What is a graphic designer?
March 16, 2007 – 4:02 pm
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.
I’ll give it a try now.
