It will not be surprising if I say Designing has become a huge part of our life. If we look around, we can see designs everywhere. Regardless of the kind of field we are in, there is a need for a design. It may be a marketing company, an advertising company, manufacturing, E-Commerce business, there is either an in-house designing department or they outsource it to designing companies or freelance designers. 

Anyone would be lying if they say they have never been interested in designing. Because everyone at some point of time would’ve thought about making designing as a career or at the least learn it. We see designs everywhere and we get inspired looking at them and wonder if we would ever be able to do it. 

So here is this blog to help everyone out there on how to make designing as a career. 

Types of Designing 

Designing is any form of information provided visually to make complex things look simpler for the better understanding of the humans. Design has made our life easy in many ways possible, mainly to understand things better and in a fun way. Design makes boring things look interesting and engaging. I have listed out a few types of designing.

Graphic Design

Graphic designing is one of the forms of visual communication created with an intention to solve a problem or communicate an information to people in a creative manner.  The design could be anything a poster, logo, product design and much more. 

Web Design

The process of creating a website by deciding the layout, color, images and overall design of the website is called web designing.

User Interface and User Experience Design

User Interface(UI) is the designing of the visuals that the users get to see on screen when they open an app or a website while User Experience(UX) design is a much broader term which involves on what the users interact with and the overall experience of the user.   

Motion Graphic Design

Although graphic designing and motion graphic designing pretty much comes under the same line, there is a slight difference between the two. The application of graphic designing into videos, film making using animation and visual effects.  

Animation

The process of making still images or pictures look like moving objects with the use of computer softwares is called animation.

Apart from these, there are other designing fields as well like Game Designing, Mobile Designing, Interior Designing, Fashion Designing, Architecture etc. 

Evolution of Design

When we say design these days, what comes to our mind is that a few 20 something-year-olds sitting in front of a system continuously clicking the mouse, working around with a software like photoshop or illustrator to create a design. That wasn’t something that would come to mind before computers made its way to the world. 

Designing was once a whole set of process requiring a lot of people doing separate things manually to bring out a single design. To put it simply, division of labour was involved to create a single design. It was a process where you had to be ready to get your hands dirty to bring out a pretty design. 

With computers came new technologies and new softwares, all the tools used physically were included in the software and a design could be created with just one person. There are many softwares with different purposes to create a design like Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, CorelDraw etc.

In today’s world, the designers can easily connect with each other, share their works and get feedback from other designers who have been in the field for a longer period than them. That wasn’t quite possible before the digital world.

Why choose Designing?

1. Good demand for good designers

If you’re someone who is just starting out your career or someone who is thinking of a change in career, designing is a good career to go with. Designing has a huge demand all over the places but it is not easy to find a job in designing unless and until you’re good. If you are talented and have the skills and the urge to learn new trends, you should have no trouble finding a designing job. 

2. Never-ending Learning

Design evolves with technology. There will be new trends, new tools, new technologies every now and then. As a designer, you will be required to always learn. If you are someone who believes learning is a never-ending process and follows the belief in your life, you will keep exploring new things and enjoy designing as a career. 

3. Designers will never be replaced by Machines

With the growth of technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and every industry feeling the threat of being replaced by machines, designers have no such things to worry about. AI can do all kind of things but it cannot create a design. Designing will forever be a humans job and that can never be replaced. 

4. Location will never be a problem

What’s interesting with designing is that it doesn’t require to stay in a particular place. You can be from any part of the world and work from anywhere you like. Opportunities are around the globe for good designers. While some people choose to work for a company, the others go with freelancing which offers them the freedom to work as and when the like from wherever they wish to.   

5. Creative Visuals – All day, every day

The most interesting part of designing is that you are always working around with pictures and images all day. You won’t just be designing only but also looking at various other works of designing, get inspired and again create a design. This way you’re always surrounded by creative visuals. 

