• This topic has 55 replies, 14 voices, and was last updated 14 years ago by hora.
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  • graphic designer – how can you train to become one?
  • BobaFatt
    Free Member

    simple as that really, my lifes ambition was to become a graphic designer when i was younger, now i'm getting older is still something i've meant to pursue (after a good few years in the financial sector which didn't pan out too well in the end)

    Where should i start? college courses? online training in different packages??

    mastiles_fanylion
    Free Member

    I would suggest a college course as you do most of your 'learning' from your peers. There is a small minority of designers that are self-taught though.

    Sim
    Full Member

    A foundation art course should be your first step, it will let you really get your artistic juice loose and help free up your ways of thinking, it'll also help you to confirm you really want to do graphics. You'll get the opportunity to try lots of things like, video, sculpture, metal work all fun stuff and at the end of it you may realise you don't want to do graphic design, you may be better at product design, fashion, photography etc. Recommended.

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    mastiles_fanylion
    Free Member

    A foundation art course should be your first step

    I wouldn't recommend a foundation – as a more mature individual, you clearly know what you want to do and a foundation will have too many distractions. A good graphics course will have modules to help you decide where you want to move within the graphics industry (motion/web/print/advertising etc). Good graphics tutors and students will not be found so readily on a foundation course.

    When I was 16 I went to an interview for a foundation course and they proudly showed me their final end of year project – a teabag Olympics. I thought 'WTF' and went back to sixth form to get my grades up in order to do the graphics course I knew I wanted to do. And still in the industry some 20 years later and with my own business…

    tails
    Free Member

    Foundation is one option and mature students do, do them. Having done such things, although my passion lies with furniture design and having hindsight.

    I would look at the job market there are alot more graphic design positions than any other discipline of design, well maybe more web design.

    Get yourself to a basic level with adobe illustrator, plus photoshop and in design will be helpful but probably to lesser extent. Also a good knowledge of fonts and where to source good res images would be of use.

    People talk about hand drawing skills but really thats just a tool for yourself, it won't win you a job alone you need computer skills.

    Right so now were here is graphics what you want to do perhaps illustration or even advertising is more your thing although alot harder industries to break.

    If you have the time perhaps do a day a week with someone, although this is often not ideal due to ££££ but there are many people who want work done for free you'll need to weed out the chancers from the legit people.

    So at some point your going to want some form of qualification be that foundation, specific graphics course, degree, HND. So go research whats out there.

    And good luck design is not always as fun as it sounds, you rarely get free reign but equally constraints are sometimes good.

    Pook
    Full Member

    what's a teabag olympics?

    grumm
    Free Member

    what's a teabag olympics?

    Exactly. 🙂

    Wee
    Free Member

    Get your portfolio organised and get into a HND course first and see if it's really for you. You'll need talent and a qualification to get anywhere in graphics. Look at current design jobs in your area and see what they are looking for. Normally either HND or Degree with a good portfolio. So getting into a course would be a good start. They'll teach you the very basics of developing your creative ideas.

    So once enrolled, I would spend all your spare time learning the Adobe packages, especially InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, they're the industry standard. Having a good understanding of web design too is a must nowadays. In the old days you had separate graphic designers and web designers now companies expect you to know both, employing one person to do everything. And I agree with Tails, it's sometimes never as creative as it sounds and you rarely have free design reign. But I still love it.

    You could always chance your arm and approach a local design company and ask to shadow one of their designers for a day. That would show you what it really is to work as a designer in studio.

    mastiles_fanylion
    Free Member

    what's a teabag olympics?

    Which is what I thought and it was why I declined their offer. Basically they had to devise ways of making teabags do Olympic sports such as get it over a high jump!

    well maybe more web design.

    Web design IS graphic design. It is still the design of something that is aesthetically pleasing whilst communicating key messages and performing a function through the use of type, colour, space, images etc.

    Or do you mean website building? Somethign very VERY different.

    Get yourself to a basic level with adobe illustrator, plus photoshop and in design will be helpful but probably to lesser extent. Also a good knowledge of fonts and where to source good res images would be of use.

    People talk about hand drawing skills but really thats just a tool for yourself, it won't win you a job alone you need computer skills.
    Totally disagree – design is NOT about using computer programmes, it is about communicating key messages through type, colour, space, images etc. – which is artistic, not technical. I would rather employ a good creative designer who can't use a Mac than someone who can use a Mac but can't design. Of course, I would still choose someone who can do both over someone who can't, so you do need the skills, but they are not a primary skill set. I have never, ever met a student/new leaver that is able to use any of the programmes to a high enough standard for commercial print design.

    blueberry
    Free Member

    I work for a graphics company and I get alot of CV's from graduates looking for work experience/jobs. It is about the portfolio at the end of the day (Obviously experience as well). But the stuff coming from graduates these days is all the same….. It looks like they've lost there imagination!!!!

