12 Facts About Graphic Designers

By AALofts Design

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By AALofts Design

Graphic Design is a process of visually communicating concepts & products. In this process, a designer uses different designing elements like typography, colour, illustration & photography to express ideas. Using graphic design, the visibility & influential impact of content is enhanced. Graphic design has a great application in daily life as well as for business processes. Graphic Design plays an essential role in society & its trends, which is evident in history & architecture.

A single image can express a thousand words making graphic design a popular method for businesses to introduce their brands. Visuals can influence people through communicating messages through tone, composition & colour. There is the immense importance of custom graphic designs in business growth as businesses prepare themselves to go online. The content created online usually comprises text, images, & videos.

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Fact One | Graphic Designers Can Make Some Serious Money.

A professional graphic designer’s average salary is from $32.4K to $78.2K per year. Earning potential can go much higher depending on location, experience & area of expertise. Large corporations will pay graphic designers substantial sums of money for logos & brochures from graphic designers. Companies & brands want to be unique, & they sometimes have a hard time creating their logos. They may have the resources & funds, but they lack the creative part. That is where the best graphic design comes in.

Logos mean a lot to companies as they help them establish their identities. Many times this is more cost-effective than hiring a full-time in-house designer. When you consider how important a logo is to a large company’s branding, you can understand why they would pay a premium for excellent design work. You may be asked to design leaflets, business cards, flyers, or even brochures & get paid thousands of dollars for a single design project.

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Fact Two | Graphic Designers Do Not Need A Design Degree to be Successful.

A graphic designer does not need a degree to get qualified. Designers can secure work based on their portfolio & designing skills. The rise in popularity for online courses such as Udemy, Lynda or Unacademy has made graphic design education far more accessible. With a good dose of diligence, practice & patience, coupled with the resources available (online tutorials, short courses, classic books), anyone willing to learn can get into the profession.

Suppose you’re looking to brush up on your knowledge. In that case, books such as: How to be a Graphic Designer, Without Losing Your Soul by Adrian Shaughnessy draws on a wealth of experience to provide a handbook that helps graphic designers navigate their careers. This revised, extended edition includes all-new chapters covering professional skills, the creative process, & global trends, including green issues, ethics & the rise of digital culture.

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Fact Three | Graphic Designers Will Experience an Increase in Demand Over the Next Decade.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there will be a 13% increase in demand for graphic designers by 2020. As new businesses start up & more & more commerce becomes dependent on the Internet, graphic designers will play an increasingly crucial role in trade. 

Recent studies conducted by IBISWorld show that in 2019 alone, the graphic design industry generated a $15 billion revenue with an annual growth rate of 3.5% & it’s expected to grow further at a rate of 2.7% to become a $14.8 billion-dollar-strong industry. 

According to the graphic design market analysis, the number of businesses in the US graphic & design industry by June 2019 was 16,823. [Source]. According to the Design Management Institute (DMI), between 2004 & 2014, design-driven businesses consistently outwitted the S&P by a whopping 219%. [Source]

Statistics also show that companies that encourage creativity achieve 1.5 times greater market share. [Source]. Interestingly, 67% of small businesses think that the importance of graphic design to business success will grow exponentially in the next five years [Source]. Now has never been a better time to enter the graphic design profession.

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Fact Four | Graphic Designers Bring Marketing Ideas to Life.

All of the products & services you have selected have, at some point in time, persuaded you to purchase them through designed visual marketing. Everything from the labels on food packaging to your insurance company’s billboard advertising has used graphic designers for their marketing.

Graphic designers optimize marketing campaigns across all channels & are crucial to building a professional brand. Graphic design in its purest form is the art of persuasion & promotes a strong business brand. The mind resonates with a brand, logo, or design within seconds.

This makes the creative elements highly crucial to businesses & their objectives. Being consistent in marketing collateral allows brands to be easily recognizable & allows customers & clients to get familiar with what companies have to offer quickly.

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Fact Five | Graphic Designers Create Cultural Movements.

Graphic designers have produced many of the most important visual media landmarks over the last century. For example, Art Nouveau was a primarily ornamental movement in both Europe & the USA. One distinctive characteristic of the style is organic, asymmetrical linework instead of solid, uniform shapes – applied across architecture, interiors & jewellery, & posters & illustration.

Scottish architect & designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh was a leading exponent of the Art Nouveau movement & Czech graphic artist Alphonse Mucha, & iconic Spanish architect/ sculptor Antonio Gaudí. Mucha’s stunning artworks, many of which were advertising commissions, combined the flowing organic lines & natural motifs of the Art Nouveau style with women’s sensual portraits.

Movements Include:

Cubism – (1900-1930), the 20th-century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso & Georges Braque, revolutionized European painting & sculpture. In cubist artworks, objects are broken up, analyzed, & re-assembled in an abstracted form. 

Dada – (1900-1930) The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature, poetry, art manifestoes, art theory, theatre, & graphic design & concentrated its anti-war politics by rejecting the prevailing art standards through anti-art cultural work.

