to create great designs.
15 Best Skills to be a Great Graphic Designer
This post provides complete information on the graphic designing skills and qualities you will need to develop to succeed in your career if you are a graphic designer or illustrator.
A skill in graphic designing is a collection of different abilities and design concepts to communicate a message when used together.
The designing tools can only help you to create the images and pass a message but the ability to use them is what makes you a graphic designer.
You need to apply your skills to create a mind blowing visual concepts.
Are you imaginative or creative in nature?.Being imaginative is an essential skill in designing, tap into your imaginative abilities and develop your skills in graphics designing.
Do you want to make a career in graphic designing but you don’t know the required skills to help you grow in the career?
Here are the skills to put on your checklist if you want to be a graphic designer:
15 Best Graphic Designing Skills and Qualities for Career Success
- Creativity Skills
The most important skill for graphic designers is creativity. Coming up with a new innovative design idea is a hard nut to crack if you do not have the creative skills. Having a visual creativity eye is a vital part in graphic design.
2. Communication Skill
Communicating and being able to understand what a client wants from a design is a step ahead from completing a successful project. The ability to pay attention to details and listen attentively to clients, ideas, process feedback, and explain design elements with an everyday language will give you a big advantage.
3. Digital Typography Skill
The ability to make written language not only legible but also visually appealing is an essential skill in graphic designing. Almost every graphic design has a typography attached to it to help relay messages through graphics communication effects. Possessing this skill as a graphics designer is an essential tool in the field.
4. Design Software
The world had gone digital with the emergence of the new media. Graphic designing has gone digital too. Knowing how to operate CorelDraw and Adobe’s creative software like, Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop is a prerequisite requirement for every graphic designer.
5. Coding Skills
As a graphic designer, you do not need to be a professional at coding for most graphic design jobs, having at least a basic understanding of HTML will make you more valuable and marketable in the graphics field. Having a fundamental skill of Java and C++ coding is proficient.
6. Branding Skills
Branding skill is critical for graphic designers. Branding entails the promotion of a commercial brand of product in order to give it greater public awareness. You should be able to understand a client’s needs and the client’s branding details in other to create a profound brand. And having the ability to create a signature brand for a venture is a necessity.
7. Presentation Skills
Graphic designers should have clear presentation skills to be able to deliver speeches, or have the ability to take complex data and present it in a clear way to a board or client. Having this skill will make you more valuable in the field.
8. Time Management Skills
Most graphic designers constantly work on multiple projects at once; therefore, they must have strong time management skills.
Graphic designers should be able to multitask and work on several projects over long periods, and still meet up with all deadlines.
9. Technology Know-how
Graphic designers have to be conversant with various forms of technology. They need to be fluent in the operation of a computer system and also be familiar with design software, such as Inkscape, Blender, and Adobe, which are used to produce digital designs and prints.
If your graphics design skill pertains to website development, you must have knowledge about web design. You should be fluent in operation of multiple programming languages including HTML and CSS as well as WordPress.
10. Problem-solving Skills
The objective of every graphics designer is to solve a particular issue using its design to add value to a brand and help a brand achieve its goals, and the ability to carry out these aims requires a crucial problem solving skills.
11. Aesthetic Design Skills
A profound skill of aesthetic design marks your proficiency as a graphic designer. This skill separates professional designers from others. Everyone is liable to learn tools and software but not everyone has the ability to put the tools in good use to create a good and attractive design.
12. Painting Skills
Painting skills is the base of every design and the color theory prowess empowers all the designers to shift the market to their advantage. Every color represents a scenario and also has a visual and psychological effect on the audience.
Painting skills involves the use of paint to create an amazing picture, putting lighting and shadowing along side with effects into consideration to fabricate or put an imagination to life.
13. Image Editing and Retouching
The world has revolved to a point where people are visually minded on the images they see in this age of Social media. Editing and retouching of pictures is becoming a vital part in graphic designing.
Editing is mainly done using CorelDraw, Adobe Photoshop and other editing software. Image editing entails clearing any tiny glitches from a photo, cropping pictures to fit different social platforms and image manipulation and enhancements.
14. Crucial Thinking Skills
Alongside with problem solving skills, the ability to think critically is an essential skill for designers to develop so as to sail through in the field.
15. Photography
Apart from retouching and editing images, the ability to take original pictures using Camera is also an important skill for designers to have.
Conclusion
To be able to create awesome designs and satisfy customer expectations, graphic designers will need to develop certain skills and qualities; these post provides them.