Do you picture artistic advertisements when you think of the graphic design?
Websites, Social Media and Ads with attention-getting graphics?
Eye-catching billboards?
While these examples clearly fall under the graphic design umbrella, the phrase covers a wide range of items, including posters, flyers, infographics, book covers, product labels, logos, packaging boxes, business cards, signage, website layouts, mobile apps, visual navigation and much more.
In this Digital Era, You are continuously bombarded with sights that are intended to catch your attention and convey a message that will stick with you. Do you often find yourself evaluating those designs?
Whether you are an aspiring designer or seeking design services for your business or someone, understanding the basics of graphic design will help you find the right skills for the job before getting started.
So what is graphic design, exactly?
And how can you design graphics like a pro?
How can you start as an Aspiring Graphic Designer to a pro?
First steps first, Learning the basics.
What is graphic design?
At its core, graphic design is really combining words, shapes, form, and colour to communicate an idea. It is a craft where professionals create creative visual content to communicate messages. It’s more about ideas!
The idea can be a branding, a poster, information graphics, television, broadcast graphics, title sequences, interactive design, experience design or anything depending upon your niche.
The media isn’t as crucial as the concept, and it’s here how good graphic design really shines: clever concepts that transmit a clear message with skill and artistry.
It’s critical to recognize that there is a method to the madness and to follow it step by step.
Being an aspiring Graphic Designer, you should have that madness to experiment and explore different elements to express an idea!
Designers utilize typography and graphics to fulfil users’ individual demands and focus on the logic of showing items in interactive designs to optimize the user experience by employing visual hierarchy and page layout approaches.
The main motive of Graphic Design is about Molding the User Experience Visually. That implies you should concentrate on your specific audience and try to empathize with them as much as possible while creating attractive designs that are also usable.
After learning about what Graphic designing is. Do you feel that you are an aspiring Graphic Designer?
Take some more time and understand the Elements of Graphic Design first.
Here we go…
Elements of Graphic Design
To ace your skill in Graphic Design, you need two things.
One is the software /app or tool(to be discussed below) and the second is the necessity to be aware of aspects and principles that make up a Graphic or Creative in order to better comprehend what it means.
To Create Visually attractive, effective and interactive design, different elements of design are used in combination and in opposition to one another.
You always have Inspiration around, remembering that inspiration is not for copying. Read our article on Copying vs Inspiration.
As an aspiring Graphic Designer, you need to experiment with the Elements of Design, their placements, sizes, structure and many other things to Convey your Idea loud and Clear.
The Elements of Graphic Design are:
- Colour
- Form
- Line
- Size
- Shape
- Space
- Texture
Apart from having clarity on elements of Graphic Design, a graphic designer should follow design principles, which are essentially a collection of criteria that aid in the composition of a design.
Implementing and Exploring design principles contribute to creating balance and stability in your Projects.
The following are some of the graphic design principles:
- Balance
- Contrast
- Movement
- Emphasis
- Proportion
- Rhythm
You can clearly break the rule sometimes and create amazing Graphics.
However, before making the purposeful decision to breach these standards, a skilled graphic designer must first comprehend them.
Hey aspiring Graphic Designers, here is a Pro Tip for you:-
While designing Graphics With user psychology in mind, it’s critical to keep your attention on a few key graphic design aspects, namely:
- Balance and Symmetry (including symmetry types)
- Flow
- Repetition
- Pattern
- Typography is the study of letters (encompassing everything from font choice to heading weight)
- The Golden Ratio is a proportion that exists in nature (i.e., proportions of 1:1.618)
- The Rule of Thirds (how people’s eyes identify good layout)
- Audience Culture (in terms of colour use—for example, red as an alert or a signal of good fortune in some Eastern cultures—and reading pattern: for example, left to right in Western cultures)
Types of Graphic Design
Graphic designers, like many other professionals, can work in a range of jobs depending on the firm or industry they work for.
