed up by a degree than someone that is self-taught and may even be better than the degree holder.

It is simply a matter of choice.

In the journey to becoming a graphic designer, whether self-taught or through a college degree, it is crucial you know some factors about graphic design that will equip you.

What Makes a Good Graphic Designer

Ambition

Learning graphic design requires an ambitious spirit to help keep the desire burning. You should always give yourself a reason to keep chasing the dream you have.

Your ambition to becoming a graphic designer is what will fuel you whenever you feel like giving up on the career path. A time will come when begin to ask yourself “is graphic design hard”, am I making the right choice being a designer” at this point you feel discouraged, and distraught will gradually crawl in.

This usually happens to graphic designers when they get into a design block or they aren’t getting enough calls from clients who need their service.

But with the ambition of being a spectacular graphic designer, you will always keep your heads up and be optimistic while you practice.

After nursing the ambition to become a graphic designer, there is a need for you to choose what form of education you want to have. Fortunately, there are two options available to choose from:

Self taught & College degree in graphic design

Both options are great but have their pros and cons but the question is is graphic design hard? lets check out differences each style of learning tells us.

As a self-taught graphic designer, you have the advantage of spending little or no dime learning graphic design. You can take online graphic design classes and finally become a professional but you would not be in the classroom with your colleagues, rather you take absolute responsibility for committing yourself to self-tutoring- learning the fundamentals of graphic design as a career, design element application, concepts, and theories.

However, with a formal education in graphic design, courses are taken last for approximately 4-6 years depending on the study curriculum. Concepts and theories of graphic design take more time to be taught, and the good thing is you get the opportunity to meet incredibly creative people who could share ideas and also introduce you to a broader network of potential clients that could land you massive jobs even before graduation.

Advantages of a self-taught designer

Absolute time control

Taking a formal graphic design course is time-consuming and also could make you feel burnt out, especially when you can’t handle lengthy lectures. It isn’t the same with a self-taught graphic designer, a self-taught designer has full control of his personal course curricula and his time management.

A self-taught graphic designer decides how many hours are dedicated to learning a particular topic so he can be able to make out time to learn other topics and attend to other life matters.

In case you are just starting out your graphic design career all by yourself, here is our latest post on simple self taught graphic design tips to help you become a successful graphic designer.

The long hours spent on learning concepts and theories in a formal graphic design course can be optimized by a self-taught designer, he could efficiently manage his time and learn the various fundamentals and theories in a shorter time and still acquire the same knowledge as formal education.

You can take a break when your brain feels exhausted, and when you come across an unfamiliar design term or concept you don’t understand you could easily open a new tab on your browser to look it up.

Work as you learn graphic design

Unlike a formal graphic designer who takes a four years course and can only be employed after he has been certified to understand all fundamentals of graphic design and how to effectively apply colors, texts, and shapes in graphic design rightfully. Only after the full completion of his graphic design career in school only then can he get an employment offer.

However, managing clients’ work and self-tutoring is a difficult graphic design task to juggle but it isn’t a big deal for a self-taught graphic designer, a self taught designer can learn and work simultaneously with the knowledge he has acquired so far.

This is advantageous to the self-taught designer because while working, he is introduced to real-life work experience and challenges that gear him up for the better.

An experience the college degree student would only get after he must have completed his course duration in school.

Face real-life design problems while working

Facing real-life graphic design problems while working is an everyday experience for a self-taught designer, as you work you bump into challenging obstacles but you don’t really get bothered about them rather you always find a way to figure them out yourself

Solution finding is made possible because of the flexibility that comes with self-tutoring which allows you to pause and watch tutorial videos online or read articles written online on other blogs by professionals that will help you figure out those problems.

No tuition fee

Attending a prominent graphic design schools like Rhode Island School of Design, Yale University, and Maryland Institute College of Art. The average cost for undergraduate tuition & fees of Best Graphic Design Colleges is $14,710 for state residents and $44,995 for out-of-state students in the academic year 2021-2022. 

