Do you think you have a creative mind? How cool would it be to get paid for illustrating from the essence of your creativity? There aren’t many fields that allow you to show your creativity and artistic skills to its fullest.
But don’t worry, being good at drawing isn’t a necessity in this illustrative world. As Chris Do once said, “If you can design one thing, you can design everything”
A flair for creativity, a habit of thinking outside the box, and some basic understanding of the field are all you will need to enter this creative field.
Simply put, graphic designing is planning and projecting ideas using text and visual elements. Graphic designs are used to communicate a message that is visually appealing to the audience.
These designs are mainly used to advertise and for marketing purposes but some artists also use it to show their artistic skills. Graphic design also helps with building a brand in an enormous way. Just think about the impact that Nike, Apple, Starbucks, or any other major company’s logo has.
There are a total of six elements, anyone trying to understand graphic design should know about:
Every designer follows his/her own set of principles while creating a design. Nonetheless, they always know and understand the basic principles of designing and then choose whether to follow, tweak, or ignore them.
Symmetrical designs distribute the weight of each element evenly in either section of a design. When two sides of a design don’t look the same, it is called asymmetrical design. Radius balance is achieved when the elements are placed in a circular manner.
Graphic Designers often use their sketchbooks to jot down their creative ideas. However, at the end of the day they use different tools to digitise these ideas.
Here are some of the most common tools used by designers:
Here are some of the computer tools that Designers make use of :
You can also choose to draw using a mouse/ trackpad or use a graphics pad like Wacom Intuos Pro or XP-Pen Star05.
From the logo of a company to the icons on a website, from the illustration on a billboard to the designs on your t-shirt, we can see examples of graphic design all around us. Here are the different types of graphic designs:
1. Visual Identity : This refers to the branding aspect of a company. It creates a relationship between a business or organisation and its audience. It includes logo designing, style guides, typography, colour palette, etc.
2. Marketing and Advertising : Companies depend heavily upon their marketing campaigns to promote their products/services to the correct audience. All these marketing campaigns have multiple visual elements which attract the user to interact with a specific brand. The different marketing collaterals can be:
3. User Interface : This defines how a user gets to interact with a website, mobile application, or any other product. Examples of designing UI includes:
4. Publication : Designers are needed to curate designs for publications like the newspaper, books, magazines etc. They work on curating the cover images, page layouts, custom illustrations and any other element that might be needed in a publication.
5. Packaging : Most products come in professional packaging, which means they would require designs for the same. This can include designing boxes and bags in which a particular product is delivered to the customer.
6. Motion Graphics : These are graphics that are moving or are in motion. These can include typography, audio, animation, imagery, video, and other effects that can be used in television, films, or various online media.
7. Environmental : These designs aim to improve the overall experience of people going through places. Examples include:
8. Art and Illustrations : Graphic art and illustrations involve creating detailed, visually appealing, and original pieces of artwork.
Graphic designing, UI designing, and UX designing are three fields that go toe to toe on a daily basis. It can be easy to get confused amongst the three but here’s a quick differentiation to understand them better.
Graphic designers create visual representations either by hand or by using computer software. They are masters of communicating by combining technology and art.
A major objective of a graphic designer is to captivate viewers by communicating ideas that inspire and inform.
Graphic designers are responsible for structuring the layout of an advertisement, t-shirt designs, websites, magazines, etc. and use visual elements with design principles and their expertise on the subject to do so.
A graphic designer has to do a lot more than just designing something. Some of the typical tasks include:
As more and more companies start to realise the importance of not just communicating through designs but through the right designs, the demand for graphic designers has been on the rise.
Today, at least 40% of the communication done by a company is visual.
The average salary of a graphic designer depends on many factors such as whether he/she is an employee or a freelancer, experience, portfolio, and so on. But to put it broadly, a graphic designer can earn anywhere between INR 90,000 to INR 6 lakhs yearly.
Want to explore the world of design with young mentors in the field? Then sign up for the MyCaptain Graphic Design Workshop!