Whether you are a freelance graphic designer or just start your career as a graphic designer. These essential skills to be a graphic designer can help you take your career to the next level. Just like in every field clients or employers have some expectation from their employees. There are many people who have formal education in graphic design but some people don’t have a formal education in graphic design. They are just creative. Luckily the design industry needs talent and creativity. If you can imagine the new ideas and put them on paper, then you can prove yourself in the graphic design industry.
Graphic Design is an exciting professional and creative field. Where you can express your ideas, put your passion into a piece of art that you are creating. It is the post where the skills pay the bill. Employers need a skilled graphic designer to design a unique idea to help them communicate with their audience and convince their customers to take action. It can be a massage to purchase something or it can be an announcement to join social or professional events.
Yes, Talent can take you to the height of your life. If you are interested to be a graphic designer then we have some must-learn skills to be a graphic designer for you. If you already know these skills then consider polishing these skills. To be proficient and get prepared for the competition.
Never Doubt the skills to be graphic design is very much important for a designer but what is equally important is the latest trends. You must aware of the industry and the latest researches about graphic design Like Research on color theory, typography, and so many other things. What expert graphic designers are creating? and The most important What is the thing what attracts the audience and customer. These are things that can help you specify your target audience through your design.
If you understand the principle and elements of the graphic design so let’s get started, if don’t understand about these skills then I would highly recommend you to have a basic knowledge of these skills In this article, I will focus on the practical skills to be a graphic designer
1. Creativity
Creativity is the key thing of skills to be a graphic designer. Graphic designers are express creativity every day to create an idea to convey the client’s message as well as by selecting the right color pallet, and the typography as per requirement. Graphic designers always think “outside the box” to approach the problem and find the solution. Creativity is always unique from every other designer. No one can imagine what you have imagined. So keep in mind if can not create your own idea then you have to consider learning creativity.
how to learn Creativity
Some People think that creativity is a God-gifted ability. It is right some lucky people are naturally creative but If you are not creative you can learn creativity. There is no hard and fast rule to learn creativity. you have been passionate and give extra time to it. Here are some scientifically proven ways to learn or improve your creativity.
- Train your mind to produce original Ideas
- Think outside the box – don’t follow a straight line
- Be Ready to Experience new things
- Go for a walk and think and fresh your mind
- Research says greenery can improve your creativity
- Don’t Afraid to be rejected
- Clarify your ideas and implement it
- It is important to sit back and relax during the work
- And last but not least is do practice
2. Communication
Communication is the most common skill in every field and employers are looking for skilled employees to communicate with their customers and leave a professional impact on the client’s mind. Graphic design is not bound to sit alone in a room and wait for inspiration to put it on paper. but as a graphic designer, you may work as a team member and you have to answer the creative director and a manager.
If you are a freelancer and providing your own services of graphic design then the communication skill is very important to deal with the client and convince them to award their project to you. Of course, you need a technical background and a strong knowledge of principle to present your design decisions in front of your client.
3. Sketches and Drawings
Sketching and drawing are the most important skills for you If you a UI/UX designer or brand identity developer you need to have a hand drawing ability to put your ideas into paper. It can help you visualize your multiple ideas and choose the best one for digitalizing. The first step of creativity is sketching. UI designers first draw an outline of the website or any software, when they choose the interface of design then they are considered digitalizing their website
4. Color theory
Color theory is another very important skill for graphic designers. It is all about the color wheel and the types of colors (Like Primary, Secondary, or any other) and the mixing of colors (like Hues, Tones, Etc) Color theory can help graphic designers to create different combinations of colors. (like complementary color, contrast, etc)
If you don’t know about color theory. It is important to learn color theory and understand the basic terminology of how colors work. and How different colors communicate themselves. Have you imagine why we stop when the signal is red. and go ahead when the light is green. you have to learn the basic effects of colors.
5. Software Skills
Today the world is going to be digitalized and the competition is becoming more and more complicated. Being a graphic designer you should update yourself with the world and learn every news that is coming to this industry. This is a very saturated industry and you have to come first to get a new skill first if you failed to update yourself with this digitalise world the competition will kick you out of the graphic design industry.
There are some graphic design software that you can just start from. You can consider learning more advance skills. If you are familier with the basic softwares. I will mention here some basic and also advance skills. you are a beginner and want to start your career as a graphic designer. then you have to learn basic software.
Basic Softwares
- Adobe InDesign
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Illustrator
- Word Processing Software
Advanced Software and tools
- Sketch (For Digital UI/UX Design)
- Coding ( HTML5, CSS3 etc)
- WordPress (Some Website design can be designed on WordPress through theme builder)
6. Problem-solving
Problem Solving is the key part of skills to be a graphic designer. Graphic designers solve problems every day and they always come up with a unique solution. Businesses have a problem in marketing and conveying their message to potential customers. but they can’t write a letter to their customer. Because they don’t want to bore their consumer. This is the problem. and a graphic designer gives the solution to design a professional banner flyer or any other type of marketing material using attractive illustration images and colors so that costumer are interested to see the peace of design which means they have conveyed their message throughout their audience. this is the solution
7. Expansive thinking
Becoming a graphic designer itself an expensive decision that you are going to take. Graphic designers are always thinking that may not be affordable. If you are afraid will my design be liked by the client or not. Then it is so difficult for you to produce new ideas. you may produce a new design and erase it constantly. Which is the most worse thing in the graphic design industry. If you are a graphic designer you don’t have to afraid of the result and don’t bound yourself to the straight line. If you do bound to the straight line and trying to produce a design that is already produced so remember people like original only they don’t a copy. no matter how good a copy is.
8. Time management
Usually freelancers are free to manage manage their time. But without an exellent time managment skills they may not meet the deadlines of taking their project that can be completed on time. Which means clients are not happy with them and they are going out of the industry.
If you are a part of a professional graphic design team then it is supper important to manage your time effectively and meet the deadline of different projects that you have tasked to complete on time. The problem-solving skills come up here to respond quickly to the task and complete it within a good time.
You can use project management which helps you to manage and complete multiple projects on time effectively, Asana, Trello
9. Strategy
When working project designers need to develop a good strategy. It will help the designer to manage their time, meet the expectations and also meet the requirements. If you are a graphic designer you should have a readymade strategy to work on a project.
For Example, If you are awarded to do the project (As a graphic designer) First you doing market research and analyze your competitors, then you are trying to understand your target audience. And then you may start working on a project.
10. Other Skills
Now we have discussed almost maximum skills that can make you a professional graphic design but it is not enough you have to learn some extra skills like, Social media marketing, etc. these skills can help you to sell your services and let you available to the world.