What does graphic designing mean?
Why is it important today?
What career prospects can graphic designing offer?
How big is the graphic designing industry?
Can I learn graphic design and be a good graphic designer?
Will it offer me a good package?
What is the scope of graphic designing in the near future?
Come on, let’s find the possible answers to all the above questions!
What does graphic designing mean?
Graphic designing, simply put, is an art or skill to present/representing data in an attractive, visually appealing style, which keeps the reader/web visitor engaged to have a look at the communication, which the graphic designer has created.
It is an art to convey an idea or concept with a meaningful combination of text and images to the target audience. Graphic designers create logos, posters, brochures, website mock-ups, package designs, billboards and various other types of visual communication.
For simplicity, let us take an example of a plain black and white artwork, having all the content one below the other in a straightforward way, with not too variation of typefaces or type sizes, vs. a well-layout colourful artwork, with one or two images here and there, using a high sense of typography, with sensible usage of what word/sentence to be enlarged, to be highlighted, etc. Please see the figure below. Which one is attractive? Obviously the option “B” right?
| Option A | Option B |
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Your club present MUSIC FESTIVAL BEST EVENT ON 18TH JUNE FREE ENTRY Featuring GUEST STAR DJ FESTIVAL LIVE MUSIC Lorem Ipsum is simply a dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s www.yourevent.com |
Image courtesy: www.freepik.com |
This one example underscores the importance of graphic designing. Graphic designing doesn’t mean you should have a good hand at drawing/sketching. Now there are many tools, which can take care of drawing out new illustrations or figures without having a good hand at drawing/sketching. Yes, having skills with drawing/sketching will enhance your skills further, but it’s not mandatory. Most importantly you should have a good sense of visualising, have an eye for detail, and should have a sense of what the target audience will love to see to connect with the creation the graphic designer has created and go on reading further what the artwork has to say.
In short, graphic designing is one of the tools wherein you build an easy-going bridge between the supplier and the consumer. A graphic designer creates attractive communication material, which draws the consumer’s attention, thereby making him read all the info the advertiser has to communicate. And as per the universal law of marketing, if a consumer has a will to buy, has the capacity to buy, he will go further and buy that product. So, in a way, the graphic designer is one important element who in some way eases out closing the deal.
Why is graphic designing important today?
Why is it important today?
You see, there’s a lot of competition going on between the companies, every other organisation wants to push the sale further for better profits.
Today, in every other sector, consumers are getting smarter and smarter due to exposure of various media, and they have become selective and convincing them is not a joke.
Attractive graphic design will help consumers to arrive at a decision to some extent and pull them closer to the product.
Graphic design is not only used as a communication material for passing out the info to consumers but it is also used to create attractive packaging artworks that can attract the consumer to further explore the product when stacked on the shelf of a shopping outlet.
Posters and press advertisements designed with good graphic design may attract the audience to read it further thus making communication successful by passing on the information to a broad audience giving a great ROI.
Today graphic designing is needed in every field. Be it the conventional press ads, hoardings, billboards, posters, booklets, brochures, leaflets or the new age of digital technology like mobile apps, various software applications, electronic games, website designs, web banners, various presentations etc., graphic designing is necessary.
In short, graphic designing plays an important part in inspiring or motivating the target audience to dig further information about any product or service.
What career prospects can graphic designing offer?
Graphic designers are required mainly in the media houses, advertising agencies, design studios etc. Nowadays, many corporations also have in-house design studios to carry out their day to day presentation tasks, or to carry out any work related to any advertising campaign, which has been planned for sales and marketing activities.
So, if you have the required skill to make a combination of pictures and words to make them speak with the target audience, you have a good chance to be on board a good company. Graphic designing is enjoyable to do. It gives a fair chance to extend your creativity, stretch your imagination and offers a learning opportunity almost on a daily basis. More importantly, you don’t get bored with your job as there’s a variety of creations you will be doing and it’s all different stuff all the way.
You can also provide free-lancing services to many organisations. It will be a tough part in the beginning, but nowadays as I stated earlier, there’s always competition and everyone needs to be presentable with their portfolio. Some organisations prefer to have a free-lancing graphic designer, in contrast, to have one on board. Yes, I agree it’s not as easy as it seems, as you will have to do thorough marketing for identifying those customers, understand their needs and then present your offer to suit their needs and budget. Also, you will have to be well-equipped with the accounts part and should be prompt with submitting your invoices and following up for the payment to keep your break-even calculations intact.
