What is a graphic designer?

What is a graphic designer? Websites, posters, business cards, detergent boxes, DVD artwork, movie credits and dog food cans – graphic designers do them. Within just about every conceivable employment sector, a graphic designer brands, advertises and communicates.

He works under time and money constraints and, to varying degrees, within guidelines. A graphic designer must use research from a marketing department and costings from a budgeting department to produce work that satisfies both aesthetically and financially.

This takes a person who can evaluate left brain thinking of the corporate world and combine them with right brain creativity.

Communication – you’ve heard it before – is the name of the game so a graphic designer needs to listen to his client and then sell his solutions effectively.

He also needs to be constantly on the look out for new business and therefore market and sell himself. A personal website or blog is one way of doing this. He also needs to maintain a portfolio of his recent work.

He needs to be able to evaluate work – to estimate the price of a job and the time it will take. This needs to be communicated to the client with the highest degree of customer service skills.

This article was posted on Friday, March 16th, 2007 at 4:02 pm and is filed under Design.
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5 Responses to “What is a graphic designer?”

bebo whiteboard, on December 17th, 2008 at 3:00 am, said:

nice little write up, how do you reccomend getting into the feild?
Tk, on February 13th, 2009 at 4:15 am, said:

If you’re going to get in the feild it has to start out as a hobby bebo. Then once you’re good you can build a portofolio and start getting some work
Rob Cubbon, on February 22nd, 2009 at 12:42 pm, said:

That’s good advice to bebo, Tk, I would recommend you start your own website as soon as possible as well.
Patricia, on May 14th, 2009 at 4:52 pm, said:

You keep saying ‘he’ why not she or she/he i think you are being a littlie sexist. I am a female graphic designer and your article does not appeal to me
Rob Cubbon, on May 17th, 2009 at 3:16 pm, said:

I’m sorry the article does not appeal to you, Patricia!

Graphic and Web Designer London UK