become a graphic designer without having a
college degree.
10 Reasons You Don’t Need a Degree to Become a Graphic Designer
If you are interested in becoming a graphic designer but are wondering if you need a degree from a college or University to work as a graphic designer, this post seeks to give you the answer.
And the answer is that even though a college degree can help you to grow faster in your career and enable you to access big projects and work with big firms, you can still become a successful graphic designer without one.
The beautiful thing about the graphic designing career is that it gives you the opportunity to learn and develop relevant skills and competencies by yourself if you don’t have the opportunity of a college degree.
This post shows you the various alternative ways you can apply to gain valuable graphic designing skills that make up for not having a college degree.
By applying these ideas, you can gradually improve your skills and expertise and build a successful graphic designing career.
10 Reasons You Don’t Need a Degree to Become a Graphic Designer
Here are good reasons you don’t need a college degree to work as a graphic designer:
- Start your online portfolio
- Work experience gathered during internship is enough to take you places as a graphic designer
- You can learn the business of design from an expert designer
- You can take self-study theoretical courses online
- Specialize on a particular field
- Be a proficient software user
- Take care of your tools and equipment
- Have a good writing skill
- Develop your style
- Get inspiration from established designers.
- Start your online portfolio
As a graphic designer, your portfolio shows how competent you are. You can create your portfolio on online communities such as Behance or Squarespace.
Online portfolio can be used to showcase your best work online and indicate yourself as professionally as possible so as to stand a chance to get potential clients.
Your portfolio is more potent than a degree certificate; most clients are interested in your creative talent than what you studied in a tertiary institution.
- Work experience gathered during internship is enough to take you places as a graphic designer
Experience is the major attribute of a professional graphic designer. Most employers or clients are interested in your experience as a graphic designer.
Once you have worked in different projects or completed your internship, you have gained enough experience to scale you through.
- You can learn the business of design from an expert designer
Like all professions, graphic designing operates with business ethics. Apart from creativity skills, there are other skills you need to learn outside degree practical and theoretical courses in order to succeed in the industry.
Skills like client relation or negation, writing business development proposal and elements used during design contracts.
You can learn a lot online by reading inspirational and design books and keeping up with expert designers who work creatively with clients.
- You can take self-study theoretical courses online
Learning the practical aspect through experience and industry research without knowing the theoretical part might not make you as competent as design degree holders or graduates.
But once you learn the theoretical aspect through online resources and recommended design books will go a long way to compete with design degree graduates.
Many design principles and theories are self-explanatory when you read and research. You don’t need to go to college to understand these theories.
- Specialize on a particular field
Graphic designing encompasses many fields and branches. In order to truly give your best, you don’t have to go down the degree route as it will take more time and doesn’t make you specialize in a particular field; you can focus your attention on a specific field.
Specializing on a particular field of graphic designing can give you a competitive advantage when applying for a job.
You can choose to specialize in logo designing or web designing. Whatever the area you choose to focus on, you can become a master of your specialty and be able to give your clients the satisfaction they need.
- Be a proficient software user
Technology has made graphic designing easier than ever, more graphic design software tools are being created to make designing easier.
It is therefore a good idea to get yourself acquainted with the relevant software packages and explore every aspect of it.
Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator are two great software tools for graphic designs. Having strong knowledge and understanding of them is a real asset if you don’t have a design degree.
With so many tutorials online one can easily learn how to be a proficient user of these software packages.
- Take care of your tools and equipment
Your tools are vital possessions that help to facilitate your work. Always take proper care of your tools; make sure they are serviced when it is needful.
You don’t need a degree to be able to make use of these tools, all you need is proper knowledge of it.
Investing in your tools is a decision you have to make if you want to get the best results from them.
Buy an up to date computer with large storage capacity and always update your graphic software to the latest version as they are always new with improved features to facilitate your work.
- Have a good writing skill
As a designer, you sometimes face jobs that are more than designing; you may come across jobs that require you to design logos or fliers that correlate between imagery, colors and language.
Having some writing skills will help you with such jobs, as the images have to match with the writings.
- Develop your style
Developing your own style is one of the major factors that can help you become successful as a graphic designer, whether you are a freelance or full time graphic designer.
You can practice your style by taking other people’s work and reworking on it to create your own version.
This serves as an aid to teach and direct you to achieve your own style and to also create other projects from scratch in your style.
- Get inspiration from established designers
You can follow the industry’s famous, biggest, and best graphic designers. Observe what they are posting on their social media and read their blogs.
Pay attention and get inspired by their work and career path. Find out what’s happening in your local area and make contacts with graphic designers in your area and go to as many talks and events as possible.
By doing all these things, you can learn graphic designing without going to college.
Conclusion
You can become a graphic designer without a degree but not without an education, there is a margin between the both.
Successful graphic designers never stop learning and searching for new ways to improve themselves.
You may not be professionally certified in the field but being educated is essential.