Graphic Designer
Graphic designers can enjoy rewarding, engaging careers that fulfil their creative urges while still letting them pay the bills. That’s not to say that attractive opportunities for professionals in this space are easy to come by; you still need to make careful decisions if you want to get ahead.
If you’re a graphic designer who feels like you are no longer improving, or getting jobs, opportunity, here are a few tips to give your career the boost it needs right now as well as improving its trajectory in the long term.
Who is a graphic designer? A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, printed or electronic media, such as brochures and advertising.
Most graphic designers tend to be jack of all trades, dabbling in various aspects of design occasionally. There is nothing wrong with this approach for some but if you are tired of the sporadic employments/gigs, then I feel you need to take a more focused approach. If you feel like you’re spread too thin to let your talents shine, taking a more specified role could help.
For example, you might consider becoming a motion graphic designer, capitalizing on the demand for this skill at the moment and also specializing in an area that will only become more relevant in this highly competitive segment of the job market.
This is not an option for everyone, but if you want to take the plunge and become a freelance designer rather than working for one agency, there are still opportunities for expanding your portfolio as well as your career options if you take on some freelance work.
Finding clients as a freelancer has never been easier but it is a great way to work remotely, or start your own business. Furthermore, escaping office politics and distractions is an added bonus. If you grow your followers on social media, many clients will end up coming to you, and you could even promote yourself as an environmental graphic designer on social media.
One of the reasons why a graphic designer’s career can hit the rocks too soon is if they stop acquiring new skills and are instead limited to doing the same old things over and over again, missing out on job opportunities and promotions as a result.
Training is the best way to overcome this, and there are myriad means of learning new things and expanding your skillset in a way that will make you more valuable to employers.
In some cases, your existing firm may offer to pay for training, or you could make use of free online resources to achieve this. Perhaps you may want to dig into web design, motion design or video making. All of those are in high demand right now.
This is an alternative to pursuing an extended career as a graphic designer, but one which many people find rewarding. If you have a solid background in education under your belt, including a postgraduate degree, then taking up the art of teaching others graphic design could be a good move.
There are plenty of different ways to go about this, as well as a variety of approaches to education that you might want to adopt. From dealing solely with the nuts and bolts of graphic design to espousing on the theories which define the practice, the world is your oyster.
This is also an area of rapid growth, with plenty of demand for academics dealing in a variety of subjects. Add to that the fact that remuneration for teaching at a postsecondary level can be higher than you might earn as a graphic designer in the first place and the reasons to make the switch even more compelling.