There are many steps to becoming a great graphic designer

If you want to become a graphic designer, there is a step-by-step procedure that will show you how to make it to the top of the ladder in the graphic design world.

You might have heard about design school, but we can’t stop there.

The answer to the question is more complex than one may think. The short version is that there is no perfect course to be a professional designer.

Your learning process will start when you’re in school. There will be books and magazines. You will also attend workshops to understand the fundamentals of design.

Once you’re done with your degree, you can start working at a design company or start freelancing to make a living.

What you will learn in this article

I will walk you through the steps of becoming a graphic designer. Some of the topics I will cover are:

The basics of graphic design:

Knowing Adobe Photoshop and other software packages, working with vector images, and a few tricks on manipulating images

Being a designer:

Basic designing skills, concepts, concepts in graphic design, company branding, client management, and so on

Exposure:

You will find out about how to create your first designs, starting a portfolio, and finding clients

Marketing:

How to generate business for yourself, be it through social media, ads, and more publishing and content creation

We will be using a small working document to document this entire process. The goals of this document are as follows:

• Show you exactly what you need to know.
• Show you how you can translate the theory and the terms to become a professional designer.
• Incorporate all the learning and tools we will be talking about in a step-by-step process that you can apply in your workflow.
• When you learn this guide, you will be able to design with the confidence that you will work for a growing company with a customer base willing to pay for your work.
• This isn’t a course or a document that is easy to digest. The learning is very involved and detailed, but the process is simple, and the final result is something you can share with your friends.

Note: I will be using a lot of Adobe software in this article.

Step 1: Becoming a Design Student

Here is a short tutorial I made to help you understand what a design student is. Click on the image above to see it in full resolution.

When you graduate design school, you are pretty much a working professional, even though you will need some experience and the right training to succeed.

You can expect to start working in a design company after a few months.

The most important thing to do is understand that design is more than being able to create designs.

We will cover how to communicate with clients, be a salesperson, and more in the following articles.

Step 2: Knowing the Basics of Graphic Design

Before you can become a graphic designer, you will need to be proficient in the following topics:

Photoshop

Photoshop is a great software that allows you to create and modify graphics. The best part is that you can create vector images, which will help you create print designs.

Adobe InDesign

Adobe InDesign is an Adobe suite of design software that allows you to create flowcharts, logos, advertisements, and more.

Web designers use InDesign to design websites and print production designs.

Illustrator

Illustrator is a vector graphics program that allows you to create illustrations, logos, animations, etc.

Web designers and magazines use illustrator to create layouts.

The free version of Illustrator is limited, and you will need to upgrade to the full version to create anything in the program.

Free Online Design Resources

These sites offer various resources for learning design.

It is also important to take advantage of the fact that most of them are free to use since they would have taken a lot of time and money if you had purchased each of these resources.

An excellent site that offers free resources and downloads, along with valuable lessons and tutorials, is a Graphic Design Vault.

Freebies

Not every design project comes with an associated price tag. Therefore, if you find a free resource relevant to what you want to do, use it.

How I learned to be a graphic designer

I started as a web designer, and after spending countless hours reading, I noticed a major problem.

I wasn't creating the type of design I envisioned myself doing. I was designing webpages, but I didn't feel good about my work.

It had no personality in my work. And most of the time, I couldn't say what my work was for.

I had no idea why I was designing these. That's when I started to realize that Webdesign wasn't the right path for me, but I was stuck.

Things weren't going well, so I turned to photoshop to get out of the hole. I was hoping to learn Photoshop skills that would make my work better.

I started my graphic design journey

It didn't take me long to finish the first book on my list. After finishing Photoshop Master by Henry Petroski, I was hooked.

I couldn't believe that I'd spent so much time wasting my time trying to learn how to make websites look good when all I wanted to do was be a graphic designer.

I was hooked on learning how to design, and I spent a lot of my spare time reading books about design.

After finishing Photoshop Master, I began to set my goals. I wanted to learn how to draw comics and backgrounds, improve my lineart skills, and learn how to use InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop.

The materials that I purchased at the time were considerably different than the materials that I now use. Still, all of my graphic design resources are going to be the same throughout this whole tutorial.

The second book on my list was Mastering Photoshop by Stephen Coles. When I purchased this book, it was around the time that it had been released.

The book was beneficial for learning how to use Photoshop. Stephen Coles taught me how to make layers, use the Healing Brush Tool to correct mistakes, and duplicate and merge objects.

I learned about transform filters, filters, and many other interesting tools.

Stephen Coles stressed the importance of using your layers wisely, and one of my favorite tools that I learned was the Photo Filter.

After completing the first two books on my list, I set my goal to complete all of the books. I bought each of them within the same year, and one year later, I finished all 7 books.

I can't tell you the number of times that I've used Photoshop since that year.