Graphic designing is a promising career path for artistically inclined individuals, writes our career counselor
Signs, shades, lines and images, welcome to the world of graphics. If art and illustrations interest you, you can also aim to craft a career to satisfy your creative spirits. A career in graphics and multimedia is one of the most exciting and rewarding career options in today’s e-age.
To cash on your designer instincts and foray into the world of art and illustrations, you need to arm yourself with specific elements and principles of design, for which one requires professional training.Graphic artists use a variety of print, electronic, and film media to create art that meets a client's needs. An artist’s imagination and creativity are the major ingredients in a finished piece of art. Business cards, greeting cards, magazine covers, invoices, 3D presentations, and books are a few products of graphics design.
What is graphic designing?
Graphic designing is the process of creating a pleasing layout from text and graphics to communicate an effective message in the design of visual communications like logos, graphics, brochures, newsletters, posters, signs, etc.
“A career in graphics and multimedia has bigger prospects than medical or engineering,” quips Rajiv Thakre, centre manager, Arena Multimedia, Andheri.“You can look forward to working in an ad agency, publishing house, media company, TV channel, web designing firm, etc. Today, multimedia artists also work in e-learning companies, BPOs, movie production houses, event management companies, hospitals,airlines, and under architects and engineers. You can expect a starting salary of 7-8 thousand that goes upto lakhs as per your skills andexperience,” he adds.
Graphics may be applied in any media, such as print media, digital media, motion pictures, animation, product design, packaging, and information design. Designers use a variety of tools, techniques and software including DTP (desk top publishing) software, CAD (computer aided design), animation software, 3D-multimedia, or web-design software. You may start with basic techniques and software for print design and escalate to multimedia and animation. In any field, once you become a professional‘designer’ you can move up the ladder to become a visualiser and later an art director.
Pursuing a course in design or acquiring a degree in fine arts accentuates your abilities and labels you as a trained professional. Of course getting a degree or certificate doesn't reflect your talent, but it does show that you have good knowledge and interest in this field.
There are programmes in multimedia, visual communication, advertising, animation, web development, and so on. Often people sum these categories together into‘graphic design’. Often there is some overlap with all of these kinds of programmes, but they can be quite different. Graphic design overlaps significantly with other art disciplines, including, but not limited to, visual arts, illustration, photography, package design, information design. If you have the talent, you can acquire specialized training to be a graphic designer, and widen your horizons to be an art director, animator, video game designer, web designer or multimedia specialist.
Job opportunities for graphic designers:
Illustrator (creates image, picture, graphics)
Designer (creates pages, presentations)
Web designer (creates web pages to be published on internet)
Ad Designer (creates print/TV ads, product promotion material)
In-house designer (design corporate stationery and identity)
Multimedia Designer (presentations, movie titles, animation.)
You may be a born‘artist’ but one requires a certificate or degree course to acquire a job as a graphic designer. There are many colleges and institutes offering graphic design related degrees and programs. The range and scope of these programmes depend on what you want to do, and where you want to go. Both short and long term programmes, most often, offer a work placement into a related business/studio during or after your studies. Many institutes have a placement cell to offer you jobs in the industry depending upon your qualifications, aptitude and interest.
While an animation artist is wasted in a publishing house, a print designer works on what will appear on paper– it may be a magazine cover page or a press ad, a web designer serves best in a web development firm and a multimedia expert is ideal for animated presentations for electronic media. Take your pick!
Design Institutes and courses:
Sir J.J. Institute of Applied Art,Mumbai - Applied arts (commercial arts)
Maya Academy of Advanced Cinematics - 3D Animation and Visual Effects
Arena Multimedia - Graphics, Animation and multimedia
Edit Institute - CAD, multimedia, animation