Is Graphic Design Right For Me?

The choice to enter into a graphic design field will depend largely on how much you enjoy working on creative projects and how important it is that you can flex your creativity while still remaining within the bounds of an assignment. Graphic Design is a great way to make an artistic passion a career, and it is a perfect career choice for anyone who wants to create vibrant, evocative, and memorable visual compositions. Graphic Designers do have to deal with long hours occasionally, but this tends to be rarer and more predictable than in many other fields. Graphic Design careers tend to be available in major metropolitan areas, so anyone looking for a job in the city may find this a desirable career path.

What is a Graphic Designer?

A Graphic Designer is a creative professional who combines text and visually appealing imagery to share a message with an audience. This could be through advertising, social media, or product packaging, to name a few. They are well-versed in design principles like color and typography and are committed to staying up-to-date on the latest trends. Whether they work for an agency or freelancer, they collaborate with clients and other team members to create high-quality designs that appeal to new and existing customers. 

In addition to proficiency in professional design programs like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, a successful Graphic Designer must also work well with others. Graphic Designers rarely work alone, and since their job is to create a product that matches a client's vision, they must be willing to accept feedback and suggestions from others. Time management skills are also crucial for a Graphic Designer; since most of them work freelance, they often work on multiple projects for many clients simultaneously. 

Read more about what a Graphic Designer does. 

Why Become a Graphic Designer?

As the old saying goes, “Choose a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” For artistic professionals, earning money while being creative is reason enough to pursue a career as a Graphic Designer. However, this profession offers a host of other perks. To start, Graphic Designers work across nearly every industry, so there’s always something new to learn and new people to interact with. For instance, a professional designer might start their career working for a marketing agency before pivoting to healthcare, film, or education. 

Design is also a highly collaborative and rewarding field. You’ll work on designs with input from other professionals, and at the end of that process, you’ll have a concrete product to show off. Finally, Graphic Designers can choose to be self-employed and work remotely for added flexibility. Freelancing may not be for everyone, but knowing the option is there is certainly a bonus, especially in an age where a positive work/life balance is highly sought-after. 

Read more about whether a Graphic Designer is a good career.

Creative Passions

One of the major selling points of a Graphic Design career is that it is a place to turn your creative passion into your life’s work. This can be very rewarding for students who enjoy working with creative design tools and feel empowered to create vibrant, evocative, and memorable designs. Anyone interested in working in a creative environment should consider graphic design as a viable career path.

However, many creative and passionate Graphic Designers will risk becoming burnt out by the limitations of the field, particularly early on in their careers. Novice and entry-level Graphic Designers will have significantly less control over the kinds of work they are assigned or hired to do, which can be a problem for students with high-minded ideals about the kinds of art they want to create. This isn’t to suggest that the work is unrewarded, far from it. Still, if you are considering looking for work as a Graphic Designer, you should consider that it is unlikely that you will find your first job to be one where you are always producing work that you are deeply and professionally passionate about. Sometimes, a Graphic Designer will need to take a contract or assignment that doesn’t suit their immediate drive, but it will need to get done nonetheless.

Working on Teams

For Graphic Designers who aren’t freelancing, much of their work will be done alongside teams of other designers working to make a project complete. For example, there isn’t a single Graphic Designer working on a magazine. Instead, dozens of designers are tasked with building individual spreads, page layouts, and assets to populate those layouts. This makes graphic design an ideal career space for creatives who enjoy working on collaborative design projects and being a small part of making something that would have otherwise been impossible to make into a reality without a large team of designers.

This does mean that Graphic Designers will need to be comfortable occasionally working a cog in a large machine and having their work disappear into the background of a more elaborate project. Sometimes, elements of your design may even end up being scrapped as a project changes directions or de-emphasizes the work you were doing. This can be disheartening for some designers, particularly when those changes result in extra work for you and the rest of your team. Despite this, many designers enjoy working with teams of colleagues to bring large projects through to completion.

Iterative Design

One of the most important things to consider for aspiring Graphic Designers is how willing you are to work under fairly direct scrutiny from an employer or commissioner. While graphic design is a creative profession, you will still have to ensure that the work you produce meets the specifications laid out by someone else. Graphic Designers will need to learn to put their own desires for a project aside and iterate on their designs until they meet their employers' specifications and are approved to be handed off for the next step in the process.

This means that Graphic Designers need to develop and cultivate the personal skills necessary to listen to a supervisor and understand exactly what kind of work that is being asked of them. A huge part of your success in the field will come from your ability to work with other stakeholders to produce final designs that make a great many people happy, even if you aren’t necessarily one of those stakeholders. This can be challenging for some designers who are used to having complete control over their work and who entered into a creative field because it lets them express themselves as creative beings. However, for many prospective designers, this collaborative process is part of what makes the job so rewarding.