But self-taught graphic designers spend almost no dime learning graphic design, except the fee you pay when purchasing your design software from the product site – Adobe Creative package or any other design software vendor.

The self-taught designer is immune from paying high fees for various items required to learn in a college, sometimes it is required you buy textbooks and equipment for practical design classes, required to buy ebooks from a special store owned by the college online.

You go at your own pace

Unlike the college degree type of education where study curricula comprising all the courses of study offered by the graphic design institution are set out for students to follow. These curricula last for approximately four years with few off sessions.

Sometimes formal graphic design students find difficulty following up the pace at which teachers go in class when teaching, it could be a difficult graphic design subject that needs more time to understand at a slower pace.

But as a self-taught graphic designer, you are absolutely free to follow up your design classes at your desired pace with no rush, and you can conveniently learn theories you don’t clearly understand, revise them countless times and spend time carefully understanding how the various tools in your design software work.

All the information you need is online

Before now the learning graphic design was difficult for most persons but thanks to the internet. The internet has made everything we want to learn much easier. Gone are those days when you must enroll in a college degree before you can become good a good graphic designer.

The traditional form of learning requires you to be in class one on one with your lecturer and your colleagues to be able to acquire knowledge about a field of study.

But nowadays technological invention has made it easy enough to learn so many things unless you want to become a brain surgeon which requires physical presence.

As long as you have an internet-enabled phone or laptop, you can watch tutorial videos on YouTube (that’s how I learned Graphic design), visit graphic design blogs, listen to podcasts, etc.

The Internet is loaded with graphic design resources at your disposal, you can use these free resources to hone your design skill and make your graphic design career journey much easier and as well make you a much better designer like a college degree graphic designer.

You can find tutors to answer questions

As you gradually progress as a self-taught designer, chances are you will bump into difficult graphic design issues, dead ends, creative blocks, and problems that will make you think of giving up. This is when you need answers from someone who has more experience than you in graphic design.

At this point is where you might begin to contemplate if learning graphic designing is hard and also begin to develop a certain level of self-doubt that “hmmm maybe graphic design isn’t what I was supposed to go for after all”

This is the reason why when starting as an amateur designer, it is advisable you have a mentor or role model you could easily run to whenever problems spring up, they will walk you through how you could solve those graphic design problems.

You might find difficulty with the color theory, you may find it difficult to figure out how various colors work well with each other and which colors lack contrast or complements the opposite color.

Online studies can be legally certified

Just as formal graphic design student earns their certificate after graduation from a design school, it is the same way a self-taught designer can make his certificate after completing his course through online graphic design course.

There are great online graphic design programs that offer certificates to their students after full course completion. graphic design certificate programs can be acquired from online graphic design schools Udemy, Coursera.

After completion of your online course curriculum as a self-taught designer, you will be given a certificate that validates you as a qualified graphic designer. It’s just that easy, no need to travel overseas to pick it up, it can be emailed to you or even shipped to wherever you are in the world.

You can study it in parallel with another career

As you study as a self-taught graphic designer, you can manage other life careers simultaneously. This is because the key component for a graphic designer is his or her ability

While this sounds like a cool idea, it is worth knowing that discouragement will slowly crawl, and most times it is tempting to call it a day when you think you have learned much for the day but truly you haven’t. Becoming a self-taught designer needs absolute concentration, consistency and persistence must be put to work, and the will to always stand up when you fail.

While a college degree graphic design student would not have as much time as the self-taught, they will always try to meet up with class quizzes, group assignments, and course curricula to handle, and failure to submit assignments or projects will result in termination.

Nevertheless, as I said earlier, both options are great; it all comes down to the energy you put in.

Study the principles of graphic design

In becoming a professional graphic designer, you need to adhere to the principles of graphic design. Graphic design principles are what make your designs look staggering and alluring to the eyes. It’s easy to create shapes and apply texts and images, but if the principles are not applied, your designs will be an eyesore.