If you are an aspiring Graphic designer and are planning to start a career in this field, first try to understand the type of graphic design. Coz these are the type of projects and jobs available for you once you have mastered this skill.
Despite the fact that these design principles have essentially remained the same, your graphic design skills are adaptable and can be used in a variety of settings. Take a peek to determine which graphic design style appeals to you.
- Branding Design– Branding Design focuses on the visual identity of the brand/company or product. Consumer attitudes towards a company are frequently influenced by its branding, thus graphic designers in this field devote all of their talents to creating a visual identity that will resonate with the target audience and convey the appropriate message about the company. Examples of this type of Design are Logos, company letterhead, website branding, business cards, company brochures signage etc.
- Product Design- Product designers study, design, and develop new products using their creative abilities. These graphic designers do market research to ensure that their product will appeal to the target audience and will not infringe on the copyrights of rivals. Then, before sending their concepts into production, they’ll generate early designs and prototypes. Examples of product designs are creating Various types of products, product packaging, product illustrations, marketing designs and prototypes.
- Website Design- To ensure that the sites the company/brand developed are as user-friendly as possible on both desktops and mobile devices, these graphic designers must have a good understanding of user experience (UX) design. They put all of their abilities to work to create online environments that are aesthetically appealing, easy to browse, SEO-friendly, and consistent with their customers’ branding. Examples of Website Designs are Branding, UX design, wireframing, SEO, basic coding, and problem-solving.
- Print Design- These graphic designers are experts at designing art that is designed to be physically experienced. These designers are capable of creating digital designs that extend beyond the computer and transition effectively to the physical environment, from billboards to business cards. Examples of Print Design are Brochures, billboards, stickers, flyers, stationery sets, mugs and other products.
- Publishing Design- Whether it’s developing an eye-catching edgy picture spread for a magazine or picking exactly the perfect typeface for the next bestseller, graphic designers work closely with authors and editors to produce precisely the right aesthetic for a project. Examples of Publishing Design are book covers, ebook layout and design, magazine spreads, graphs, and other pictures.
- Animation Design– These designers’ graphics can be used to provide entertainment through TV shows or video games, to draw attention to a company’s social media account, or to educate people through animated educational videos. Animation designers mostly work as part of a team to turn their creative ideas into fully animated works of art. Video games, cartoons and animations for television or film, brand animation for social media channels, and motion graphics for internet videos are all examples of this type of work.
As you can see, there are a variety of graphic design employment opportunities available after you have the necessary skills, experience and training.
You have the option of tailoring your career to your own talents and interests.
Popular Graphic Designing Tools
Being a competent designer requires not just innovative ideas and execution, but also the proper equipment and tools. If you just utilise a few tools as a designer, you’ll have a firm basis for presenting your ideas and streamlining your job. So, in order to progress from a good to a great designer, all you need is a collection of tools for web and graphic design pros – and you’ll be able to sail through the process with minimal additional work.
If you want to rush and explore the world of graphic Designer instantly, CANVA is a go-to tool for you. It is free to use with Easy Interface and great features like Drag and drop designs, pre-built templates, free stock images and much more.
No matter if you are a beginner, intermediate or a pro, this graphic design free tool is going to help you.
So, Get started with a Canva free account now!
As a beginner, nothing better than Canva. But to excel in your design skill, you should also get hands-on experience in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.
If you are lured to explore animation, you can go for a software called Blender or Powtoon which is free to use and easy to handle. And to take it a level up you can explore paid software like Adobe animate CC.
And if you are working on User Interface graphics, Figma is a free amazing tool to go for and Adobe XD is a paid tool to level up your skill.
Make a career in graphic design for yourself.
Having an eye for design is a great start.
Aspiring designers have a plethora of alternatives to choose from. Whatever part of this creative profession has grabbed your attention, you’re undoubtedly wondering how to proceed.
Recommended is to get started with a Canva free account to apply learnings from these readings.
Start by designing a logo for absolutely free on Canva.
Trust me it’s totally worth it!