    A company will be looking for something unique in a portfolio, this is what will gets them to get in contact with you.

    I wouldnt say it mattered if you did a foundation or a degree, if you can show you have the skill for the design and can use the relevant packages employers will look at your CV.

    We are always looking for people with strong typography/illustrative skills. It also helps if you know about the print industry. About paper and how things are printed. See if you can get to go and look around a printers.

    – Designers and Printers clash soooo much.

    This is usually due to designers see lovely posh paper that they want to print on, when the reality is… you cant print on it as it doesn't dry and its way to expensive!!!!

    tails
    Free Member

    Web design IS graphic design.

    yeah your probably right, but type designer into a job site and it comes up with web designer and graphic designer, I don't delve any deeper than that as its not my field.

    To the other point I would not say you need to be able to draw like Caravaggio to be a good designer, drawing is a good tool to communicate your ideas often to yourself.

    I would say the most important attribute a designer can have is an ability to think of concepts and ideas in relation to the brief. Then I would say their computer ability is very important in getting a job, whilst it is very teachable, time costs money.

    In regards to students some of them have far superior comp skills than those in the business, they have been brought up on the things unlike old hands who used pen and paper.

    Recent graduates problems are as they have had a far better access to design they often have fewer fresh ideas, and of course a studio environment is very different to the classroom.

    tails
    Free Member

    This is usually due to designers see lovely posh paper that they want to print on, when the reality is… you cant print on it as it doesn't dry and its way to expensive!!!

    😆 he's not wrong. But its not something you think of as a student and i don't believe its worth teaching as its easy to pick up.

    mastiles_fanylion
    Free Member

    Tails – you clearly understand what I am trying to say and we are pretty well much agreeing on most things. I guess my beef is with places like job sites that (for some inexplicable reason) see web design as different from graphic design when it isn't. Web design is different from print design, but they are both graphic design.

    As I said in my post, someone with computer skills is ideal, but I would much rather have someone with ideas than with computer skills – I use computers every day as a tool to illustrate my ideas, yet I still pick up scraps of paper and doodle ideas and this is also something we try to teach when my business partner and I do our annual design project with students at our local colleges. It astounds me how many people dive straight onto a computer long before they know what they are going to do when they get there. Equally, it drives me mad when I see students draw up ideas in pencil then rub out ideas when they decide they don't like them.

    CountZero
    Full Member

    This is usually due to designers see lovely posh paper that they want to print on, when the reality is… you cant print on it as it doesn't dry and its way to expensive!!!
    he's not wrong. But its not something you think of as a student and i don't believe its worth teaching as its easy to pick up.

    So why do so many designers fail to pick it up if it's so easy? Is it because they feel a Designer shouldn't trouble themselves with such tawdry details, it's up to the little people, the working class printer types, to handle those sort of things? Or has my life in the graphics and print industry left me hopelessly cynical?

    blueberry
    Free Member

    Im a she….

    I didnt learn about paper until I got my first job.

    But knowing about paper can help when designing, as some logos don't work on paper as they do on screen.

    It should be something students should be made aware of. Also that clients never like what you design… it will always need amending and you will really hate the project at the end of the day…..

    This is usually general moan in are office……the other one is why wont they spend the money….

    Sorry I know im going off on one now!!!!!

    If you are doing a graphics course dont do an HND in Multimedia…. all my skills are now out of date as they have updated all the packages!

    Stick with Graphic design in the title.

    mastiles_fanylion
    Free Member

    Is it because they feel a Designer shouldn't trouble themselves with such tawdry details,

    Or whether they feel that a printer should know their job too. No paper cannot be printed on – you just need to use the correct inks for any surface. For example, oxidising inks are used for many uncoated stocks in order for them to dry quickly and not set-off. But as a designer, I would not expect to be telling my printer this – I would expect them to be recommending the correct solution for the job specification I have given them. There are too many lazy and inexperienced printers out there who are unable to handle anything other than bog-standard commercial cmyk printing.

    tails
    Free Member

    Well xipe I don't do graphic design, but from my exp doing bits whilst working as an exhibition designer, we only printed on 4 different materials then you decided whether its matt or gloss blah blah. So not hard to learn, I'm sure there are many materials but thats a printers job to know them.

    blueberry
    Free Member

    Can agree with both of you, but I find if I give the designers options (this is just the company I work for)! They dont like the paper and wont compromise. – Eventually they have too.

    I work for the design company and liaise with the printers so I play the middleman!!!

    So I get ear ache from both ends.

    One of the main problems can be the paper merchants!!! They go round the design companies showing off there new papers and how well they print. But some how forget to tell the printers about these new papers!!!!

