Graphic design is one of the top 5 in-demand careers where you can make a lot of money. Moreover, It is one of the careers in which you don’t need any degree to start. All you need to do is develop your skills to succeed in this field. So, Here is the best way How to become a Graphic designer.

But first, I’ll tell my story of How I became a Graphic Designer during the covid time.

Then I will share tips, do’s and don’ts, and many more that’ll speed up your design process and make you a pro.

Becoming a graphic designer requires your time, That’s the main thing.

You need to spend at least 2 to 3 hours a day developing your skills. So, that you can become a professional graphic designer at ease within 6 months. Let’s get started.

What Is Graphic Design?

Graphic design is a way to convey a message to the audience through visual designs.

It is important for any business for an effective marketing campaign.

It’ll grab the audience’s attention towards it. However, Brand identity is important for business. Do you know? 82% of startup businesses fail because of the lack of brand identity. And Graphic design is the best way to develop a brand identity for the business.

Some people think graphic design is dead, No Graphic design will never die and graphic designers are always needed for every business.

Is Graphic Design A Profitable Career?

Graphic design is a profitable career. Some people say that there is no future for graphic design and designers.

However, You can’t sell products/services effectively to the audience without graphic design. Many businesses seek graphic designers for their business design needs. Graphic designers are high-in-demand nowadays.

People all over the world searching for designers. This is one of the most profitable niches ever. Some pro-level graphic designers earn lakhs in this career.

Moreover, Graphic design is one of the careers that you don’t need any degree to start.

But to survive in this field, You should develop your skills and you should be a pro to survive in this field.

How I become a graphic designer

I was born in south India (Tamil Nadu). In covid, We all face a heavy loss and struggle in our life.

At that time, to run my daily life, I started playing games with my buddies and having fun. My days in Covid are dreams, I was happy.

But I play for around 3 to 5 hours a day, But then I was bored in the meantime and thinking about how to spend my time for rest of the day. Basically, I love drawing things, And one day I saw an illustration design that was created by a pro designer.

Then I got inspired And started to stare at the design for around 5 minutes.

So, Then I started searching for tutorials on youtube, Following professional designers, and started my design career without knowing anything.

When I started my graphic design career, I know basic photoshop and illustrator interfaces. So, I used every tool which I saw.

I spend around 5 hours a day practicing. Once I got some good results in my artwork, I started an Instagram account to post my artwork.

After around 3 to 5 months, I got no results. I Got around 30 to 50 likes per post but Most of them are my friends.

But I didn’t give up, I started posting daily on my Instagram account.

One day, One of my posts reached around 11,000 accounts and 800+ Likes. After that, I started getting clients and making around 100$.

My ultimate goal is to make people see my designs. And I did it. Till last year, I did the artwork.

But due to some personal reasons, I stopped doing it. Moreover, I plan on starting this again in the future.

How to become a graphic designer in this world

1/ Learn the basic graphic design theory

There are a lot of ways you can become a graphic designer. But I strongly recommend learning the basics of graphic design first.

To say this, graphic design is not a thing that puts all design elements together and selects which one looks good. There are some basics that every designer should know about. Here are the basic principles of graphic design.

Balance

Balance is defined as the equal distribution of visual weight (specifically, how much any one element draws the viewer’s attention).

Many factors can influence balance, including color, size, number, and negative space.

There are three types of balance:

• Symmetrical – A symmetrical design, formed along a vertical and/or horizontal axis, with the weight of the elements evenly distributed across both sides of the layout.
• Asymmetrical – The balance uses scale, contrast, and color to even out the flow of a layout. It is commonly found on websites where two sides of a webpage differ but contain similar elements.
• Radial– The elements of a design are placed on the layout in a circular pattern. This gives the viewer’s eyes a sense of movement and dynamism.

Contrast

Contrast matters the most in graphic design when designs pop up in the audience’s mind. Whenever someone sees it, It’ll remain in the person’s head.

It creates space and indicates the difference in elements used in your design.

