So you are now ready to start your career in arts and design and turn your passion into a livelihood. But turning such into a successful career takes more than an ambition. Balancing business management and creativity with career planning is a crucial part for graphic designers thus, mastering it takes time. To jumpstart your career, it pays to understand the importance of learning through experience and the benefit of listening to expert advice.
Graphic design is essential as it uses art to convey a message — may that be about goods, services, values and ideas, culture, tradition — all of these directly impact our lives as they influence our decisions and perceptions of the things we do every day, even the way we feel about people; thus, it’s vital to create powerful and meaningful graphic designs that would capture the true meaning of our values and mirror the society we live in, even those that we are yet to see.
The digital art revolution is constantly evolving. To better one’s craft and have a successful long-term career in the field, young designers need to take note of these things:
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Seek inspiration, not imitation
We can find inspiration everywhere, in the world around us. The internet, for instance, has become useful as it overflows with various creative resources awaiting to be discovered. Due to the pandemic, the limited movements have drawn many designers to lean more to the internet.
But how do you avoid copying? They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but being unoriginal only leads to borderline plagiarism in this field.
Though it can be challenging to be inspired without inadvertently imitating others’ work, there are better ways to stay true to your values. Analyze the piece or style that caught your attention and identify the factors that made it appealing for you. Creating a mood board would give you much better navigation as to what you’re trying to accomplish in creating your design.
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Keep up with the trend
Keeping up with the trend can be too much. With the overwhelming visual content and quick flow of information, it’s easy to get lost in this tech-driven world. Thus, it’s crucial to keep the balance of updating yourself with trends and staying true to your art. However, make sure that you don’t sacrifice your style to stay current. Keep in mind that your individuality is your integrity that sets you apart from others. The secret here is adapting and adopting trends that compliment your uniqueness — and your client’s need.
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Aspire visual harmony
In accomplishing great designs essential for your craft, keeping the visual harmony as your anchor is vital. While your project needs to be neatly designed and concise, provoking a pleasant experience for the viewers should also be present.
Fundamental components can tie everything together to produce a beautiful concept. Keep in mind that you need to utilize content hierarchy to harmonize these elements in your design.
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Don’t overdo it
When you’re fresh out of college, it’s normal to be excited and show off your skills in the hopes of creating mind-blowing visuals and impress your boss. However, doing so can entirely sacrifice the legibility for visual appeal. Thus, it’s crucial to keep things simple and always aim for clarity.
To do that, keep in mind that you do not have to throw every technique that you’ve learned and ideas that you’ve come up with or all the elements that you have to consider into one single design. The most substantial designs are those with a clear and coherent concept, defined subject, only a few techniques efficiently executed. Trust your instinct, and don’t overdo it.
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White space is your best friend
In keeping things simple, incorporating space as part of your design will help you achieve a particular appearance that will catch your audience’s attention. When done right, this element can be your most significant strength in creating a powerful message.
Space wasn’t always portrayed in terms of absolute artistic concepts. The way space was interpreted and represented was often inspired by needs from beyond the creative community.
Good communication skills are just as part of a designer’s repertoire as originality. You might be working with a client to develop visual representation through graphic design or crafting a powerful story to create awareness and motivational videos through motion graphics. You can also be tasked with the challenge to create concepts through marketing and advertising design strategically.
Whichever may apply to you, digital art is essential in adding depth to your story and building better communication with your viewers and the world. You can spread the word better and with ease.