The basic principles of graphic design are:

Layout

Graphic design layout refers to the deliberate arrangement of visual elements (e.g. text, images, graphics) on a page or screen to create a cohesive and aesthetically pleasing design. It involves the use of principles such as balance, alignment, contrast, and white space to effectively communicate a message or tell a story

Repetition

This is a pivotal graphic design principle that is mostly used in branding. It is the recurring usage of elements in design that helps in tying all other elements like logos and color palettes to enhance immediate recognition when seen by viewers.

Contrast

Contrast helps in clearly distinguishing two or more elements to help define clarity or importance. Achieving contrast can be done using dark vs light, contemporary vs modern, small vs big, round vs pointy, etc.

Hierarchy

This is done by applying more visual emphasis sequentially from the most important to the least important piece of information or element in the artboard. This way the viewer will be guided on what to read first, second, third, and last.

Balance

Just as we can feel the weight of things in the physical world, so can weight be felt in graphics design elements.  Balance which can also be called visual weight is the equal distribution of elements across a design.

Imagine placing two balls of different sizes and weights on a scale, this will cause the scale to go downwards on the side of the heavier ball thereby causing inequality in balance(that physical weight). in graphic design, the same occurs when two elements that aren’t

Negative space (or whitespace)

Negative space is your friend. Negative space is the amount of blank areas in your design that enhance the general appearance of your design. It gives your design breathing space and makes your design bloom and appears professional.

Negative when harnessed, can be a point of interest within your design. You can use negative space to create shapes, visual illusions, or even as a focal point.

These design principles can make or break your design. How you effectively apply them matters.

Learn latest graphic design trends and technology

Is graphic design hard if I don’t keep up with the latest graphic design updates and trends? Definitely it will. You have to stay on the same page with the industry’s latest design craze or elseyou will be left behind.

Graphic design is in a state of flux, every now and then, graphic designers are constantly creating, developing, and testing new ideas that don’t only look visually stunning but also work for their clients. 

We have seen graphic design trends change since the time of the pandemic, which expedited rapid social and technological change and caused designers to adjust to new trends. 

Today we might be seeing retro-inspired aesthetics in vogue, and tomorrow we might see the concept of minimalism ruling the design community. Whichever way, you should steadily keep up with the latest industry trends and transitions so that you won’t be left behind.

Also, you should familiarize yourself with the industry’s technological and software updates. Learn about the latest software professionals are using in your industry that could take your design to the next level. 

Technology intertwining with graphic design has significantly changed how things are usually created. With the cutting-edge invention of AI (artificial intelligence), which has aided in so many areas of design, designers could now develop, create, and execute graphic design content efficiently, create more in less time, reduce cost, improve creativity, and reduce human error. 

Choose your graphic design specialty 

Aspiring designers often seek guidance by asking professionals, Is graphic design hard? in their quest to to choosing particular specialty.

Graphic design is a broad career that has various sub-categories you can choose from. Over the years tons of other good careers in graphic design came up. You can choose to specialize in 3D design, poster design, illustration design, web design, animation design, and a lot more.

If you are thinking graphic design is hard to learn, worry less because there are various categories of graphic design fields that you could have an interest in and that could be the suitable career path for you. Different graphic design specialty comes with their own prerequisite.

Your specialty will be dependent on the kind of graphic design software you intend to use. Usually, the classes you take will be different, but the principles of graphic design still apply.

Also, various specialties take more or fewer years to master. For instance, a UI/UX beginner would take up to 4-5 years to master his specialty, while an animation designer would take 5-6 years to master animation design.

Related Article – Easiest Way To Be A Great Graphic Designer And Also Help You Get Hired in 2023

Learn from observing professional designs

You can also learn by observing works done by professional portfolios on social media platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, Behance, and even Facebook groups. These can help you hone your skill over time.

Graphic design is not hard, it mostly requires you to carefully examine how elements are been placed to enough for you when you carefully observe how various design elements are placed and how they don’t relate effectively to each other when they aren’t placed right. 