    They also never tell you when papers have been discontinued! – Thats a whole different kettle of fish!

    binners
    Full Member

    MF is bang on about stearing clear of the default position – jumping straight on a Mac.

    If you do that then you're not a designer, you're a mac operator. Theres a world of difference. The world is littered with absolutely bloody awful 'design' produced by people who think knowing photoshop equates as 'graphics'. Photoshop filters always crop up in the utter absense of anything resembling an idea. Drop shadows on text (please?), bevels and embosses, gausian blurs? All scattered liberally around for no discernable reason whatsoever. Nothing else quite seems to shout 'caution! Amateur at work!" quite like it.

    Graphic design, whether web or print based, should more accurately be termed 'Visual Communication'. If you want to see eddective design, look at work by the ilkes of A M Cassandre. Produced in the 30s. It combines beautiful aesthetics with a geometric purity that makes it devastatingly effective as a means of communication. It is 'constructed' jst as much as any architects drawing. Does thgat sound **** enough?

    And IMHO all printers are lazy bastards. If they can take short cuts, they will. As soon as I specify metallic inks, spot varnishes and cutter guides, I can say with reelative certainty that they'll **** it up

    mastiles_fanylion
    Free Member

    Binners – shall we pop out for a chocolate mocha latte and leave the proles to it now?

    😉

    grumm
    Free Member

    If you do that then you're not a designer, you're a mac operator. Theres a world of difference. The world is littered with absolutely bloody awful 'design' produced by people who think knowing photoshop equates as 'graphics'. Photoshop filters always crop up in the utter absense of anything resembling an idea. Drop shadows on text (please?), bevels and embosses, gausian blurs? All scattered liberally around for no discernable reason whatsoever. Nothing else quite seems to shout 'caution! Amateur at work!" quite like it.

    Graphic design, whether web or print based, should more accurately be termed 'Visual Communication'. If you want to see eddective design, look at work by the ilkes of A M Cassandre. Produced in the 30s. It combines beautiful aesthetics with a geometric purity that makes it devastatingly effective as a means of communication. It is 'constructed' jst as much as any architects drawing. Does thgat sound **** enough?

    Sounds to me like you are making the assumption that lots of 'proper' designers do – which is that everyone wants 'beautiful aesthetics and geometric purity', and wants to pay through the nose for it.

    Lots of people are quite happy with a quick and dirty photoshop job. Like I said I have no pretensions of being 'a designer' but at the same time my ability to use Photoshop is pretty in demand where I work (an arts organisation) because I can do something which looks ok faster, better and cheaper than lots of so-called designers.

    We employed a 'proper' design company with excellent credentials to come up with a whole branding guideline suite for us with new logos etc – it cost a fortune, no-one likes it and we are quietly dropping it.

    BTW I think all these 'proper designers' should post some examples of their work 🙂

    binners
    Full Member

    I was thinking more of nipping to a minimalist bar and driking an obscure brand of ludicrously over-priced guatamalon lager 😀

    binners
    Full Member

    grumm. Myself and MF have both posted our portfolios on here in the last week, in a shameless example of pimping out our wares

    Plenty of people commented on my frankly appalling spelling and illegible typography. Style over substance? Moi? 🙂

    billybob
    Free Member

    We employed a 'proper' design company with excellent credentials to come up with a whole branding guideline suite for us with new logos etc – it cost a fortune, no-one likes it and we are quietly dropping it

    Out of curiosity if no one likes why'd you not get them to design something you all liked?! After all that is why you paid them in the first place….

    mastiles_fanylion
    Free Member

    Out of curiosity if no one likes why'd you not get them to design something you all liked?! After all that is why you paid them in the first place….

    That is my thought exactly – it says more about the people in charge of the project at the client end that they didn't write a good brief or found themselves unable to communicate what they wanted. Or simply because when they had a strong brand and a set of strict brand guidelines that they found the whole brand too much hassle to implement. No doubt that business is finding itself with an ever-weakening brand identity right now – good old 'comic sans' typeface and clip art appearing on PowerPoint presentations, bastardised brand usage in marketing, inconsistent use of brand colours….

    grumm
    Free Member

    Out of curiosity if no one likes why'd you not get them to design something you all liked?! After all that is why you paid them in the first place….

    I wasn't involved at that stage. 🙂

    However, when you employ design companies, you get some initial ideas/quotes from a few people – pick the one you like best. You are then sort of committed to that design company – you can keep asking them to change what they give you and make it better, but ultimately you can't necessarily make them do something good!

    That is my thought exactly – it says more about the people in charge of the project at the client end that they didn't write a good brief or found themselves unable to communicate what they wanted.

