Let Us Discuss Different Career Avenues for a Graphic Designer

If you set out on taking graphic designing up as your career, you will find that there are more things to get to know first than you think, like what does graphic designing actually mean and what kind of jobs you will have available. After all this, you will find that a graphic designer career is quite vague and you can only land into a meaningful career in this field if you develop a good sense of direction.

And to help you out, we have explored the world of graphic designing and have brought you the underlying structure, along with a number of different design jobs that you can have a look at. Our today’s article is not only for the designing newbies but also for the ones with experience, to have them find even a better place in their field. Although, frankly, there are no restrictions or limitations in categorizing the design jobs, the only way to judge a job is by knowing its requisites and not by its title simply.

Levels of Graphic Designer:

There are some basic levels of a designer according to their specialty and these are the levels you should get familiar with because plunging into this industry. No matter what is you are of specialty, you will have to go through a set hierarchy before you are able to reach at the point you are aiming for.

• Entry Level:

Entry level designer is also known as ‘graphic designer’, ‘artworker’, ‘Mac specialist’ or ‘Mac operator.’ While all other names are quite known in the designing industry, Mac operator is a term which designers are not much familiar with.

• Mid Level:

This level of designer is pretty self explanatory. A mid level designer is in the middle of the designing career, he is neither on the top nor a newbie. There is an experience level of 3-6 years and the person has enjoyed a reasonable pay package. Moreover, this is the level that a designer has experienced some major design projects which can be individual as well as team based. Mid level designers are integral part of the designing industry because of their potential and experience and work mostly in designing firms and advertising agencies. These designers have the ability to produce a lot of work, meet deadlines after spending crazy hours over it.

• Senior Level:

While mid level designer is defined by experience and expertise, there is no defined status when it comes to senior level designer as far as duties are concerned. This is not actually the boss level but is measured more by experience, most appropriately six years or more. In a team of designers, there are probably one or two senior designers with a handful of mid level designers who carry out the work and submit to the seniors. Again, there is no set definition and designation of a senior designer as his tasks is all over the place, from managing a team to supervising and to give final touch ups to the project.

• Art Director/ Creative Director:

This is the stage where a designer gathered an experience of 10 years or more after starting from the basic level and worked his way from a cubicle to his own office. An art director is more of a manager than a designer and his task is to manage his team and get the best out of their potential. Every project comes to him for approval and final suggestions.

An art or creative director is also responsible for finding more clients, holding meetings, presentations and without doing a design work, they get all the appreciation and are also the ones to take the blame when the project goes wrong

Areas of Designers:

• Print Designing:

The advancement of digital world does not mean that print world has lost its meaning. Package design, logo design and marketing are the basic jobs of print design. Package design implies designing of packaging boxes, cartons, wrappers and sorts. These designers have their own importance as packaging is used in almost all of the commodities in markets.

While advertising and marketing in designing world is moving more and more towards digital side, its origin still lies in print media. Logo designing is a skill that can keep a designer on the top as it implies more creation and a knack at good art. Although a company provides full on marketing and designing services, a good logo designer can be a top up.

• Digital Designing:

Front end web designer, developer, user interface designer and user experience designer are what count to be digital designers on the whole. Front end web design is what you see on the web. Although there can be back end designers as well but it does not have users and is more about coding etc. In simple words, developers form a website and front end designer makes it attractive for the user.

User interface designer is very much like a front end designer in working, the only difference being related to the design specifically and hand-coded development of the interfaces. A user experience graphic designer related more to the initial stage of design, to put oneself in user’s shoes and his ‘experience’ and to sketch out a design framework accordingly.

Other Design Concerns:

And the first one is the place of work. A firm working on a small level can tend to offer more varied design tasks which can give you a good exposure while a big company might have a focus on a narrower task approach for the employees. This aspect also depends upon the size of the design department, how much of creativity is needed and how much work is dependent upon designing.

Apart from an option of a full time deign job, there is also freelancing which most graphic designers want to experience with or take up as full time business. There is no limit of having the designing specialty in freelance and a graphic designer can try all the different kinds of designing without having it affect his business or career.

And then there comes the most important question of how much money the design work give will. It is nothing to hide that when it comes to this; a big paycheck is better than a small one and so there is a big tendency that your inclinations will divert where there is good money offered.

Wrap Up:

The main purpose of this article was to let you know of all the different types of design work you can work on. Also, when you are feeling that the area in which you are in is not working for you, the points in this article can help you with it in finding what might be more interesting for you. Professional contentment goes hand in hand with how much bucks can you make in your area of design, and for professional contentment, you need to give a long thought to what interests you and what would you rather enjoy doing.

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