When you create the habit of learning from just observing these professional designs, you start copying their styles and you begin to apply those styles to your designs.

Practice

We all know that we become better at whatever we do only if we practice constantly. The same applies to graphic designs. 

You can improve gradually when you practice the application of various graphic design principles and software usage. Practicing at least six hours a day will sharpen your skill. 

Tutorial videos can be viewed on YouTube. Courses can be taken online. Instagram and Pinterest quick tips can also come in handy. 

How to practice graphic design

Look for designs made by your graphic design role model or designs you admire on the internet made by professionals in your field and try reproducing a similar design it could be a poster design or logo design.

As you practice achieving a similar design, you should constantly ask yourself questions about how they were able to achieve such effective visual appeal in their design. When you observe their designs, see what you can do to improve upon them as the unique graphic designer that you are.

You can figure these out by observing how they play around with design layout, and how they use design elements like colors, fonts,

Practice how to use color

Color is one the most important elements in graphic design and its usage is pivotal in determining the effectiveness in achieving its intended design message. This is the part where most graphic designers fail they feel that graphic design is hard and assume they can’t get a hang of it.

Observe how professionals make use of color in promoting the intended theme or message in their design. Look out for the type of color theory they are applying. Are they applying the – complementary, split complementary, triadic, analogous, tetradic, or quadrilateral color theories.

At first, graphic design seems difficult when you try mastering color. Beware of this, you will definitely suck at it, trust me, it is not a one-time success thing. It takes time to learn how to effectively apply color. Even some professionals still struggle with their color palettes when trying to pull amazing color tricks on some difficult projects.

No one is perfect when it comes to color!

But when you keep observing and constantly practice how color is used, the better you will become.

Practice how to use fonts

Observe how fonts are used in professional designs, professionals make use of fonts that speak the same language as the project they are working on.

What this means is that various font families(serif, san serif, script or handwritten, slab serif) are used for specific purposes, and they perform better where they appear legible and relevant to the theme of the design.

For example:

An educational infographic design aimed at achieving effective visuals for kids should have fonts for kids that aren’t formal but instead have a whimsical appearance that kids would easily understand A handwritten(custom font), script font, and san serif would be a great choice for kids’ design.

While at the other hand:

In the case of creating a brochure design for maybe a company that just hired you on Fiverr, you shouldn’t use the same font as the previously mentioned fonts that were used for kids. You should think of using a more casual font like the serif and san serif.

This way, the fonts used will make the design appear formal to the intended audience.

Remember to limit your font usage to 1-3 fonts maximum, or you can as well stick to one typeface with different font sizes.

Practice how to use shapes

Shapes are important graphic design elements that possess meaning and are used to send a message to the intended audience. With their dissimilar geometric form, we can easily distinguish one from the other.

• Circles: are used to represent infinity, oneness, and protection because they possess no starting or ending point. It can also be used to represent restrictions or uniqueness.
• Triangles: are used to represent stability, firmness, and direction(forward or backward depending on the direction of the head point).it can also depict instability when turned upside down or not standing with their base.
• Squares: because of its qual geometric form, the square represents equality, security, and trust.
• Rectangles: share similar meanings with the square shape- stability, power, and balance.

Have a graphic design Portfolio

A design portfolio is a great way to showcase your best work to potential clients online. Just as the demand for a graphic design certificate from a reputable design school is a prerequisite for employment by a company, so is your portfolio also important for attracting clients.

You can create a portfolio section on your website or blog. Have none yet? don’t worry, inspirational sites like –Dribbble, Behance, and Pinterest  are great places to create one for free

Having a well-designed portfolio with always up-to-date content is a great way to capture potential clients. because clients expect to see your portfolio contents move constantly with the latest trends.

Think of your portfolio as a store where people come to purchase products, they always expect you to have the most recent version of what they seek, and for that reason, a frequent stock update is advised to enable you to turn ordinary viewers into customers and drive more sales.

