Spotlight: Graphic Design Industry
Graphic designers create logos and packaging for basically every company and product. A graphic designer influenced everything in your pantry. Whether it is a can of soup, a cereal box, or even a box of trash bags, a graphic designer worked to fashion the appearance of that product.
Graphic designers tend to work on a project to project basis, which often means firm deadlines and strict financial and design limits. While the designer usually has artistic license on their project, the company they are working with will have guidelines and ideas about packaging. The design will ultimately be a reflection of that company, so they have the final say.As a graphic designer, you will need the ability to synthesize input from many different sources and create a distinctive image that conveys a message about the product, company, or both that you are representing. An important aspect of the design process is generating a variety of sketches and models which demonstrate different approaches to the product. This requires incorporating constructively critical comments from others into your final design.
Although you are not in charge of marketing the product, every consumer will see the packaging of the product before purchasing it, and, in many instances, the packaging itself will be what draws consumers to the product. Thus, your design needs to "sell" the product inside.You will also need to sell your designs to your clients and understand what it is that they are expecting from you. So, communication skills are a must in this field. Every project requires a collaboration between a number of people and integration of a number of ideas to form one image that everybody agrees upon. This may take any number of meetings, conferences, conversations, emails, and brainstorming sessions.
Although you are the artist, creating a design is a joint effort between you and your clients--which means you not only need to help them understand your vision, but you need to respect theirs as well. You must be prepared to accept any criticisms that they have to offer, and to alter your creation based on their concerns. If you are not able or willing to change your ideas based on industry trends, and, most importantly, clients' desires, you will not be very successful.However, this is not to say that the designs will not be yours, or that you will not have any input in the images you create. You are the expert. Your clients will come to you because they believe you are the best person for the job; and they have faith that you will represent them and their products in an appropriately artistic manner.
As long as you possess the creativity and imagination to generate new ideas and strategies for representing products, it won't be too hard to learn the basic principles of the industry in an appropriate graphic design program.