How big is the graphic designing industry?
In the US, the market size by revenue for the graphic designing industry is approximately 1123.84 billion INR (source: www.ibisworld.com), while in India it is poised to reach approximately 188 billion INR (source: www.fxanimation.in as of date, and would go on rising at a rate of 6% annually for the next five years.
And as a thumb rule, the market goes on expanding, and so the graphic industry will also be needing more graphic designers in the coming years.
Can I learn graphic design and be a good graphic designer?
Of course, anyone can learn graphic design and be a good graphic designer.
The basic skills needed to be a good graphic designer are to have an eye for detail and a lot of patience. Other skills required are good visualising skills and a penchant for learning new technologies.
There are many institutions offering the graphic designing course and if you are brave enough you can learn on your own. There are lots of videos from Adobe and YouTube channels offering free courses on graphic designing.
In addition, there are various forums on graphic designing where you can join the community of graphic designers and get more info to learn more.
I am listing some of the top forums for graphic designing:
https://www.designcrowd.co.in/t/graphic-design-forum
http://www.graphicdesignforums.co.uk/
There are many more which you can google yourself and learn more about graphic designing.
How to be a good graphic designer?
Not everyone is a good graphic designer. To be a good graphic designer will require you to put in lots of effort, get inspired by top graphic designers, think above the line, and come up with innovative ideas and then you should be well equipped with your graphic designing skills to get those ideas implemented in your work.
There are two main skills which you should stress on:
Visualising skills: This is a very uncommon skill but can be achieved with practice. For that, you need to train your brain to think again and again of various possibilities that can be implemented in a realistic manner, leading to some nice creativity.
Technical skills: This is easy than Visualising, as it needs you to have hands-on on various graphic designing applications like Adobe Indesign, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Photoshop.
If you are good at at least Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop, you are good to go and search for a job or do free-lancing. There are graphic designers who are only experts in Adobe Photoshop and are in high demand due to their skills like photo-optimisation and photo-retouching.
It’s not hard to be a good graphic designer, not too easy also. You will have to work on a number of various tasks before the world recognises you as a good graphic designer.
But once you are recognised as a good graphic designer, there won’t be any turning back and you can earn by working from your home too, just having 2-3 big clients in your kitty.
Will graphic designing offer me a good package?
This is a bit tricky, and the income you will get will highly depend on what kind of graphic designing skills you have.
Every company/client who will hire you will expect you to bring out the nicest of nicest designs, which is going to attract most of the consumers/customers out there in the market.
If you are fulfilling all these conditions, then you can demand your expectation of salary and the company/client will be willing to pay that to you, as they are going to get a good ROI on their investment in you.
But if you are creating an average kind of designs, which any Tom/Dick/Harry can do, then you have little chance of having a decent income.
But worry not, graphic designers get an average salary as per the industry and you will be able to run your expenses, though you won’t be able to accumulate wealth with this profession.
You can always do some extra freelancing work and start earning some extra money.
What is the scope of graphic design in the near future?
As I already mentioned, the market is ever-expanding and so new industries/services are always in the making. These new entities will always require marketing exercises, which will give rise to new graphic designing jobs.
Also, the older entities due to the rising competition will also go on putting more effort into their marketing activities, thereby keeping graphic designing professionals busy all the time.
Other than that, graphic design isn’t limited only to print media. But for website designing, video creations, mobile apps, everywhere the graphic designer will be required to create the base designs, create the basic visuals and the finals too, as a presentation activity before actually implementing the final version.
So, as per my thinking, graphic designing is a field wherein you get complete satisfaction from doing something new, creative, and out of the air.
If you have the professional skills, you have a very high chance of earning a decent income and moving to the position of Art Director or Creative Director in a reputed agency or company.
Alternately, doing freelance work and managing your own business can also yield you a good income, provided you have basic skills like time management, client servicing, and a commercial mind.
I hope you like this informative article. Kindly post in your comments and let me know your feedback on the same.