While a portfolio is often underestimated, it will interest you to know that with your highly curated design portfolio, you give a positive impression and also stand a better chance of attracting high-quality clients by making sure your contents are top-notch with attractive visuals.

What is the purpose of a design portfolio?

Your design graphic portfolio is an essential and must-have tool that helps in exhibiting your unique skill, ability, and professionalism in your design to the audience. It is a medium by which potential graphic design clients use to interact with your brand and consider if they should hie you for work.

A graphic design portfolio significantly grows your business in so many ways. here are a convincing reasons why you need one:

Wider Audience

With a well-defined online portfolio, you will be able to reach out to people outside your region, the internet has no boundary to how many people your portfolio can reach out to. You stand a better chance of making contact with various high-quality clients all around the world that offer high-paying jobs. 

When you engage with foreign audiences, you open doors to meeting new clients that might refer you to a friend or colleague after they have seen that you are reliable with the past job you have delivered for them.

And this cycle of referral keeps going on and on as long as you keep delivering amazing work for each client you are referred to.

While your content is going global, you should not forget to tailor your design style to appeal to the targeted audience. Let’s take, for example, If you are intended audience is targetted male or female adults within the age range of 18-27, your design style should be themed towards attracting those groups primarily.

Avoid Rejection

You should make your design style explicit enough to enable potential prospects to know what they are expecting from you whenever a job is given.

Are you the kind of designer that specifically focus on retro poster design or modernist poster design style, or both?

You should state that in your design visuals and try not to mix things up, you can as well let them know in your portfolio “about me” description page. So they know who you are, what design style you are into, and other interesting information about you. 

When you do so, your potentials prospect would feel you are the right person for the job and will contact you, but when you don’t state your design style in any way, clients will hire you to create a design style that you don’t specialize on and this will result to several rejections.

Brand Recognition

When you create your portfolio and you steadily upload high-quality designs, people tend to visit your portfolio regularly either for inspiration purposes or for hire, as time goes on the popularity of your graphic design brand grows.

High brand recognition results in quality clients reaching out to you for work. Imagine having a very high amount of online recognition and then Nike decides to hire you for work, incredible right? This is possible through your portfolio. No big company would want to hire an amateur graphic designer that has no portfolio to showcase their skillset, they want to testify your credibility first.

Pricing Power

Having much brand recognition that brings high-quality customers to your doorstep is what every designer dreams of. When you gain much recognition, your pricing power increases, allowing you to place so much value when price pitching with your client.

An amateur graphic designer on Fiverr who luckily gets a job offer from clients won’t charge much for a logo or poster design. Because seen as an amateur designer, he won’t be much valued because of his little experience and lacks of a portfolio to prove his credibility.

Customer Trust

When you create a portfolio for your graphic design business, customers will perceive your business to be trustworthy and authentic. They won’t feel skeptical about working with you. There are so many designers left behind because they fail to own a portfolio.

What makes a successful portfolio?

Easy-to-navigate user interface

Your portfolio interface should be as simple as possible to enable users to browse through your content with no hassle.

Your navigation buttons should be stated clearly and easy to interact with, make sure when users go deep into content on your site, they can easily navigate back to the homepage or to content that caught their attention while browsing.

It all boils down to good portfolio structuring. When your portfolio is well structured, your clients spend minutes that turn into hours, why? Because they are enjoying the user experience of your portfolio and this could be a plus for you in terms of SEO performance. Google will rank you higher when people are searching for “ design portfolios online”.

So, make it easy to navigate, and thank me later.

Simple layout

The layout is a bit similar to the navigation. But the layout is how the content on your portfolio is organized to enhance visual clarity, hierarchy, and contrast. Surprises are cool but avoid surprising your users with congested visual elements that aren’t laid out correctly. Keep it simple!

Portfolio sorting

You have created an easy-to-navigate and simple laid-out portfolio, what’s next is sorting out your various portfolio contents. As you frequently upload new content, it becomes harder for users to find specific categories. Sort contents categorically either alphabetically, tags, custom groups, or design genres/types. 

