Understanding Of Graphic Design Career

I’ve know what my career choice was ever since I was a freshman in high school. I wanted to go into the graphics design career. I was interested in how people in advertisement always made their products look good how people were able to make themselves look perfect in pictures and images around the internet. So I took a class in high school on graphic design and wanted to learn how people would use Photoshop in advertising or for fun. I wanted to open my mind to be more creative and artistic. For my whole education from elementary school to the end of high school, I only went to Catholic schools, where they shun creativity like it's a plague. Now when I entered into college, I started to open my mind with Adobe Photoshop. I mean, during high school you couldn't make what you wanted, you had to make what the teacher wanted you to make without using Adobe.

You see, unlike nowadays Photoshop wasn’t just owned by Adobe, it was available by a different company that my high school use called Macromedia. Macromedia did everything that Adobe Photoshop could back in 2010, but later Adobe did something to Macromedia that basically erased it from society. Now when going into this career I wanted to go into I had to learn some of the history of the programs used and the programs I used. When it came to finding out what skills were needed it turned out that the required skills are almost exactly the same depending on the employer. “Based on a document (thematic and content) analysis of 1, 406 job advertisements, we derive patterns in the expected skill sets employers articulate for graphic design positions. In particular, inspired by a competence-based view of skill development in education, we structure the requirements in the advertisements in terms of (1) what graphic designers should deliver (competence areas), (2) what graphic designers should know (knowledge and skills), and (3) what personal characteristics they should have. ” What it means is that graphic designers should be able to make what the employer wants to make them satisfied with your work. Then graphic designers needs to know there way around image and text editors no matter what brand or company it’s owned by. Especially with the Adobe Suite.

The editing in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Flash, Premiere, and After Effects are especially helpful when getting a job. Illustrator is used with those who like to draw original content and design layouts or trace over old content then take that content and reshape it into your own spin-off design. Moving to Photoshop you can add the finer details to your own images or edit another person’s image to fit your own taste or the taste of the customer. Indesign is used for taking your work and having it shaped for printing in a specific way, such as a poster, book, magazine (cover or pages), and so on. Premiere is used to editing videos to make them look better, not much to say about it other than it’s a video editor. After Effects is used to add special effects to videos just like in movies and flashy ads people see on TV. And what an employer also wants is what makes you different from the rest of the other designers.

What quirks do you have? What kind of style to use when making your work? How many years have you been working as a designer? Those are the questions that employers will ask. When going into the graphics career in college you will have to take required classes. I’ve been trying to finish my major for the graphics/web design for the past four or five years now. I still have a few more classes to go which are HTML Essentials, Web Design II, and Digital Portfolio. The other ones are for Photoshop, and Illustrator as the primary classes to complete. And the other required classes for this of math, english, history, and a class for physical education. This is just what I’m going through. There are other classes for the most advanced programs for graphic design at different colleges. I have wanted to transfer to a career college like University of Michigan but realized that it would have been more expensive to my parents if I actually did that. Even though going to a career college would have been better for me than getting a degree from a community college.

“Career colleges' curriculums are designed to meet specific needs of employers. They focus on specific tasks students will need to accomplish in their field of training. Hands-on training: Much of the curriculum at a career college will be spent focusing on actual tasks that will need to be completed on the job. ” What this means is that by going to a career college, the college would give the students hands on experience without beating around the bush. If I went then I would be given job experience through different internships and possibly on campus job for my career choice. Because right now the only job experience I’m currently getting is being a graphics tutor at GRCC. Except for the fact that I’m not even able to tutor anyone in my field because the text books for graphic design show the person what to do and where to look for the specific button in the program. So if they don’t know what the function in the program does, they will learn by seeing what effect it applies to the student’s work.

So I basically just sit at a tutor station doing my homework, which is fine by my standards. I mean getting paid to do your homework, who wouldn’t jump at that opportunity. However, during work even if there isn’t anyone in the lab then I have to make it look like I’m working. Now for the payment for my field, I heard from other graphic designers is that it depends on what the employer wants and by how big the project is. Like making a stamp wouldn’t pay as much as making a movie poster or magazine cover. Being a graphic designer is mostly being a one man company.