Graphic Design Careers
Learn everything you need to know about launching a career in graphic design, including job duties, salary, and more.
Table of Contents- What Does a Graphic Designer Do?
- How to Become a Graphic Designer
- Top Schools for Graphic Designers
- Graphic Designer Salary & Wages
What Does a
Graphic Designer Do?
Graphic designers use their creativity and proficiency with computer software to create visual concepts and elements for clients in virtually every industry. They work on projects ranging from a simple logo design to a complete marketing campaign package. Graphic designers use 2D and 3D art to create marketing materials, advertisements, emails, websites, promotional apparel, academic reports, books and printed art, brochures, signs, stickers, web landing pages, or any type of element, both print and digital, that helps define and support the client’s brand.
Businesses need a strong brand identity to help them stand apart from other products and services. Having a defined, consistent, look and feel across their entire product line – from company logos, business cards, and other branded materials – makes a company more memorable and helps a customer understand what the company represents. Graphic designers create illustrations, logos, and other visual elements to communicate important messages and select images, typefaces, and colors that speak for the aesthetic of the brand. A few of the most common job activities of graphic designers include:
- Meet with clients and art directors to determine the requirements and scope of a project
- Create designs based on knowledge of design concepts and layout principles
- Create visual concepts for applications, print, advertisements, websites, and other digital media
- Prepare illustrations, logos, graphics, and visual elements to communicate a message
- Use computer software, photo editing software, and digital illustration software to create designs
- Select images, colors, and typefaces and determine the arrangement of copy and illustrative material
- Review initial designs and aesthetic concepts and make improvements as needed
- Present final layouts and visual concepts to clients and art directors
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Skills You Need to Be Hired as a Graphic Designer
Like any job, a career in graphic design requires several essential skills that anyone who wants to be successful in the field must master. Whether you plan on working as a freelance artist or are looking for a role in a corporate setting, there are important technical skills that you must learn in order to get hired and excel in your design career. From basic drawing skills to more advanced skills in design software and typography, the skills listed below are what you need to be competitive in today’s job market.
- Build Your Foundation
- Master the Software
- Earn a Degree in Graphic Design
- Choose an Area of Specialization
- Build a Stand-Out Portfolio
Basic Drawing Skills
It makes a lot of sense to assume that a visual art, like graphic design, requires a designer to have professional drawing skills, or a fine art background, but it simply isn’t true. In short, you can still become a successful graphic designer without exceptional drawing skills. Drawing is a valuable asset, but you won’t be a bad graphic designer if you can’t draw well. Instead, focus on building basic drawing and sketching skills so that you are able get your ideas down on paper. Your drawings do not need to perfect when you are sketching out basic design content.
Adobe Design Software
Graphic designers rely heavily on technology and software programs when creating and editing all types of visual materials. Whether creating a logo, an icon, typography, or illustrations, a graphic designer needs to have both knowledge and skill in several key applications. If you want to be successful as a graphic designer, you will have to become fluent in the following programs.
Adobe InDesign
Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing and typesetting program that is used for creating everything from small pamphlets, to postcards, eBooks, magazines, and other visual materials. Known as the industry-standard software for layout and page design, it is one of the most important and essential programs for graphic designers to master inside and out.
Adobe Photoshop
Photoshop is a professional-level program for editing photos and creating raster/bitmap graphics (PNGs, JPEGs, and GIFs) for use in your designs. In simpler terms, the program allows a graphic designer to change the colors and aspects of an image and combine multiple images together. In the graphic design world, Photoshop is widely known as one of the staple software programs that all employers expect you to know.
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor used for manipulating photos and creating vector images. Vector images are high-quality images made up of paths, instead of pixels, which means that they can be scaled up or down without losing quality. A graphic designer might use Adobe Illustrator to create illustrations, logos, charts, icons, and typography.
UI Design & UX Design
Users spend only a few seconds making a decision about whether a website or application is interesting and meets their needs, before deciding to continue exploring – or bounce. Understanding best practices for layout, usability, content, and design principles helps a designer create visual, interactive elements that make the product easier to use and feels natural to the user.
Design Theory – Typography, Color Theory, Grid Systems
Effective graphic design is not simply slapping a cool font and a few eye-catching images together. Instead, “good” design has a basis in design theory and is the result of much more than just pure aesthetics. “Good” typography, for example, can invoke a feeling, create meaning, and help a person remember the brand. “Bad” typography, on the other hand, can be jarring, distracting, messy, and unclear. Together, the fundamental knowledge and skills related to design theory cannot be ignored – they are an essential part of any graphic designer’s skill set.
Design Principles
Every designer should be incredibly familiar with the five Design Principles – alignment, repetition, hierarchy, contrast, and balance – which should be used on every design you work on. When used together, the Design Principles ensure consistency between different elements, helps users navigate your design, signals the importance of certain parts of the composition, and improves the overall visual appeal.
Branding
To be effective as a graphic designer, you must be able to communicate a clear set of ideas about a company or product to help it stand out in people’s minds. A clear visual identity can bring a brand to life and communicate important messages about a brand’s values to consumers. Thoughtful use of colors, logos, illustrations, typography, and other graphic elements can pinpoint why a product or company is special and attract the right audience.
Designing for Print
o be a well-rounded graphic designer, you must focus on more than just digital design. For anyone who thinks print design is dead, think again. Consider for a moment about how much design is still printed: magazines, apparel, newspapers, and posters are a few good examples.