For instance, you can place brand design in a different category, logo designs, mockups, color pallets, and so on in their various category respectively. This way users could go directly into these categories to find items easily.

Portfolio collection

You shouldn’t pile up content in a single collection, make a collection of various content that has been created so far. It could be a collection of the process you took when working on clients’ projects or a yearly round of your designs. This way you make your portfolio interesting to view.

You are not mistaken if you call it a photo album. It helps show you moments or timelines of projects you have handled in the past. It enhances the organization of your portfolio as well as gives it a tidied look.

A brief description of yourself

A quick introduction about yourself to your shouldn’t be taken for granted. Your about page can help you do this. Inform them about what you do and your credentials, your experience, and why they should work with you.

Your experiences and how many successful projects you have delivered to clients, if there are renowned brands you have worked with in the past you can mention them here to help boost your level.

A photograph or avatar of yourself should be uploaded for facial reference. This way the clients feel more confident working with you and believe you aren’t a dubious person or a robot.

Portfolio contact details

Having a nice portfolio that gets a positive impression and traffic is pointless without having a means for users to be able to get in touch with you. Create a contact page for your portfolio so that users can easily get access to you for work or collaboration.

You can choose if you should be contacted via email, phone call, or social media. No matter the desired contact medium, be sure to be steadily available and respond back to messages quickly.

Teach others graphic design

When teaching graphic design to others, one must address the question that inevitably arises: Is graphic design hard? Acknowledging the complexities of the craft, it is essential to guide aspiring designers with patience and encouragement.

This might be surprising to you. but, passing your knowledge to other people will help you retain the experiences and also fuel the zeal to keep learning more as you progress. No matter how big or small the knowledge you have is, you can always share it with others.

One day a friend came to visit, he was curious and decided to ask how I was able to understand and make use of all the Photoshop tools on the toolbar, just looking at the toolbar he was overwhelmed – he said. He was considering going into graphic design but whenever he thinks about it, he feels it’s challenging and quits without even trying

So he decided to take a leap of faith. I showed him the various tools and explained each tool and how to use them. While tutoring him along the line we had some slowdowns because he felt a little challenged with a few tools and we repeated several steps. In the end, he was glad he did try and he figured out how to use some of the tools. 

Finally, he realized it wasn’t as difficult as he thought it is, and now he is confident when he’s in front of Photoshop. 

However, it doesn’t take only learning how to use the various tools in Photoshop, it also requires your creative ability to create nice visuals that promote, inform, and send out the intended message to the targeted audience.

Back to the topic. Undoubtedly teaching isn’t an easy task, but when you are passionate about transferring your design knowledge to the next person. You can do it over again with less effort.

Undoubtedly, Passing your graphic design knowledge to others would feel difficult for some newbies to grasp while to very few others, it will be very easy to understand because there are differences in the level of how people quickly comprehend new things. 

The Student you tutor will always come up with questions and this will be a reason for continuous personal research and learning about graphic design.

Graphic design requires hard work(the bitter truth)

While thinking of venturing into becoming a graphic designer, you should have it in the back of your mind that it isn’t as easy as you think. Just as hard work is required in every profitable career so is graphic design.

In fact, in some instances, you will be recruited by a big organization or company that will force you to work on design projects that are not enjoyable. Design visions will be made by the company and it’s your job to execute those visions into reality using your graphic design skills.

Often times you will be required to work on projects that might be slightly off your design specialty or focus but you just have to keep cool and work on them. Looking at the brighter side, doing those kinds of jobs will help improve your general knowledge of design, improve your skills and help you gain more experience.

Hard work will also be put in when learning design styles and this requires persistent effort as you try over and over again. Also learning how to use the various designing software and mastering the various functionalities of the tool takes time but when you keep practicing and testing out how they work, over time you will get a hang of it.

