How to Become a Graphic Designer

When you look at your Instagram feed, have you ever look at a post that is so visually engaging that you want to click right away and go visit the website? Well if you have, you would know that graphic designer are the professional who is responsible for creating posts like these.

Being a graphic designer in today’s India is one of the best professions to choose from because today, there are more than 400 million people are using Instagram and other social media platforms and brands are desperately looking for creators who can create eye-catching posts for their audience. Not only is job demands higher than ever before, but visual media is also set to become a global trend in 2019 and if you have decided to become a graphic designer, then you couldn’t have decided better.

But the question remains, how to become a graphic designer and therefore in this article, we will break down the basics and tell you how to exactly do that.

Quick STEPS to Become a Good Graphic Designer

• Learn and Master your basic art and drawing skills
• Study more about graphic designing skills in school or colleges
• Get a bachelor or master degree in graphic designing
• Involve practically more into drawing, writing, and business classes
• Try for an internship while studying in school or college
• Join as many as local graphic design group to improve your skills
• Pick your best pieces, Contextualize your work and list additional work skills
• Create a website or blog for your work to showcase your PORTFOLIO
• Try to promote your creativity through online communities and social media platforms
• Work for a graphic designing firm and learn as much as possible

Building the foundation

All great designs that have ever been created start the same way, with an idea. But how that idea can be converted into an actual design is what matters.

You have loved sketching and drawing all your life, and therefore working as a graphic designer professionally is the best career choice that you can make. As a graphic designer you will work with corporates who specialize in advertising and marketing, thus although your sketching and drawing skills are superb on paper, your computer skills too need to be accurate.

Mentioned below are the key steps you need to take in your aim to become a graphic designer.

Learn and Master your Basic Drawing Skills

The first step that any graphic designers undertake before making a design, is to sketch thumbnail versions of their idea onto paper. Thumbnails are small size creations that you sketch in order to get the basic layout of your idea. Once you have made the thumbnail, you can choose between different iterations and depending on which looks best they move on to the next stage which is the roughs. The “rough” is a more detailed layout of the design which is shown to art directors, account managers and clients for approval before the final computer rendering starts.

In both the above stages, it can be seen that sketching is an important part, thus to become a graphic designer this is one of the first skills you should develop.

While you are learning to draw and mastering your drawing skills, take note of the following areas which will help you to improve being a good graphic designer:

• Drawing Basics
• Making Your Mark
• Cross Contour Lines & Ellipses
• Perspective & Angle
• Tonality & Shadows
• The Fundamentals of Drawing
• Drawing and Sketching for Beginners
• How to Draw and Sketch for Beginners

Graphic Designing Theory

Like all great things in life, graphic designing too is ruled by a set of theory which every aspiring graphic designer needs to learn. While some people might be of the opinion that graphic designing is all about slapping a fun font and a few images into a design, the actual process is much more systematic and scientific than meets the eye. A lot of effort goes into determining the correct imagery, layout, spacing, visual structure and appropriate typography, and finally creating an appealing design that will attract and convert.

To become an effective graphic designer one must know how to properly utilize blank spaces which are also known as negative spaces in a design. It is important for a design to know the importance of colours and how their use will affect the customers who will be viewing them. A lot goes into making a design that stands out and mentioned below is a list of things you need to learn while in graphic design theory:

• Graphic Design Fundamentals: The Basics
• Color
• Type
• Layout
• Form & Image

User Experience

All being said and done, the end purpose of every design one creates as a graphic designer lies on the user experience. How an user will react to a particular creation and how it will drive them and motivate them to make a purchase decision.

When working with a brand, a graphic designer needs to understand the brands image, its business goals and what they are trying to portray or tell their audience. Without this key information, designing for the brand won’t be useful as it won’t lead to conversions. Therefore it is necessary for every graphic designer to know the basics of user experience and accordingly create designs which drive traffic and lead to conversions.

One of the best ways to learn about user experience is going online and search for free courses; these will not only give you an idea about how user experience but will also teach how to design in a way that attracts and converts customers.

Copywriting

The most famous designs people say, don’t need any written content, but this perception is entirely wrong. Without some context, the user won’t be able to gauge the importance of the design, either the context which it stands at. Therefore every graphic designer needs to master the art of copywriting and how they can use short sentences to effectively communicate the message they are trying to put across.

Mastering the art of copywriting will help you as a graphic designer to create descriptions, text blocks, headers, article titles, CTAs and even meta descriptions for brochures, point-of-sale, collateral, websites and digital ads.

In this age and time of constant chaos and overexposed consumers, content is one thing that will make your designs stand apart and therefore it is important to learn and master the art of copywriting.

Ciritism

In any creative field and graphic designing in particular, you will receive a lot of criticism. There will always be people, who will not like your designs and will ask you to make numerous iterations. But learning how to take criticism positively is one of the most skills to learn. Not only will this help you take criticisms more positively but will also teach you how to look at a situation differently and make changes. While this might be the hardest skill to learn, it is more important than any other mentioned in this list.

Earn A Degree

If you do a quick google search, you will come across thousands of graphic designers who are ready to take up projects, but the fact remains that as a client, the designers who have a degree in graphic design will get more preference over those who don’t. Of course, having a stunning portfolio and numerous designs to show matter, but we can’t undermine the value of a degree from a reputed college.

In India, there are multiple colleges and universities which offer a degree in graphic designing, and you can choose one that suits and meets your requirements. While choosing you should be well versed with the syllabus and see if everything you want to learn is being taught or not. At the end choose a university which a name in the industry, because that will give you the much-needed boost that you require.

Conclusion

Being a graphic designer is easy, but being a good one is tough. But with the above tips and tricks on how to become a graphic designer, we feel that now you can start your journey on becoming a good graphic designer in India.