Is Digital Design Right For Me?

Choosing the right career will save you time and money and greatly impact your overall sense of fulfillment. However, this decision can also be incredibly challenging. As you’ve likely already guessed, simply enjoying digital design isn’t usually enough to determine whether it’s a good career choice for you. You’ll need to consider many other factors, such as whether a Digital Designer schedule would mesh well with your lifestyle, or whether your location offers sufficient job opportunities. Keep reading to learn more about factors that can help determine whether digital design is a good fit for you. 

What is a Digital Designer?

The simplest way to describe a Digital Designer is as a visual media creator who emphasizes interactivity. These designers are distinguished from other classes of designers by their focus on how people experience their designs. Rather than focusing solely on what their designs communicate visually, Digital Designers spend considerable time perfecting components like information architecture and accessibility. To improve user-friendliness even more, digital design projects often include prototyping and preparatory phases that include demographic research. 

Digital Designers are best known for their digitally generated graphics, animations, and visual effects, but many Digital Designers also create full-scale websites and apps. If one type of project piques their interest more than others, a Digital Designer can specialize in a unique aspect of digital design. Some Digital Designers choose to highlight primarily digital projects, while others work exclusively on preparing interactive print designs for marketing. 

Because digital design is an umbrella term that includes many different design niches, most digital design professionals collaborate with a team. Their team may include fellow Designers, Project Managers, Product Designers, and IT professionals. 

Why Become a Digital Designer?

There are plenty of careers out there that can make you rich fast, and while digital design does pay a comfortable salary, it has something even more valuable to offer: joy. Digital Designers rank above most other careers when it comes to job satisfaction, and this isn’t surprising when you consider what mental health research has to say about design. Regardless of how talented you are, engaging in creative activities is beneficial for illnesses like depression and anxiety. Rather than chaining yourself to a life of dull office work, choosing a job that allows you to give expression to your artistic side can keep you in good spirits for the duration of your career.

Digital design careers are incredibly customizable. Within the field, there are many potential specializations and work formats. Rather than molding yourself to fit your career, you’ll have the opportunity to mold your career path to fit you. 

Compared to other artistic fields, digital design is both high-paying and growing rapidly. To put this into perspective, American Digital Designers earn an average income of $75,000 to $154,000 per year, while Graphic Designers earn only $49,000 to $82,000. As graphic design jobs increase roughly three percent yearly between 2023 and 2033, digital design positions will grow by 8%.

You’re Creative and Adaptable

Like most design-oriented fields, digital design requires a high degree of creativity. While every project is different, common digital design tasks include creating graphics with Adobe tools, applying special effects to videos, and creating three-dimensional digital models. Unlike more traditional design fields (such as graphic design), digital design can include many different types of projects and mediums, from static digital graphics to motion graphics, video, and even physical products. Because of this huge variety, Digital Designers need to be comfortable adjusting to new projects regularly and may even work on two opposing projects at once. 

This constant state of flux makes digital design an ideal career for creatives who are fulfilled by exploration. However, it can also act like a double-edged sword for those who don’t adapt well to change or prefer a more repetitive style of work.

You’re Invested in New Technology

While many creative fields utilize older more traditional means of creating designs, digital design both utilizes and attempts to create new technology. Common digital design tools include software such as Figma, Photoshop, After Effects, and WordPress. While some Digital Designers work with physical media as well, they spend the majority of their time working from a computer and drawing tablet. 

Other popular digital design software tools include: 

• Alternative prototyping tools (like Sketch).
• Other graphic design tools (like Illustrator and InDesign). 
• Additional web design tools (like Git).
• Other motion graphics and video production tools (like Cinema 4D). 
• AutoCAD software.

With these tools, Digital Designers can create designs for use in both digital spaces and physical ones. Physical designs may include interior design plans, physical products, or product packaging. Meanwhile, digital projects can include an equally diverse mix of things, such as:

• Video games.
• Websites and apps.
• Social media pages and content. 
• Digital advertising campaigns.
• Ebooks and other publication projects.
• Animations and special effects for video content. 
• Static graphics and digital illustrations.

You Enjoy Creative Problem-Solving

In addition to creating visually appealing designs, being a Digital Designer involves thinking outside the box to solve problems that ordinary people face every day. This might look like building an app that enables home-bound patients to access telemedicine services at home or creating product packaging that’s easier to open for people with limited hand mobility. One of the major tenets of digital design is prioritizing the experiences of people who interact with your creation in the future, and that includes maintaining functionality and accessibility for people who are different from you. Accomplishing this requires thinking creatively to first identify problems and then find ways to solve them. 

You’re Good at Time Management

Creative fields are often (somewhat erroneously) associated with spontaneity. However, deadlines and thoughtful planning are a necessity in any career that revolves around producing a custom project for a client. As you may have guessed, digital design falls into this category. In addition to later design phases, most digital design projects include preparatory phases (such as user research) that can’t simply be tacked on at the last second. As a result, Digital Designers depend on their ability to create and stick to a reasonable project timeline. 