Patience

You will have to be, “the patient dog that eats the fattest bone” when practicing graphic design all by yourself or through taking college degree classes. Challenges will come, and you will be stuck on how to solve design problems with clients, especially with the type of clients that step on your nerves. 

You have to exercise a sufficient amount of patience when going through these tough parts of working with clients if you want to be a good designer, don’t let irritability get you.

Things You Should Know Before Becoming A Graphic Designer

Graphic Design requires a strategy

Graphic designers sometimes get carried away and become obsessed with the beauty of using various graphic elements to bring their ideas to life. Creating visually attractive designs isn’t easy to pull but when you do it right it’s a win for you and your clients. When you do not apply certain strategies that enable the design to effectively pass the intended message to the target audience, then your design isn’t far from a total mess. 

Combining your strategy, concepts, and elements creates a powerful synergy that births a long-lasting effect on the audience’s mind. Design strategy has been used by creative professionals to help make good designs and also streamline the design process. Design strategy allows you to have a vivid path to follow so that you don’t get lost in the process. This has been a fi

Collaboration in Graphic Design

Many freelance graphic designers work single-handedly and that’s absolutely fine but such designers can’t be compared to designers those types of designers that work as a team. Collaboration with other designers comes with so various perks that will help streamline and speed up productivity.

Collaborating with other designers from other fields or working with an in-house agency will expose you to working with stakeholders and designers either above or below and there will be a thing or two you can learn from joining being part of the crew.

Collaboration will help tech new design experience, it certainly gives you a different flavor of design, establishes a good source of connection, enhances your communication skills, and fosters creativity.

Diverse Career Paths

There are so many different sub-careers in graphic design that fit any individual aspiring to be a graphic designer. Graphic design is a mother design discipline that branches out into various subfields. There are subfields In the realm of graphic design, various specialized fields offer unique opportunities for creative expression and problem-solving. 

Web design

focuses on crafting engaging and user-friendly online experiences, while 

UI and Interactive Design

 emphasize user interface aesthetics and functionality. 

Advertising and Marketing Design

involves creating visually compelling content to promote products or services. 

Motion Graphics and Animation

bring designs to life through dynamic movement, while 

Packaging Design

 combines aesthetics with functionality for product presentation. 

Game Design 

delves into the interactive and immersive world of gaming aesthetics and user experience. Illustration

 allows for artistic storytelling through visual elements.

Publication and Typographic Design

focus on the artful arrangement of text and imagery for print or digital publications. 

Just to a name few of the types of graphic design that you can begin to take part in. However, each sub-discipline within graphic design offers a distinct avenue for professionals to explore and contribute to the visual landscape.

Client-Designer Compatibility

There is a bitter truth most designers fail to realize. A designer must not always be compatible with every client. Graphic designers are humans and being compatible with a client is being able to tolerate the client’s character, styles, temperaments, and values. All of these should be compliments with both the client and designer.

It’s disrespectful when a client tries to ride on the designer and makes him or her feel less of themselves, you need to grow thick skin because you will come across this type of client along the line. These bad client habits towards designers are what you should look out for when you are about to get hired. If you find your client not compatible It’s okay to say No sometimes and reserve your energy and dignity for better clients.

Educating Others about Graphic Design

Sometimes non-designers get the misleading impression that design is not hard but rather very simple to create. This causes designers who haven’t grown thick skin to lose their cool and begin daunting their creative ability. Graphic design is a highly creative task that takes years of learning, technical proficiency, and understanding how visual communication works.

When designers receive discouraging words like “Duh, could do that quicker than you did it, it looks really simple” or “That logos kinda look so simple that my 2 years old son can do it, can’t pay for it for that price” these comments can be aggravating to the designer and demoralize them.

Designers whom these words get too often could make use of this opportunity by educating the clients or non-designers about the quality time and process it takes to create such simple designs and that investing in high-quality pieces is worth it.

Managing Expectations in Design Projects

Design expectation is the amount of time needed for the delivery of a client’s revision or sending in your finished design job to the client. It feels very disappointing that designers take a lot of thinking and creative process to put a design together and the clients condemn it right off the bat. It’s heartbreaking.

