Graphic design is a fantastic career path for people who are creative, have great attention to detail, have a love for digital illustration and overall want a career that helps them to combine their creativity with their technical ability to design. We’re here to help guide you to get started with your career, from initially teaching yourself and investing time in yourself to considering formal education and getting work experience.
Learn To Use Different Softwares
Firstly, if you want to get into the world of graphic design, one of the best things you can do is to take some time to learn the software yourself. When you’re going to apply for courses, jobs or work experience, one of the most impressive things you can present is to show you have spent time on your own learning skills and developing your own sense of style.
There are endless free videos online to teach you everything on the most popular softwares, which are largely Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign and Sketch. The safest choice is to go with the Adobe programmes, as they’re very widely used. Start with very basic intro videos that give you a good overview, then you’ll gradually want to learn how to do more and you can simply search for more videos on how to achieve it.
Build Your Portfolio
Once you’ve started to learn more skills, you can begin to work on projects and build your portfolio. This is basically just collating all of your best work to showcase what you can do. We’d recommend using a template online to learn about the kinds of things to be included, then make sure you’re demonstrating a range of skills, annotating your work to explain the theory behind it and how it was achieved.
Make sure you let your personality shine through, which you can do when you’re self-taught as you develop your own design style. You might have a particular area that you specialise in or that you find more interesting, but then try to show that you can also adapt to different requests. A good way to get practice is to contact local businesses and ask if they need any design work done, then you can follow briefs and include these in your portfolio! If you’re not sure what you should be designing, then you could look at the curriculum for graphic design courses and use that as a bit of a guide on what to work on. Put time and effort into this and it could transform your career.
Get Work Experience
Another thing that is really beneficial when you’re starting a career in graphic design is to get work experience. While learning on your own is great, work experience can help you to see what working in a graphic design role would look like, to make sure it’s the career path you want to do. We’d recommend trying to get experience in a graphic design agency, as you’ll get to see lots of different projects with different requirements to understand how to adapt to different client needs. You could also get some experience in-house somewhere at a small business or a large business to get another perspective on the industry. Get as much work experience as you can, as it will help you to find the path you want to follow for your career.
Consider Formal Education
Last but not least, you could consider formal education. Some people do put together their own portfolio and go straight into a job; however, the majority of people will really benefit from some form of formal education. This could be a course at college or a degree, but especially with a degree, you benefit from working with some of the best people in the industry, so you can also form fantastic connections. Often they will help you to get work experience, and you’ll be able to do lots of different modules to help you find your style and decide the kind of route you want to take. You will gain personal skills, and technical skills and learn the latest in the industry, so it’s definitely worth considering a graphic design degree, although it’s not essential to get into the industry.
Final Thoughts
With experience in graphic design, you have so many different options when it comes to the career you should follow, from a classic graphic designer to a brand strategist, a designer at a UX agency to an animator. The best thing you can do is start learning, put together a portfolio, get some work experience and consider formal education to put you in a great place to start your career in graphic design. It’s such an in-demand industry, so you will be setting yourself up for a positive future, whether you want to work at a smaller local company or large city centre-based agencies, as well as having the opportunity to work for yourself in the future!