Possible Crunch

Graphic design tends to be a very deadline-focused career field. Almost all projects you work on, whether as part of a large firm or as a freelancer, will have a fairly tight deadline for when it is acceptable to submit a finished product in line with your contract. This means that near the end of any given project, it may be necessary to work significant overtime and crunch time to ensure that a deadline is met. This is usually easy to predict since it will be visible whether or not a project is running behind schedule, but it will be a consideration to keep in mind.

This can be even more significant for freelance Graphic Designers, who will need to ensure that they are delivering contract work on time to keep receiving contract work. This is also often harder to predict since freelancers are most likely to need to do crunch work when something unexpected happens in their own lives. Designers who enjoy the flexibility offered by freelance employment will need to be prepared for more rigorous work schedules as deadlines become more and more of an issue.

Freelance Design Considerations

One thing to consider when entering into a graphic design career is whether you will seek work at a design studio or if you will start working as a Freelance Designer. Freelancers will be responsible for finding and bidding on their own job assignments, either through online contract aggregation systems like Dribbble or Design Jobs Board, or through cultivating a following either in-person or online networking practices. Freelancers will have significantly greater control over their own work schedule and the kinds of projects that they work on. By contrast, studio designers will be able to offload the labor of finding jobs and assignments to other parts of their firm, freeing them up to do more direct design work.

The choice to go into graphic design work as a freelancer will come with advantages and disadvantages. It is much easier to break into entry-level work because you don’t need to convince anyone to hire you. However, it may be more difficult to get a footing in the industry since you won’t have an established apparatus for building relationships and networking. You’ll be able to control your own hours on a weekly and even daily basis, but you’ll probably have to put in more work dealing with clients and handling the administrative aspects of your own work. You’ll be able to work on a more diverse range of projects, but at the same time, you’ll have to compete with others just to get those projects, which can sometimes result in unpleasant bidding wars and doing work for less than you would normally prefer.

Do I Need a Degree to Become a Graphic Designer?

Whether Graphic Designers need a degree is a surprisingly divisive topic amongst professionals; some will say that a degree isn’t nearly as valuable as a portfolio, while others point out that self-teaching requires a great deal of time and discipline. There are plenty of Graphic Designers who hold a bachelor’s degree in art, design, or a related field. Some companies require a degree, but it’s becoming increasingly common for creative professionals to gain experience through freelancing and completing personal passion projects. 

The short (and overly simplified) answer is: A degree is not a requirement, but it helps. If you’d like to pursue a degree to help you stand out in a competitive market, you might consider minoring in public relations, marketing, or advertising. Since Graphic Designers are commonly employed to help sell a good or service, knowing some marketing principles could help you understand the ins and outs of a solid campaign. These added skills will make you more marketable and help you land a lucrative career outside of graphic design if you need more time to build your portfolio.

Read more about if you need a degree to become a Graphic Designer.

Learn the Skills to Become a Graphic Designer at Noble Desktop

If you want to start a career in graphic design, the graphic design classes offered by Noble Desktop are an excellent place to start. Students can take all their classes remotely or in-person at their Manhattan campus. For students who want to start slow by just learning one popular design program, Noble offers an Adobe Photoshop Bootcamp, an Adobe InDesign Bootcamp, and an Adobe Illustrator Bootcamp. These beginner-friendly courses take just a few days to complete and will provide students with foundational design skills.

For those who feel ready to dive into a more comprehensive program, Noble Desktop’s Graphic Design Certificate might be a better fit. Students will complete hands-on assignments using popular design programs, including Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. This program is ideal for those hoping to start a career as a Graphic Designer. Certificate students at Noble Desktop receive individual career mentorship, where experts in the design industry help craft resumes and portfolios and provide helpful tips for finding lucrative employment. 

If a class isn’t feasible for your current schedule, Noble Desktop has a host of resources on its website to help start your graphic design career. You can browse their collection of articles about Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign if you’re curious about how each program works. You can also review information about other design tools to see if another field might interest you more.

Key Takeaways

• Anyone looking for a career in a creative field will want to consider becoming a professional Graphic Designer. A few things to consider when thinking about applying for these positions are your ability to work on projects that might not excite you, your willingness to work crunch time and whether or not you want to work as a freelancer or in a studio.
• Graphic Designers are passionate creatives who produce wonderfully evocative and visually stunning designs. However, in the course of their work, they may find that they are assigned work that they are less passionate about on a personal level. They may also find that their work is significantly changed or even discarded as part of a larger design project.
• Designers will also occasionally need to work significant overtime as deadlines grow closer. This is usually predictable for studio designers but may be more significant for freelance designers, who have their own host of responsibilities and obligations.
• If you think a graphic design career is right for you, you may consider enrolling in an in-person or live online graphic design course through Noble Desktop.