Your background must be notably different from the color used in the elements so they work harmoniously and blend together and are easily readable.

Alignment

The Next principle of graphic design is Alignment, Which creates a visual connection between elements such as images, shapes, or blocks of text.

Moreover, It helps to develop a sharp and ordered appearance by eliminating any distortion in the layout.

Color Theory

Color theory is a body of practical guidance on color mixing and the visual effects of a specific color combination in the visual arts. Each color has separate emotion which speaks louder than words.

Color terminology based on the color wheel and its geometry categorizes colors as primary, secondary, and tertiary. Color theory has been studied since antiquity.

White Space

White space is important for every composition. Moreover, This doesn’t mean literal “white space” – It means negative space, like the spaces. White space helps you to define and separate different sections in the content and it gives a nice breath.

If your work ever starts to feel cluttered or uncomfortable, A little white space might be just what the doctor says.

Typography

It is one of the most important principles of graphic design, Typography. What typography fonts do you use in your design?

When choosing your font for your visuals, do not try and do something wildly different.

Moreover, readers expect to see familiar fonts like Arial, Roboto, Helvetica, Poppins, and so on. So, Use a maximum of two or three fonts in a single webpage and even fewer for images and ads.

Composition

Once you get to know the colors, fonts, and imagery for your design, You need to put it all together to create a beautiful design. And that’s where the composition comes in.

Each piece of graphic design content should serve one purpose. When you’re creating a design, ask yourself: “What is its purpose?” Should it lead the user to do something? Inform them. 

Nudge them to keep reading? Fill in a form. Or is it just there to give them information?

The composition can apply to any work of art that is arranged using conscious thought, from music to writing to photography.

So, these are the basic principles of graphic design.

And I know that some of us may don’t understand the concept of the basics of graphic design. So, Here is an informative infographic design of the basics of graphic design. Now you’ll understand the basic concept with ease. I hope so.

2/ Buy graphic design requirements

Buy that, you need equipment to start a graphic design journey. The right hardware and software are needed. You need a PC with the best specification. Moreover, You can do graphic design is a low-end PC build.

But Why do I request you to buy at least Mid-range PC is, It may lag low than a low-end PC.

To say this, I own a PC with low-end specifications and I struggle to make a single design with it (Laggy).

That’s why I recommend you buy at least a 2000$ PC build. It’ll help you to boost your design skills.

The software, Go with Adobe. Adobe is the No:1 Leading graphic design software in which you can do a lot of things. Firstly, I buy Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator and started playing with them.

Then I realize that these two software are complex and the most powerful tools. So, Started watching Adobe tutorials and Youtube tutorials before I was able to feel comfortable with the software.

Then I started getting ideas of how to use Adobe software and started playing the game by my rules.

Learn software

For the software, I recommend you go for the whole Adobe creative cloud app. So that you don’t have to limit yourself in the future.

For instance, I’m an illustrator so I use Adobe illustrator for creating illustrations but I also use photoshop for poster designs. If you’re a beginner designer—that’s a good combo to start with.

However, I also use Adobe express for quick designs. So, If you can, invest in your career and it will surely pay off later!

There is N number of tutorials available out there. I learn from Youtube. You can also do it But I recommend you to learn a complete the course.

Just browse websites like Udemy and start learning graphic design courses. A complete course is available for around 10$ to 20$.

If you’re conveniently learning from Youtube, It’s fine. Here I mention some good guru’s here. You can check them:

• PiXimperfect
• Benny production
• Creatnprocess
• Arunz creation
• Tutorials junction

These are the best graphic design gurus whom I learn from. Check them out!

3/ Build a strong portfolio

That’s it, Now you know graphic designing. The next step is to get clients and earn money.

When it comes to getting clients, a Portfolio plays an important role. Moreover, You don’t need to market yourself. All you need is to showcase your great work and clients will automatically hire you.

Trust me, I didn’t market myself. All I did is upgrade my portfolio and showcase the best of my best work of mine.

And people start giving projects to me. Moreover, I got one regular client.

