Graphic design as a job skill is valuable, and demand is predicted to grow. So, perhaps a graphic design course might benefit you or someone you know.
Leading up to May 2021, IT Jobs Watch shows the number of jobs that reference the term ‘graphic design’ rising over the past 24 months. These figures reflect UK-wide employment trends but we checked reed.co.uk for ‘Graphic Designer Leeds’ jobs on May 5th, 2021, and found 115 roles.
Other job roles that might regard creative design skills as essential include Website Designer, Digital Designer, UX Designer and Motion Graphics Designer. Roles with lesser requirements for graphic design training include Marketing Assistant and Adobe Experience Manager.
Aside from all those official-sounding job titles, most organisations would benefit from a creative designer to help develop their branding and create engaging documents. That is, there is plenty of graphic designer work outside of these job titles. This article lists 50 (fifty!) jobs a graphic designer could do.
The fundamentals of graphic design
According to a paper by the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, the top 10 ‘CreaTech’ skills are:
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe InDesign
- Adobe Illustrator
- Adobe Creative Suite
- Adobe Acrobat
- Graphic design
- Creative design
- Typesetting
- Adobe After Effects
- Digital design
Although they are mostly intertwined, it is worth noting that graphic design vs technical knowledge of graphic design software are different skills.
To achieve professional-grade design you will also need some knowledge of typography, illustration, layout or other related discipline.
Also, in theory, you could have a graphic design career without using any computers at all!
A graphic design course at Digital Skills Training CIC can provide pre-employment training and mentoring, equipping participants with both technical skills and on-the-job work experience.
Adobe graphic design software
In reality though, Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator are core workflow tools for many graphic designers, marketing professionals, social media managers and others. The apps work seamlessly together and, in many cases, overlap in terms of possible outcomes.
However, industry-standard graphic design software might be expensive for a lot of people. This can discourage or even excluding those on limited income from learning new skills.
Although we can’t offer a free graphic design course right now (we do hope to offer funded courses in the future) we can remove the cost of Adobe Creative Cloud apps which, at the time of writing, is £49.94 per month.
Using free software to teach graphic design
There are free software options which, if not replicate, get near to the experience of learning Adobe software – the skills learned are easily transferrable to apps like Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.
As a community interest company with a mission to create social impact we’re committed to ensuring nobody is excluded due to low income. That is why all of our courses offer a choice between Adobe software or free alternatives:
Adobe InDesign > Scribus training course (PC / Mac)
Adobe Illustrator > Inkscape training course (PC / Mac) / Vectornator training course (Mac)
Adobe Photoshop > GIMP photo editor training course (PC / Mac)
Employment mentoring and work experience
Alongside the creative and technical skills required to become a graphic designer, individuals will also benefit from our insights into how to apply their knowledge to: being a freelance graphic designer; working in a marketing agency or in-house design team; their own entrepreneurial projects and business start-ups.
We cover how to create a solid graphic design portfolio, creating and interpreting briefs, costing and invoicing; etiquette at meetings and loads more.
Our instructors’ real-world experience in all of the above spaces will help you to formulate a clear pathway to achieving your goals. An introductory graphic design training course may help you on your way to further learning with us, self-led courses or even a higher qualification at a college or university.
Fancy a chat about where you’re at?
This isn’t a sales-y call-to-action – we’d love to hear from you. It helps us to assess how we operate, what is needed in the local area and what kinds of projects would be useful for people. We set up as a CIC to make a social impact by sharing our knowledge of some digital skills and would be happy to give advice on graphic design jobs and careers. You could email us or call on 0113 282 9146.
Thanks for reading 🙂
Digital Skills Training CIC