6 Skills that a Graphic Designer Needs to Build a Successful Career

You might have witnessed a lot of creative book covers, inspiring illustrations, and interactive posters in your day-to-day life. All these, collectively, are graphic designs. In other words, any form of communication that uses graphics or drawing is called graphic design and can be created by a graphic designer. Letters, colour, patterns, illustrations, photographs, information: graphic designers play around with all of these and create attractive and innovative visual designs.

Every industry today requires a graphic designer to create their corporate logos, product packaging, digital interfaces and other forms of visual communication. Graphic designers are required in the advertising industry, print as well as digital media companies, IT companies, FMCG brands, financial industries, and many other similar sectors.  

Graphic designing courses are available for those who are interested to be a part of this fast-growing industry and meet the increasing demand for trained professionals. But even before you join a graphic designing training institute, it would be of help to know a little more about the various must-have skills of graphic designing.

1. Creativity

 This might seem obvious: creativity. Every discipline where you need to create something new requires some sort of creativity. However, creativity is often misunderstood and is even considered as an ability to draw, paint or sculpt. To become a graphic designer, what you need is a creative mindset. This will enable you to master almost every stage of the design process: from coming up with innovative ideas to developing and designing new concepts.

2. Understanding of Typography

This is the making of various typefaces, with complete knowledge of point size, tracking (the space between all characters used), kerning (the space between two specific characters), and leading (line spacing). Typography skills are a fundamental part of any graphic designer’s skills set list.

3. Familiarity with Page Layout Creation 

Page layout is all about the look and feel of a printed page. This includes aesthetic alignment of images, text and the agreed style-sheet on a page. 

4. Knowledge of Interface Designing 

Today, with the increasing use of the internet, mobile, and social media, a graphic designer also has to think about website layouts and user-interface designs to enhance the interactive experience.

5. Software Skills

It is unlikely that you will become a graphic designer without a good grasp of at least Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. Hence, it is important to enrol in a course that not only trains you in the fundamental concepts of graphic design, but also gives you a firm grasp of the industry-relevant software.

To be a graphic designer, you must learn the appropriate application of all the necessary tools. A graphic design course can guide you to acquire the right skills set and make your career a success.

6. Communication Skills

Communication is an important skill for a graphic designer. Graphic design, simply put, is the “effective visual communication of an idea or concept”. Hence communication is at the very heart of what a graphic designer does. You will need top communication skills to collaborate with your clients to understand them better, even before you start designing. You will also be collaborating with your team, account managers and so many other people on an everyday basis.

And there you have it! If you are looking for the right graphic design course to join, you may want to visit this website.