Graphic design as a field is quite broad and when you hear that a person works as a graphic designer, your initial guess about their daily tasks will possibly miss the mark. Describing what graphic designers do isn’t quite like speaking about the role of house painters — they paint houses — or even of mechanical engineers — these people design or build machines.
To understand the role of a graphic designer better, you’ll want to begin by learning the fundamentals of their craft: what a graphic designer is, a short history of graphic design, the various popular career paths within the field as well as which technical skills are required by most graphic design jobs.
Graphics Design Broken Down In Detail
What Is Graphic Design?
Graphic design is the art of developing and creating visual content to communicate ideas and messages. Graphic design is everywhere that you look in the digital age — from billboards and cereal boxes to mobile apps. By combining different elements and principles, these designs can impact our perceptions and emotions.
Also, graphic design is known as communication design and graphic designers are ultimately visual communicators. They bring visual concepts to life usually via graphic design software and inform or engage consumers through text, graphics as well as images.
Graphic design is one way in which companies connect with consumers. Design can be utilised to promote and sell products, communicate a message or develop a brand identity. Although some graphic design has a commercial purpose, graphic designers blend art and business, so the creative process is influenced in part by business goals.
What Does A Graphic Designer Do?
Graphic designers are responsible for blending art and technology to communicate ideas by utilising several design elements to achieve artistic or decorative effects. They create the overall layout and production design for advertisements, brochures, magazines as well as corporate reports. This normally starts by producing rough illustrations of design ideas, either by hand sketching or by utilising a computer program.
A graphic designer’s ultimate goal is to make the company that hired them recognizable and prominent. By utilising text, images and a variety of media, they communicate a specific idea or identity to be utilised in advertising and promotions. Media could include fonts, size, shapes, colours, print design, photography, animation, and logos in addition to billboards.
Graphic designers frequently collaborate on projects with other graphic designers, digital marketing experts, multimedia animators, programmers, art directors as well as web designers. When using text in layouts, they work closely with copywriters who write the wording and decide on whether the words will be put into headlines, paragraphs, lists or – alternatively – tables.
A graphic designer’s responsibilities include the following:
- Meeting with clients or the art director to establish the scope of a project
- Advising clients on strategies to speak to a specific audience
- Determining the message the design should convey
- Creating images that distinguish a product or convey a message
- Developing graphics and visual or audio images for product illustrations, logos as well as websites
- Creating designs either by hand or by utilising computer software packages
- Selecting colours, images, text style and layout
- Presenting the design to clients or – alternatively – the art director
- Incorporating changes recommended by the clients into the final design
- Reviewing designs for mistakes before printing or publishing them
Top 5 Graphic Designer’s Responsibilities Explained
1. Advise clients on strategies to reach a particular audience
It’s very important to understand that your products and services have a target audience that can be clearly defined. As a graphic designer, your main goal is to find ways to identify who these people are so that you can create marketing campaigns that talk to them directly.
This may sound pretty obvious but too frequently graphic designers assume that what they offer the world has widespread appeal and that their target audience is “everybody”! As much as we would all like to believe that it’s not true and can get in the way of putting together effective marketing campaigns that do talk to the correct people.
2. Determine the message the design should portray
In marketing and graphic design, the term “messaging” refers to how an organisation talks about itself and the value that it provides. Related to positioning, messaging is an appropriate set of key points or messages an organisation utilises to convey something to a particular target audience. Messaging translates a positioning statement into a collection of believable “key message” statements.
Marketers and graphic designers use these statements to put together materials for marketing communications such as ad slogans, advertising copy, social media posts, press releases, presentation scripts, and so forth. Messaging documents are a plan for what all the other materials –and people – need to communicate.
3. Create images that identify a product or convey a message
Think about your perfect customer: what is important to her? What does her day look like? If you can visualise that person and what they would like, you will be able to create better visuals that your audience will respond to. Understand and acknowledge your competitors and work to set yourself apart from them.
4. Develop graphics and visual or audio images for products
Videos are very useful for presenting common problems and then demonstrating the solutions that your product can provide. While there are much cheaper kinds of visual content available, a great video serves as extra clout for your campaign by showing that you’re prepared to go the extra mile for quality.
There are numerous kinds of videos that can improve your business – you could think about how-to videos, animated explainer videos, demonstrations or – alternatively – customer testimonials. Whatever you choose, the videos must align with the overall style and ethos of your brand.
5. Present the design to clients or the art director
Graphic designers are extremely creative and passionate people who pour their hearts and souls into design solutions. Presenting design work incorrectly may very well create a vacuum for clients to provide misdirected or overly prescriptive feedback. This in turn leads to subpar final work. Proper presenting skills assist clients to see the graphic designer’s point of view and ultimately allow them to put designs out into the world which they’re proud to put our names on
Is Being A Graphic Designer Hard?
Learning graphic design is not hard however it does require creative thinking, an aptitude towards art and design together with time and dedication.
How Long Does It Take To Become A Graphic Designer?
On average students take 6 to 8 months to become graphic designers.
STUDY TO BECOME AN ADVANCED GRAPHIC DESIGNER WITH THE DIGITAL SCHOOL OF MARKETING
If you want to become an advanced graphic designer then you should check out our Short Courses in Graphic Design. Follow this link to find out more.