6. Your day will never be mundane 

Designing is a creative field. A design is not just created to make things look beautiful. It has evolved to the level where a design is created to solve a problem and give the solution through visuals. You would never feel like you’re doing the same thing. Everyday you’ll come across different challenges and you will you’ll get to create a new design every day. 

7. Freelancing

Designing doesn’t require you to go to the office daily and work staying in a place. You might already be a working employee or you’re someone who travels around and doesn’t stay in a place or you’re just not the person who wants to go to a day job but you want to do designing. Freelancing is the way. There are many companies who look for freelance designers to get the job done. If you’re good with designing but don’t want to stick to a company, you can take up freelancing and work as it fits you. 

8. Good Growth for Designers

Designers rule the world today. People love when an information is provided with good visuals. Not every industry had a separate designing department before. But nowadays every company has a designing department or they give the designing work outside. Every company somehow integrates with designing and that is only going to keep growing.

9. Engage with Design Community 

Unlike other fields, designing is a cool industry to work in. There are websites like Dribbble, Behance on which your can share you work, look for other designer’s work. You can make use of these websites and get in touch with people who are at the same level of mind, creativity as yours. This helps you to understand how good your work is. You can also give feedback to others’ work and get advice or tips from experts on the website. 

Prerequisites to become a Designer

Designing is a creative field. Anyone cannot just come and become a designer because they think it’s “cool”. Designing is created with an intention make things look simpler for a better understanding of the humans. To create a design, a lot of thought process is involved. You can’t sit in front of a computer software and  just create a design.

There are a few things you need to have regardless of any kind of a designer you want to become. 

You will need to 

• Have basic computer skills.

• Some level of creativity

• Innovative thinking

• An eye for colour

• Analytical skills 

• Problem solving skills

• An eye for detail 

• Be able to see things at a different level

• Be curious and always ready to learn new things
• Be flexible

•  Be a story-teller

What to learn?

Graphic designing – To become a graphic designer, you need to become hands-on with certain tools like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, InDesign. 

Web designing – The basic things you need know to become good web designer are Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Fireworks, Dreamweaver. These softwares are used for designing. But for web design, you are also required to learn some coding like HTML, CSS, Javascript, JQuery, Bootstrap. 

UI/UX – The first step is to analyse the competitors so there is a lot of research involved for UI/UX. So you need to learn how to research and get the competitor analysis. After that designing is done for which you need know how to work with softwares like Auxre, Balsamiq, Adobe XD, InDesign. 

Motion Graphics Design – You will need to learn softwares like Adobe Animate, Adobe After effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, Illustrator, Photoshop

Animation – For animation you should learn and understand about Computer Generated Interface, Visual effects. You need to how to work with Adobe Animate, Adobe After effects,  Autodesk Maya, Autodesk 3DS Max.

Choosing the best designing institute

If you have come to this part of the blog, you’re most likely interested in designing and probably wondering where to start and how to go about it. 

Designing is considered a major subject in almost none of the colleges. Architecture design, interior design and industrial design are some exceptions. 

But for graphic designing, web designing, UI/UX etc. there are not colleges providing a degree. The best way to learn is to join a certification course at the place. 

There are many institutes offering various designing courses all over the world. But what’s important is to know how best they are. To make sure that this is the best place for you to study, you need to do a lot of research. There are few things you need to ensure before joining an institute

• The first and foremost thing you need to look is the curriculum. Make sure the syllabus of the course is wide enough covering everything you need to learn from designing.

• Find out the the faculties and how much of an experience they have and if they’ve good subject knowledge. 

• Ensure if they provide both theoretical and practical training

•  If it is nearby, go and visit the institute in person. Look how the environment and infrastructure of the institute is. But don’t leave a good institute because it a little far away. 

• Make sure they provide 100% placement assistance. Nobody can help you get a job unless you do the interview but the see if they’ve a placement cell and train you for the job interviews.  

The process of designing keeps changing. The way the designing was once done is not the same way it is done now. As a designer, you should always be ready for change and welcome the new trends and technologies with open arms. You should be able to adapt to changes and figure out a way to integrate your designing skills with advanced technologies.