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??
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.
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.
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...
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.
what's a teabag olympics?
what's a teabag olympics?
Exactly. 🙂
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.
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 [i]primary[/i] 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.
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!!!!
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.
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.
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.
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 [i]Designer[/i] 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?
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 ****y 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
Binners - shall we pop out for a chocolate mocha latte and leave the proles to it now?
😉
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 ****y 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 🙂
I was thinking more of nipping to a minimalist bar and driking an obscure brand of ludicrously over-priced guatamalon lager 😀
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? 🙂
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....
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....
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.
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.
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? 🙄
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?
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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.
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.
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 [i]just change what they give you and make it better[/i]. 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)...
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).
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?
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
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
Grumm - I was thinking over lunch.... Do you have an example of the brand design? A website or something? Just curious...
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.
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 [i]clients who think their nephew can do their website in his summer holidays. [/i]
👿
The design for print and design for web is an interesting debate.
I have a brief that I am working on at the moment that is primarily for print but requires the designs to be suitable for online campaigns also, in fact thinking about it a lot of our designs are primarily for print but also end up being developed for on line campaigns.
I think it is most interesting that as graphic designers we can't agree specifically what a graphic designer is or how you become one 😉
I have a brief that I am working on at the moment that is primarily for print but requires the designs to be suitable for online campaigns also, in fact thinking about it a lot of our designs are primarily for print but also end up being developed for on line campaigns.
Most design can be adapted to work on screen or on paper as long as the designer and the client understand that compromises have to be made - especially true if you want to build a an accessibility compliant website.
Most design can be adapted to work on screen or on paper as long as the designer and the client understand that compromises have to be made - especially true if you want to build a an accessibility compliant website.
I agree, but we find more and more at the design stage we are developing ideas that will work across multiple media, for example a project that we are just finishing is for new packaging that has an on pack promotion to a microsite as well as point of sale display materials the design has to work across all these. I did the design work for all the elements, but not necessarily all the "mechanical" bits like writing code and pre-press. 😉
I think it is quite hard to just become a graphic designer unless you have a large amount of natural talent waiting to be unleashed. I would have thought though if you did then it would have been hard for you to contain this in earlier years.
Programs can be learnt easily but to my mind being a designer is not just about what programs you can use, it is all those problems you had to solve, all those experiments that went wrong or fortunate accidents you discovered. I think designers look at the world in a different way too whether its the different pantone refs of some autumn leaves or noticing typesetting errors in a restaurant menu.
Sometimes it almost feels like an affliction 🙂
noticing typesetting errors in a restaurant menu.
Its not just menu's (BIG 😉 )
I see them everywhere - especially apostrophes used (or not used) in plurals and possessives. It drives my wife to distraction 😆
Second on the typesetting errors, I see them everywhere, certainly feels like an affliction.
I came to designing late in life and showed little interest in art at school, I was "discovered" when working with graphic designers on projects and found that the roughs I did were as good if not better than the stuff they came up with. From there I started working with web designers and found the same, then more graphic people and picked things up from there over about ten years.
My actual background is in marketing so I act as a hybrid account handler / marketeer/ bod that can design a bit.
Oh yes, I also write copy too...
I is a crazy mixed up kid me.
Jack of all trades, master of none...
😉
I dont care for punctuation grammer or owt else in forum posts 🙂
However things that are "proper" are a different matter.
That is a broad range to excel in!
I blame my appalling spelling and grammer on the fact that for years I have been obsessed with correct typesetting.
I can be looking at the most glaring spelling error and it won't even figure in my mind, as I'm too busy concentrating on the kerning and the leading. And invariably tutting and mumbling to myself.
Thats my story anyway, and I'm sticking with it 😉
I dont care for punctuation grammer or owt else in forum posts
I guess that is because you could class a forum as informal chat so punctuation/grammar/spelling guidelines are less rigorously adhered to. It's a bit like writing an essay at school - it would be expected to read 'my friends and I'. But when chatting informally it is quite acceptable to say 'me and my mates'.
And of course language is ever-changing. I was in Alnwick Castle last autumn reading some written texts from just a couple of hundred years ago and it took quite some effort to understand much of it.
MF so can you make websites? I may be interested in something simple to put my 'wares' on I have a reasonable idea of what I want or more to the point sites i like using.
Do you think it would be better for me to get au fait with dreamweaver and do myself, I have a good basic knowledge of PS, IL, ID but just looking at html etc switches me off. I'm currently not working, well since august, so it wouldn't be for a while although I'm hopeful of a few interviews in next 2 weeks unfortunately I've smashed my face up doing this silly hobby of ours
I think the jack of all trades is a very fair tag 😉
But I am a one man (at the moment) freelance operation and take what projects I can.
Did I also include exhibition designer, builder and driver of the white van?
I need to focus people.
WGA
Tails- we can design, build and host a website. Like you I do not build, but we have people that do in the office 🙂 I tried getting into build myself but just couldn't grasp it...
okay MF i'll remember and get in touch if i need to
[i]I blame my appalling spelling and grammer on the fact that for years I have been obsessed with correct typesetting.[/i]
Murrrggggg binners is Rainman mmmurrhhh 