You Have Strong People Skills

There are a million and one reasons why you need a bedrock of good people skills to build on in digital design. While some creative arts (such as poetry) can be done in solitude at least 80% of the time, digital design projects are team-based. As a Digital Designer, you may work alongside a group of designers with different specialties, writers, or even IT professionals. To maintain group harmony and keep things moving, you’ll need solid communication skills. These skills will also go to bat helping you collaborate with company stakeholders and identifying problems during prototyping. 

While less obvious than elements like color and white space, people skills are a key ingredient in digital designs themselves. Because the whole point of digital designs is to be interactive, they can only succeed when people enjoy interacting with them. If a blind user encounters an accessibility issue that renders an app unusable, then the app falls short as a digital design project. A Digital Designer with higher social awareness will know that some design features may make their app harder for disabled users to enjoy and will put in the work to find solutions.

Sometimes, however, there are just factors you may not be able to predict. The prototyping phase allows time to identify and iron out kinds in a design before it goes live. During this phase, you’ll receive feedback from testers, business stakeholders, and colleagues. Because feedback is so essential to the overall success of a digital design, having the humility to accept and iterate feedback goes a long way in this field. 

How to Decide Which Career is Right for You

Because it can impact the rest of your life in so many ways, choosing a career can feel like an immense decision. The decision may even feel impossible if you’re presented with opposing advice, such as:

• Money can’t buy happiness, so do what you love.
• If you want to raise a family, a high-paying career is the most responsible choice. 

Though offered in the spirit of generosity, these quick answers aren’t very helpful. If you ask ten people how to choose a career, you may receive ten different answers, the reason being that each advice-giver is operating on a different set of internal values. 

Identify Your Core Values

If you want to find your true path in life, take the time to figure out what’s important to you first. When you understand the unique core values that influence your decisions and preferences, you’re more likely to choose a career that you’re happy with in the long run. Mental health professionals on platforms like Psychology Today have created guides that can help you quickly identify what your top core values are. 

Identify Compatible Careers

Once you’ve done that, consider as many aspects of the careers you’re interested in as you can. How well do they align with your core values? In addition to evaluating key job responsibilities and salary information, pay close attention to what kind of lifestyle comes with the job. 

Do I Need a Degree to Become a Digital Designer?

By and large, most hiring managers expect digital design job candidates to hold a Bachelor of Art (B.F.A.) degree in a design subject (such as digital design, UX/UI design, graphic design, or web design). However, a degree won’t mean anything if not accompanied by real skills. For this reason, many aspiring designers find it valuable to attend a design bootcamp or certificate class. In these career-focused classes, students learn practical skills by applying them to hands-on projects. With the right digital design bootcamp, it’s possible to start building experience for a design career before completing an expensive college program.

After completing your initial training, be prepared to continue learning throughout your career. Like any industry, digital design changes over time, and it pays to stay up-to-date on the latest design trends, tools, and techniques. 

Some digital design jobs may require specialist certifications that can be attained through a proctored exam. Regardless of whether your job requires certification, however, getting certified can reward you with more opportunities and a higher salary. Throughout the United States, certified workers earn almost $400 more per week than they would without a certification. Following the same market rules, college graduates also earned an additional $500 each week and saw less unemployment as of 2020. 

Learn the Skills to Become a Digital Designer at Noble Desktop

Want to learn design in a supportive environment? Noble Desktop offers highly-rated design classes covering a range of digital design topics for students at all levels. In addition to shorter classes, you’ll find a variety of career certificates that provide comprehensive training, complete with one-on-one mentorship and professional experience opportunities. Start your journey now by signing up for training live online or participating in face-to-face classes at the school’s NYC campus. 

With the hands-on training you’ll get in the Digital Design Certificate, preparing for a digital design career isn’t hard. Even if you start with no experience, you can learn the UI design and graphic design skills you need to launch your career in a matter of weeks. Instead of sitting through dull lectures, this program will teach you practical skills through activities and projects. In addition to mastering tools like InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, and Figma, you’ll gain the expertise necessary to apply design principles for truly stunning results. 

Learn the skills to make websites and apps that are truly user-friendly in UX & UI Design Certificate. Working with a team, you’ll create your own interactive digital interfaces from start to finish, resulting in work you can proudly display in your portfolio. Rather than focusing only on aesthetics, you’ll learn how to research your target users and prototype to improve accessibility. This course also includes a job preparation segment designed to help you workshop your resume and create the perfect portfolio website. 

If websites are your jam, you can make it into a career by joining Noble Desktop’s Web Design Certificate program. Work toward an impressive portfolio with hands-on assignments that will help you learn a combination of design, coding, and software skills. Quicker than you know, you’ll acquire a versatile skill set that includes UI design theory, Figma, WordPress, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Before you’re through, you’ll also have the chance to build a high-quality portfolio website with help from your expert mentor.