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Fact Six | Graphic Designers Have Many Talents.

Graphic designers have to embrace a range of new skills to power their craft. In the past, designing media for a company was all about explaining what the business did in the most effective way possible. While that’s still a typical graphic design component today, there are so many new concepts to think about too. Graphic Designers of today are often multifaceted to keep up with businesses’ demands, which can involve anything from coding to copywriting along with traditional graphic design skills such as drawing & Adobe CC.

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Fact Seven | Graphic Designers Have Been on the Earth Circa the 1400s.

Dating back to ancient Egypt, Greece, & China, graphic design has seen many changes. As compositors & typesetters started to explore composition & type, book production & print began to evolve in the 15th century. At the onset of the 19th century, technological advancements pushed graphic design to became a profession.

Graphic designers required specialization due to commercial possibilities, & the involvement of technology with industrialization. By the 19th century, graphic design became a communication medium. In 1922, typographer William A. Dwiggins first coined the term graphic design for this emerging visual communication field. The 20th century saw further technological progression that enabled graphic design to grow as a recognized occupation.

Now, graphic designers started creating magazine covers, giving an entirely different look due to art involvement. By 2001, graphic design was a globally recognized industry. Now, graphic designers are responsible for creating engaging & converting artwork for advertisements, magazines, packaging, websites & much more.

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Fact Eight | Graphic Designers Can Work for Themselves, Anywhere.

The best part of being a graphic designer is that you can become self-employed. If you are not looking for full-time employment & have the skills/ tools needed to create impressive designs; you need to think about finding your gigs.

With graphic design software now readily available on laptops & mobile phones, it has made it much easier for graphic designers to work anywhere globally, making it easier for companies to outsource talent without hiring in-house. Graphic designers can now work anywhere they want & still be connected with their offices.

This has led to the rise of freelance designers currently working in their respective creative spaces anywhere globally, which some companies have realized is much more cost-efficient. With online job agencies, you can find design projects quickly & efficiently. If you want to build your portfolio, try marketing yourself as a freelancer.

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Fact Nine | Graphic Designers Are Making the World More Accessible.

Many people in the world possess disability or impairment, whether visual, auditory, or mobile. Designing for accessibility is extremely important to get messages to as many people as possible, plus it’s far easier to make this a reality with the technology available today.

Designing with accessibility in mind is vital because there may not be enough digital content available for those with disabilities or impairments. Failing to cater to this portion of the population prevents everyone from accessing the content they could benefit from or enjoy. Graphic designers could play a pivotal role in increasing inclusivity in society.

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Fact Ten | Graphic Designers Contribute to Making the World More Sustainable.

Being trendsetters, designers are responsible for minimizing their ecological footprint & making wiser, less destructive, & less wasteful decisions about materials & energy consumption. Teaching sustainable design to the next generation of designers is a fundamental step towards a more eco-friendly world.

Designers also need to be conscious of material choices—the production of paper claims about 40 per cent of the responsibility for the world’s industrial deforestation. The output of the new paper is destructive & requires trees, energy, & water. In terms of alternatives, PCR has become a paper substitute for paper. There are also different paper alternatives becoming available.

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Fact Eleven | Graphic Designers Can’t Be Replaced by Machines.

Graphic design requires human-led intelligence, intuition & ideas to respond to trends, tastes, that we dictate. While I think it’s vital to employ & train up in the latest technology to assist designers in doing our jobs, I believe our eye for design is a gift that machines can not replicate.

Have you heard a piece of music or seen a painting made solely by artificial consciousness? Sounds/looks strange right? Despite applying all the correct mathematical principles, machines don’t understand what truly looks & sounds good to the human eye & ear because we’re subjective creatures. We are the tastemakers.

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Fact Twelve | Graphic Designers Continue to Be Innovators.

Creating things we didn’t know we needed is one of the pillars of graphic design thinking. It encourages people to think about the possibilities instead of adding improvements to what already exists.

In graphic design, we generally use the visual element to express the designer’s ideas & plans & use text & graphic to transfer the information to customers to understand our vision & strategy. No innovative thinking means there is no connotation. There you have it – graphic designers are more than what meets the eye. Design plays a massive part in our businesses & daily lives.

Wrapping it All Up.

If you’re interested in further reading, please see the links to my trusted resources page & related articles below. To find out more about AALofts Design, please click here. If you found this content helpful, want to collaborate on a project, or would like to request an article topic, please click here to get in touch via the contact form. Feel free to share & connect on social media, if you found this content helpful.

Article by Amy Lofts.

Article by Amy Lofts.

Owner of AALofts Design

Welcome! I am a graphic designer & digital marketer with over ten years of experience within a range of industries including; e-commerce, architecture, cruise liners, textiles & interior design. Having grown with exposure to various disciplines of art & design, my brand reflects my love of elegance, beauty & exploration. Get in touch or learn more.

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