When clients ask for seemingly small adjustments, it likely isn’t something you can fix in just a few minutes,” says Anna Bacon, graphic design specialist at Adduco Communications.

Design is a hefty task that needs time to create but clients think it’s simple because of how easy it may seem. They expect you to reply with a revision in a short time but they fail to understand that design isn’t a walk in the park.

For this reason, a good graphic designer should also be a good communicator, taking them by the hand and explaining to them how much processes, time, and resources it takes to create design will help calm things down a bit and place them in the same perspective as you.

So, when next you get a fuming client demanding you deliver the revision in an unrealistic period just try explaining how much time is needed before job delivery.  

Data Integration in Graphic Design

Designers shouldn’t only know how to create designs but should also. Know how to read, understand, and transform data into visuals for easy rasping. it is believed that the human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text. Understanding data analytics that holds crucial information about a data science project or population stats could be overwhelming to understand so this is why companies that work with figures love hiring designer which such skillset.

Anyone who doesn’t know how to read data in its raw form can easily do so when it’s broken by s designer using shapes, colors, line, icons (infographic).

As a graphic designer, you should buckle up and begin associating yourself with raw data figures because working with figures is something you definitely will come across as a designer. Learning data visualization gives you a bump in your design experience. 

Artistic Skills vs. Graphic Design

Becoming a graphic designer is not hard even though your drawing skill isn’t proficient. Most graphic design prospects get worried and consider themselves to not be able to do well because of their poor drawing skill. However, having proficient drawing skills is a perk because it only makes the whole creative process much easier. But let’s not go deep into the rabbit hole because this isn’t about drawing but knowing that becoming a graphic designer isn’t difficult even without any artistic prowess.

So, wondering whether graphic design is difficult even without possessing good artistic skills. I am giving a resounding No! Graphic designers only require the drive to become a designer, skill, and your required design software which will handle the heavy extra lifting.

Diverse Job Options Beyond Graphic Design

Graphic design might just be broader than you think, it cuts across various niches that are in and out of design as a whole. Often when a designer becomes so good in a particular section field of graphic design, the designer might just begin craving to try out new aspects of design. This is absolutely normal for any design, if you ask me, it is not clever for a designer to stick to a particular field for the entire time as a designer.

Try dipping your legs into the water and see what you can add to your skill set. Let’s take for example you are a graphic designer who simply specializes in promotional design like poster designs, flyers, and business card cards. It is safe to begin dipping your line of UI/UX design.

Field transition is a common act designers usually do. They move from promotional designs to UI/UX – Motion design(blender rendering) etc. However, it isn’t a must it follows the listed stages but you get the idea.

So, feel free to explore new waters when you feel it’s time for you to evolve. You might just be as good as how you were in your previous field or maybe even better.

Evolution of Style in Graphic Design

Style evolution in graphic design is a constant phenomenon that happens from time to time and every designer that wants to own their game is expected to keep up with the pace. Over the years there have been several well-known graphic design styles that are prominent e.g. minimalist design style, retro design, maximalist, abstract, geometric, three-dimensional and so many others.

Each of these styles is how graphic designers can give design a certain look and feel to their design. Keeping up with the evolving design trends is how clients see you to be up to date and fit for hiring either as a freelancer or bringing you into their agency.

Continuous Learning in Graphic Design

Learning knows boundaries in the world of design for that reason every design must keep up the pace by staying up to date with the latest graphic design trends and software that designers use in creating their ideas easily. Every year new graphic design trends come into the limelight and clients may desire a graphic designer to use these trending styles in their design for that reason, the designer may require a newly released design software with the ability to carry the clients’ request.

As a graphic designer who stays up to date with design trends and software releases, you tend to remain ahead of your competitors. Being someone who knows what the latest simply translates to having more clients demanding your service. So, as a designer staying up to date should be a design habit you must develop. 

FAQ