Graphic Design Careers

The Career Path of a Graphic Designer

What is graphic design? It’s the process of creating visuals that communicate a specific brand, message, or concept to an audience.

Careers Settings:

In-House: You will work within a company or organization. You can generally expect to be paid well but may have less creative freedom and variety.

Agency: You will work on a team that creates designs for multiple companies. Your salary may be lower, but you will likely have more variety of work.

Freelance: You will work entirely on your own as your own boss. You will seek out clients and pick and choose which projects you want to work on.

Departments:

Packaging Design, Branding, Editorial Design, Advertising, Public Relations, Marketing, Newspaper, Printing and Publishing, and Management.

Roles:

Junior Graphic Designer: You will focus primarily on layouts, logos, redrawing logos, color corrections, and monotonous work that other designers may not want to do. This is a great role to learn and grow in under the supervision of a senior designer.

Graphic Designer: This role comes with more responsibilities, and you may find yourself taking over entire campaigns. This will give you more creative freedom. You will likely oversee junior designers and report to the directors of the company.

Studio Manager: This role is like that of a Graphic Designer, but you will likely have multiple projects at once that you will need to delegate. You may also be in charge of hiring and day-to-day operations.

Art Director: This role begins to shift from the design to the marketing element of Graphic Design. The Art Director is the senior position in a firm. You will likely be meeting with clients and communicating their needs to the design staff.

Graphic designers make our media world beautiful, and we couldn’t do it without them!


Image by: Iris Xie, BFA in Graphic Design from Rhode Island School of Design.