How To Become a Graphic Designer

What Are Graphic Designers?

We’ll start off your journey to becoming a graphic designer with a little about who and what are graphic designers.

First off, who. You may have a picture in your head of who a graphic designer is and what they look like. Though forget the stereotypes and the clichés, a graphic designer can be anyone and anyone can be a graphic designer. The design industry is full of people from all walks of life.

OK, that is all acceptable. In any case, what is a visual architect? That is the thing that you truly need to know to get one. We characterize visual communication as the powerful visual correspondence of a thought or idea.

This implies that, above all else, visual planners are visual communicators.

All in all, to turn into a visual planner, you ought to have the option to take data and transform it into something visual or realistic. To separate this further, the data, as a rule, comes as a brief from a customer, and something visual or realistic can be numerous things — we’ll separate a portion of these further at this point.

As we said previously, all visual creators are visual communicators yet visual planners can likewise be a colossal number of various things! Fashioners are liable for making such countless things you see and use consistently: marking, adverts, applications, magazines, bundling, logos, books, guides, and sites.

We could continue for significantly more yet we think you get the image. To put it plainly, visual architects are visual communicators that make things that make our lives simpler from numerous points of view.

How To Become A Graphic Designer

You’ve now read what it means to be a graphic designer and the amazing benefits that a career in graphic design can offer you. Now let’s really get down to brass tacks and discuss how to become a graphic designer. Specifically, what you’ll need to know and what you’ll need to do.

Step 1: Be Creative

The first step is an easy one and, if you’ve already got this far, chances are you’ve already achieved it! This first step to becoming a graphic designer is simply to be creative. Graphic design is a creative career so you’ll need to have creativity by the bucket loads to be a graphic designer.

Step 2: Become a Problem Solver

As well as being creative, graphic designers need to be problem solvers. A large part of being a graphic designer is thinking of creative, graphic solutions to “problems” given to you by clients.

Step 3: Get the Right Tools…

Like any other profession, to become a graphic designer you need the right tools to get the job done. So before embarking on your journey to becoming a designer, it’s essential that you get a hold of the tools you need. These tools are both actual tools and apps and programs on your computer.

Step 4: …And Learn to Use Them!

It’s all good having all the tools and programs you need to become a graphic designer but you don’t want to fall into the trap of “all the gear and no idea”. You actually have to learn how to use these tools if you are truly interested in becoming a graphic designer. We’re sure you’re already proficient in using a pen and a sketchbook so we will skip past that one.

Step 5: Understand the Fundamentals

One thing we do teach on the Shillington course is the fundamentals of design. Most importantly, the design principles.

No matter where how you choose to become a graphic designer, you won’t get far without these. These principles are alignment, repetition, contrast, hierarchy, and balance — they’re crucial in creating any successful design. Therefore, they’re a crucial part of becoming a graphic designer.

• Alignment → creates a sharper, more unified design.
• Repetition → strengthens a design by tying together otherwise separate parts and, as a result, creates associations.
• Contrast → is the most effective way to create emphasis and impact with your design.
• Hierarchy → creates organization.
• Balance → provides stability and structure to a design, either through symmetry or tension of elements.

Step 6: Be a Bookworm

A great way of helping yourself become a graphic designer is to get your head in a good book. Obviously, we’re not talking about the latest novel or a childhood favorite, we’re talking about the many, many amazing graphic design books out there.

As we said, there’s a lot of graphic design books out there so here are a few that we recommend for different things to help you sort the wheat from the chaff.

I hope it will you…