    There may be some truth in that.

    mastiles_fanylion
    Free Member

    you get some initial ideas/quotes

    That sounds like it started off badly then – you get several businesses to come up with some initial ideas without paying them (and probably without briefing them properly). Then when you decide on a logo you like, based on nothing but a knee-jerk reaction to something that 'looks nice', you ask the business to progress that idea. But the idea in the first place could be very wrong

    Basically you have several ideas that haven't properly been considered, crash-tested, researched, user-tested etc – just some quick logos people have done in the hope they may win the work but with minimum time spent (in case they don't win it).

    No wonder it didn't work for you….

    Gawd I am rambling.

    hora
    Free Member

    Always disagree with Graphic designers ideas. After all who are they to know about colour co-ordination and their mistaken belief that comic-sans is a crap typeface? 🙄

    grumm
    Free Member

    Like I said, I wasn't involved in the process – but how do you think it should work then?

    You just look at previous examples of a design company's work for other people, then decide to give them a contract for thousands of pounds worth of work?

    mastiles_fanylion
    Free Member

    mastiles_fanylion
    Free Member

    You just look at previous examples of a design company's work for other people, then decide to give them a contract for thousands of pounds worth of work?

    If you paid thousands for some logo ideas someone did as part of a pitch, the people in charge of the project really did mess up. That sort of process is the realm of a 'few hundred quid' logo, not a full-scale branding programme.

    If you are paying thousands, you should be going through a considered process that gives both the design business and the client many, many opportunities to arrive at a final brand identity that they expected, wanted and are happy with.

    I honestly feel that, on face value, your project seems to have been very badly handled. Sorry.

    grumm
    Free Member

    Try actually reading what I have written.

    I wasn't involved in the process. No-one paid thousands for logo ideas as part of a pitch – I was asking if you were suggesting giving someone a large contract without seeing any ideas, which you seemed to be.

    You are coming across in the somewhat arrogant way many designers seem to.

    It may well have been badly handled, but you keep missing the point completely.

    mastiles_fanylion
    Free Member

    then decide to give them a contract for thousands of pounds worth of work?

    That is what you said – I was responding to it. You suggest your brand cost thousands yet chose something that was pitched to you then just change what they give you and make it better. The whole process sounds flawed to me.

    the people in charge of the project really did mess up.

    I know you weren't involved – which is why I said the people in charge – ie not you.

    I am not meaning to come across as arrogant, but from where I am sitting, it seems that you feel the designers let you down but I do not think that is the case. (Unless they charged you thousands just for pitched ideas, then they are guilty of an almighty rip-off)…

    grumm
    Free Member

    OK, so what do you do if you have decided to employ a particular designer, but then everything they keep coming back with is a bit crap? After a while you will probably just go for the least crap option. That sounds like what happened from where I'm sitting.

    I agree that a large part of the problem was probably to do with the management of the project at our end, but what can you actually do if you feel that a designer is continually coming up with poor stuff? Eventually you either sack them off, having wasted lots of time and effort, or you keep trying (and eventually settle for something that you are not very happy with).

    mastiles_fanylion
    Free Member

    If that is what happened then I am truly sorry for those concerned but as a client they should have pursued the designers until they arrived at something they wanted.

    But the puzzle is – if they liked the ideas at pitch stage, what changed so dramatically that meant they no longer liked it? Did they actually change it so much through 'project creep' that it became something very different than the original idea?

    tails
    Free Member

    always sack them off, its easy for problems to arise with stuff like this from the better companies i have worked with they have very strict guidelines about logos and typeface etc. If the company colours are red and blue then don't let the designer give an alternative they should work to the brief however tuff it is. Still damage is done now, on the bright side you seem to have found a keen designer with MF

    maxlite
    Free Member

    You have to have a love for design and art and belief in what you are doing, so many people just wander into design.

    Find a good course and put a portfolio together, computer experience is good, but creative ability is far more important…..good luck

    mastiles_fanylion
    Free Member

    Grumm – I was thinking over lunch…. Do you have an example of the brand design? A website or something? Just curious…

    maxray
    Free Member

    Whilst I partly agree with you mastiles the key thing you are missing is that most Graphic Designers do not have the knowledge and understanding required to design for web.

    Bane of my life designers who "think" they are web designers. Almost as bad as clients who think their nephew can do their website in his summer holidays.

    I would definately say do a foundation though, it was the best piece of education I ever had, though I am sure the location/tutors content etc would have a direct impact on this.

    mastiles_fanylion
    Free Member

    Whilst I partly agree with you mastiles the key thing you are missing is that most Graphic Designers do not have the knowledge and understanding required to design for web.

    Ohh I agree with that completely – I am not saying a print designer can design for web (they usually can't – but I am an exception as I am traditionally trained in print design but worked in web for several years 😉 ). I was trying to make the point that web design is not different from graphic design, rather it is a discipline *within* graphic design.

    Totally agree with regards to clients who think their nephew can do their website in his summer holidays.
    👿

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