There are certain technical requirements associated with getting a design ready for print that are an essential part of your toolkit. For example, you should know the two different types of printing, offset and digital, and be familiar with all of the terminology associated with printing and print production – crop, slug, bleed, fold marks, dot gain, ink limits, and transparency. Mistakes in the design or production phase can cause poor quality prints – which is bad for the client and the designer.
Top Graphic Design Schools of 2020
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See ListHighest Paying Careers in Graphic Design
As you explore the field of graphic design, you will find an extensive variety of jobs you can pursue. Virtually everything we look at has some combination of words, images, or both – which means that graphic design is needed by a nearly endless assortment of industries. Publishing, manufacturing, advertising, computer systems design, and education are just a few examples of job sectors where graphic designers are in high demand and where rapid tech innovation will fuel job growth for years to come.
With this in mind, creative professionals who are looking for careers that provide opportunities for both inspiring work and substantial pay will find a large number of options in the field of graphic design. According to a 2021 salary guide published by the human resource consulting firm Robert Half, there are over 40 high-paying creative roles in marketing, design, and production that pay a median salary of at least $70,000 per year. We highlight several of the highest paying careers below:
- UX Director – $111,250 – $197,750
- Creative Director – $93,000 – $191,500
- UX Designer – $75,750 – $148,000
- Creative Services Manager – $69,000 – $125,750
- Art Director – $77,500 – $125,000
- Instructional Designer – $67,250 – $120,000
- Mobile Designer – $67,000 – $113,750
User Experience Director
The role of a user experience (UX) director is to lead a company or brand’s UX department, which works to enhance people’s experience of a digital or physical product by making it more useful and enjoyable to use. Whether a person is playing a game on their phone, launching a mobile app to order food online, or scrolling through a website (like this one), a user experience director is responsible for the design decisions that create an emotional connection with users, organize information, and make the product easier to use.
Creative Director
A creative director is one of the most well-known leadership positions in the creative industry. The role of a creative director is to oversee the creative vision of a company, brand, or project, and to establish budgets, timelines, and manage client relationships. Creative directors are responsible for stewarding the resources of an organization, guiding a team of creative staff, and for planning the layout and visuals for digital, film, and print publications.
User Experience Designer
The job of a user experience designer focuses on the interactions between real human users and products we use every day, such as web applications, digital media, and even physical products. In order to create an experience that is efficient, easy, and pleasing to the user, a UX designer must simultaneously consider a variety of factors – including user research, content strategy, visual design, information architecture, usability, and overall business goals – to get a strong feeling for what users want, need, and why.
Creative Services Manager
Creative services managers (CSMs) are responsible for coordinating with a variety of team members and staff within an organization to develop ideas, design concepts, and create content for delivery to the client. CSMs are also responsible for delegating tasks across a creative team, developing strategy, tracking the progress of a design team, and ensuring the proper vision of the creative output. Creative services managers are most commonly found at work in corporate settings, such as advertising agencies, and marketing and communication firms.
Art Director
Unlike a creative director, who is responsible for guiding an organization’s creative strategy, unifying their teams, and managing the creative process behind a project, an art director has a narrow focus that involves executing the details of the project at hand. Once a strategy and concept are established, an art director is responsible for leading a team of creatives through various phases of production, including edits and final execution. Art directors may also contribute to the production process, by creating artwork themselves.
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Top Paying Industries & States for Graphic Designers
According to employment and salary data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual wage for a graphic designer was $52,110 in May 2019, which is the equivalent of $25.05 per hour. Graphic designers in the top ten percent of all earners reported annual wages higher than $89,210.
Top Paying Industries
According to BLS data, approximately 281,500 jobs were held by graphic designers in 2019. The most common work environment for a graphic designer is in a self-employed setting (21%) where the designer works independently with clients. The second largest employer of graphic designers are firms who offer specialized design services (10%).
| Top Paying Industries for Graphic Designers | ||
|---|---|---|
| INDUSTRY | HOURLY MEAN WAGE | ANNUAL MEAN WAGE |
| Federal Executive Branch | $40.23 | $83,680 |
| Aerospace Product & Parts Manufacturing | $39.31 | $81,770 |
| Software Publishers | $37.83 | $78,690 |
| Legal Services | $36.50 | $75,910 |
| Medical & Diagnostic Laboratories | $35.09 | $73,000 |
Top Paying States
Our research shows that the top location in the U.S. for graphic designers is the District of Columbia, where the average mean wage is $79,450. The average mean wage is defined as the wage at which 50% of the workers in the profession earned more than that amount and 50% earned less. The two states with the highest incomes for graphic designers are Washington and Massachusetts, where salaries exceed $68,000 per year on average.
The two worst states, where graphic designers earn the least, are South Dakota and Wyoming. In 2019, the median wage in South Dakota was $36,090, while the median pay in Wyoming was $39,790 – almost half of what graphic designers earn in the highest paying states.
| Top Paying States for Graphic Designers | ||
|---|---|---|
| STATE | HOURLY MEAN WAGE | ANNUAL MEAN WAGE |
| District of Colombia | $38.20 | $79,450 |
| Washington | $34.71 | $72,200 |
| Massachusetts | $32.77 | $68,170 |
| New York | $32.15 | $66,870 |
| California | $30.63 | $63,710 |
Additional Career Paths
Professional Organizations for Graphic Designers
If you are interested in becoming a graphic designer or pursuing a career in the Arts, it’s a good idea to seek out professional organizations that cater to the needs of emerging artists in your field. Joining groups in the industry can help foster personal connections and put you in contact with resources that support your professional growth.
Here are a few professional organizations that rising graphic designers should consider: