Being a Freelance Graphic Designer Without Creativity

How to Become a Graphic Designer Without any Experience

Graphic designers are the most sought-after people who are highly requested by the global jobs market today. Companies are looking to hire them because they need creative folks on staff. Graphic designers can make all things look beautiful and professional – from logos to business cards.

Good graphic designers can turn any marketing materials into a masterpiece. Marketing processes can not roll without graphic designers. And since marketing is a powerful force that makes people buy products and services, graphic designers fuel this engine with creativity to make it do the job.

The main goal of graphic designers is to create "imagery" that people will eventually see and be entertained by. In that sense, it's a type of connection with the public that helps a company grow and prosper because of the creativity they deliver. But before you go in this game, stop and think for the moment whether you have this inner need for creating unique artworks. Will you be willing to contribute to the world's aesthetics? Do you have a passion and drive for art? Are you ready for continuous learning?

Today, there is no problem with learning anything that deals with graphic design. You can easily do it even while holding another job. Plenty of resources online out there and tons of examples of different artwork. But where to start and how to transition from zero experience to actual projects? If you need some tips and hints, let's talk more about it here in this blog post.

Table of Contents

1. How to Become a Graphic Designer Without any Experience
   1. Why become a graphic designer
   2. How to become a graphic designer with no previous experience
   3. What do you need to become a  freelance graphic designer?
   4. Bottom line

Why become a graphic designer

There is no definite answer why somebody would decide to become a graphic designer. Some people say that it was just like love from first sight to them. They just got hooked. And that's where it all started. Other designers believe that this profession chose them and not vice versa. Usually, most designers decide later on to transition from using a pencil and a sketchbook to designing on the computer. After becoming obsessed with digital graphic design, artists become certain – this is the path they want to take.

Reasons why having this job is super cool:

• You get paid for being creative.
• You work in a constantly changing field.
• Every day is different.
• You can bring your positivity to art projects and project your art to others.
• You meet many interesting people who enjoy your work.
• Inspiration is everywhere.

Designing is pretty much similar to the process of solving a puzzle. The only difference is that you passionately solve visual problems with digital graphics. Good graphic designers have a powerful willingness and a strong drive to create something extraordinary. Even if this is just a supermarket brochure.

Talented graphic designers are highly requested by many industries and businesses. There is a huge benefit of gaining a diverse experience by working in multiple environments and being a part of the creative team. Graphic designers hardly get bored with their work because they have a broad professional field to specialize in and get many opportunities to create things for their clients.

This field embraces many types of designs like illustration, typography, web and app design, etc. Basically, the more experience you get – the more in-demand your skills are because of their versatility. Now, let's talk about what exactly it is that you need to enter this field.

How to become a graphic designer with no previous experience

Many beginners start learning design by doing lots of sketches with no special software involved. You can start with nothing more sophisticated than just a pencil and a sheet of paper. However, in order to make good quality designs that look professional, you'll need to learn how to utilize graphic design software and digital tools.

No really shortcut for this, so invest lots of effort during the learning process. If you practice all the concepts and disciplines necessary for competency, you will be gaining priceless skills along the way.

Some simple steps to start with:

Take action and explore creativity.  A creator's main goal is to go beyond just taking care of nice photos or making things look stylish.

Get a mentor (teacher, professional, online instructor, etc.) that will teach you essential fundamentals of art and graphic design. It's maybe easy to teach yourself a program but it's not as easy to teach yourself basic practical design principles.

Create in as many mediums as possible. The more you hone your skills, the better you become. The more skills you have from creating in different mediums, the better and more varied your skills will be.

Learn graphic design theory. Explore various books, tutorials, or any reliable resources available online and offline. This will teach you basic steps and clarify the basics.

Prepare to work digitally. Learn all you can about Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop because graphic designers use these programs daily. So, explore these tools deeply. A solid comprehension of one or both graphic design programs is a genuine resource for making art. Especially, if a structured degree or certification is absent. Fortunately, there are plenty of effective approaches to self-instruct or you can always learn online. For example, PSD Tuts or Tuts Plus have probably some of the most well-known inside and out instructional exercises. Investigate online courses and masterclasses that teach tricks and hints of Photoshop and Illustrator on the Grinfer e-learning platform.

Stay up-to-date with various design trends. Like any other design business, it's very important that you know what the current trends are. Even though you don't have to follow them. It's very helpful in your own practice if you stay informed with the current industry standard.

Get online. Apart from learning, show your creativity by participating in various online crowdsourcing sites available online, such as – designhill, designcrowd, behance, dribbble. These sites not just provide a chance to participate in contests but also to build an online portfolio.

Volunteer. Offer to do art projects for friends, family, local businesses. Build a portfolio with real experience, since internships generally won't take someone until they have some sort of a portfolio to show. So, dabble in as many side projects as you can.

Besides all this, create projects for yourself and exercise by practicing. Use real brands and try to improve on what they're doing. This shows real-world applicability.

The rundown of useful online resources:

Skillshare – loads of top to bottom graphic design instructional exercises. Most Skillshare online courses are created by industry specialists. Incorporate video content makes them considerably additionally captivating.

Grinfer – an online educational marketplace that has plenty of online courses created by professional artists and experienced graphic designers. If you need to get a consultation, there are 1-1 online consultations offered by Grinfer's instructors. You can book an online consultation in accordance with your own scheduler.

Kadenze – gives seminars on workmanship, music, design, imaginative advancements. Gives an option to gain admittance to educational materials by picking a "Review Course" setting.

CreativeLive – provides a scope of art courses outfitted for designers and craftsmen to propel their inventive abilities. These courses are shown live by proficient teachers. Students take them over the range of a couple of days learning incorporated HTML and CSS lectures, basics about typography, essentials of Adobe projects, etc.

GoSkills – you'll need to become a member to gain admittance to the whole range of l courses. GoSkills courses are master driven, scaled-down, and on-request, empowering to gaining proficiency at any place and at any time.

What do you need to become a  freelance graphic designer?

You'd be quite challenged to find a job if you've not got any portfolio of completed works to show. If you don't have anything in your own book to illustrate a point, pick something online that will do the job. Use any examples to help yourself, but remember – you'll need to have solid proof that you can deliver something similar. So, be sure that your portfolio contains the strongest works.

Pros and cons of working as a graphic design freelancer:

Pros

• You are your own boss;
• You're in charge of scheduling and can work from home;
• You decide who you want to work with.

Cons

• Have to find clients on your own;
• It may take a while to obtain a stable income;
• Taxes.

Find a business that you believe could be more successful by using strategic graphic design. Contact them with a proposal articulating why good design is an important business tool. Explain how it would improve their business. Convince them by showing your own works.

Areas to explore and focus on:

Explore Logo design – If you think that all there is to logo design is the logo itself, you are greatly mistaken. In many cases, a designer is signed on board to create not just a logo, but an entire brand identity. Logo design can be a challenging zone, but it is consistently sought after.

Learn hand lettering – if you enjoy hand lettering, there is a huge demand for it right now. People are in love with handcrafted and personalized designs because hand lettering brings a "real human touch" to design.

Look into mobile app design – mobile apps are obviously very much in demand, but you also have to be ready for a lot of competition. You may want to go through many learning resources first if you want to concentrate on this niche.

Explore web design – obviously, this is a promising choice in this specialization. While exploring this field, don't forget to take notes about the design aspects of each website you see which you particularly like the most.

Learn about front-end web design. If you want to expand from just print and stationary graphics, it's suggested that you start early on learning HTML and CSS, then even JavaScript (if you have the time).

Build up your style. Style can frequently be the separating factor in turning you into an effective visual creator. No matter whether this implies an in-house job or building your own independent business. In any case, discover your style groove, because this can be an ideal opportunity to begin sharpening your skills.

Find a new line of work as a designer. As you take your insight, abilities, and your own portfolio to the next level, it might take a while to get where you want to be. So, one of the most fundamental things for you here is to increase genuine work understanding. This may appear to be a chicken and egg situation (an occupation without experience, understanding without work). Yet, keep on looking for effective imaginative approaches to discover changes and improvements. Even at the beginning period of your profession.

A hint: Register yourself to sites like Fiverr and many more. Where you will be paid for each and every task. Pricing factor depends upon how much you charge for your services for example logo designing, website prototype making, gaming poster design, books cover designing, must be priced differently.

Bottom line

Today, thanks to modern technologies, it has become much easier to learn graphic design from scratch. Go to youtube, take an online course, download digital tutorials, etc. It's just as simple as clicking a link, downloading the templates, purchasing those stock vector logos or images, and following exactly what the person does in the video content.

Graphic design is something that a person needs to have a passion for and courage to meet challenges. Having the software knowledge and an ability to unitize digital tools with creativity will make you a true graphic designer.  Research it, breathe it, sleep on it, and, of course, practice it. Get a feel for what it really is and take time to really understand the strategy behind it. All this definitely will be worth your time and effort.

If at some point you decide that it is not for you, take a break, and reconsider. Then go through all that work with a fresh and open mind. Don't hold back on your dream and start making art today with all that knowledge you can gain from awesome online courses on Grinfer!

Click to rate this post!

[Total: 3 Average: 5]

Summary

Article Name

How to Become a Graphic Designer Without any Experience

Description

Today, there is no problem with learning anything that deals with graphic design. But where to start and how to transition from zero experience to actual projects?

Author

Julia Abbasova

Publisher Name

Grinfer B.V.

Publisher Logo

Being a Freelance Graphic Designer Without Creativity

Source: https://blog.grinfer.com/stories/how-to-become-a-graphic-designer-without-any-experience/

Share this post