Whenever he needs design work, He asks me to do it without going somewhere. To do this, You need a strong portfolio. That’ll show people how much you are capable of.

So eventually, you will be able to update your portfolio with real client work! Don’t just showcase your work and stop upgrading. You need to upgrade your portfolio on a regular basis in order to get clients.

Make a unique portfolio that no one has. Here are a few tips to make a portfolio that’ll make you unique from other designers:

• Attach your great work that’ll highlight how experienced a person you’re.
• Add a short video about yourself and about your design approach.
• Update your portfolio regularly, So, that people will know your activity.
• Create a PDF portfolio that’s easy to download and share.

4/ Gain knowledge and Work Experience

So once you’re ready with your portfolio, It’s time to start working with clients.

As I mentioned, Clients can notice you and start reaching out to you on social media or Industry-Relevant Social Media Accounts like dribble and Behance. I found my first client on Instagram where I share all my designs.

When I got better, I start getting referrals.

People and friends of mine started referring people to me.

And it worked, Word of mouth is the best way to get clients without doing anything. This trick will work only when you’re getting better and you’re behavior toward the clients.

However, there are lots of freelance websites out there like Fiverr, Upwork, and all.

You can sign up and start getting clients. The point is that there are plenty of opportunities out there. You can leverage them all to get a few clients and to be able to get some real work experience.

Don’t miss any opportunities, Work on each and every project and get work experience.

Another way to get work experience is to apply for an internship at some of the design firms that you admire.

5/ Be a brand

Once you’ve got experience, You can build your own brand so that you can be an expert in this field. The sooner you start building a brand identity for the audience, The more money you make as a graphic designer.

You can create a website and some social media presence, that’s it. You can get lots of clients.

Moreover, Having a website means, you can’t just limit yourself by just working with clients.

There are lots of ways that you can make money from your website. Here are some of the ways to make money with your website:

• You can work with clients all over the world.
• You can sell affiliate products so that you can earn a commission.
• Sell your own digital products.
• Get AdSense approval and earn money from ads.

create content

If you start to create a blog, youtube channel, or even if you can just regularly post on Instagram or Facebook—that helps you attract new clients and get you new career opportunities.

you can start creating some content about graphic design, whether it’s about sharing your own work or reviewing other people’s work.

There are numerous ways to create design content, but your main goal here is to establish yourself in the space.

Remember, it’s not just about your design abilities; it’s also about who you know.

Bonus way to become an instant graphic designer (Within 2 months)

If you want to become an instant graphic designer, Focus on one and start doing consistently.

For instance, If you like logo designing, Focus on logo design only for 2 months. And start practicing logo design daily. That’s what I did. I love doing illustrations so I start focusing on doing illustrations and I was very good at it.

Just take a look at my process of focusing on one thing:

Take a look at the result of focusing on one and being consistent with it. After you’ve mastered you’re working, You can move on to the next one. For instance, If you know well about illustration, You can move to digital painting.

That’s what I did, But don’t just limit yourself to one. Just explore everything, and learn everything from graphic design.

Conclusion

In conclusion: graphic design is one of the best and in-demand careers in the world. Moreover, You don’t need a degree to start a graphic design career. These days, You can learn anything on the internet.

However, You need to stay hungry to gain knowledge because being a graphic designer is a constant journey.

Don’t hesitate to learn from other designers. Do learn from other designers and apply it to your design process, It’ll help you to develop your design skills.

But first, you need to master graphic design software. Learn all the shortcuts which are more important. Watch youtube videos, read articles, watch video courses, and so on.

The best way to become a pro is to be consistent and practice daily. Practice makes improvement. Do practice at least 3 hours a day.

I was being consistent and practice around 5 hours a day during covid. The result of being consistent with the process is given above.

Then focus on building a strong portfolio on social media, LinkedIn, Behance, and so on.

Eventually, build your own website and social media presence. This will help you get bigger clients as a freelancer and better opportunities as an in-house graphic designer.

So I hope you’ve got to know How to become a graphic designer. Follow for more.

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