graphic design?

[Nizza_waaarg]

hey all, got a question. What is graphic design?

I've been looking around for a job and i'm thinking more in terms of a little bit down the line, getting an art job. Now i know being an illustrator or working at some flash hot games company would be the shit, but i've been going over seek.com.au (job search) and alot of the jobs on offer ask for graphic designers (and there are lots).

I know i'd probably have to go through different means of finding all those great jobs listed before, but it seems as though there's a lot of graphic design jobs up for grabs and it could be a good alternative while i'm still studying and trying to build up my skills so i can do the best possible job i can when i do finally break into the illustration/concept art game.

so basically, how is graphic design different to traditional illustration, whats the main skill required (guessing design), and anyone got some awsome links/books i should look into if i am at all interested in following this course of action up?

[daveneale]

I have friends who work as graphic designers...and some of them like it others dont. If you want a job where your drawing lots of cool stuff then graphics may not be the thing for you....a lot of it is arranging type and layouts. It would all depend on the agency, the coolest design places to get to work in would not be easy to break into. A good way to see if you wanted to get into it would be to volenteer your services to a company as an intern. If you cant afford to do this some places will take on designers on lower pay. You may end up doing some illustration work-logos are something you'd probly get more of, but again, all depnds on the type of agency-if its a small one then more than likely resteraunt menus and the like would be the focus. Having said that its more creative than some crappy 9-5, you get to pitch ideas and think creativly, and its a lot easier to break into than the other artistic fields you mentioned. Hope thats vaugly helpfull:S

[Nizza_waaarg]

definitley was helpful, thanks daveneale.

i had a feeling it would be very far removed form all the drawing and excitement of illustration, but i figured it's either apply to one of the millions of listings for graphic design all over the place (wouldn't be too hard to get into with a bit of study beforehand), or pick up my shitty job at target or k mart...
the only problem is, it could end up like one of those awful art jobs that make you hate art at the end of the day and the thought of drawing when getting home would be awful (listening to bobby chiu again :P)

btw, alot of the ads are asking mainly for design help with things like brochures, posters, ads, logos etc. so heavily design focused but still room for creative input (and its gotta pay more than retail customer service wage too, decent art school here i come). Now if only i knew the first thing about design... :\

[Elwell]

You have to loooove type.

[Seedling]

To give you some idea, among the departments at my college there is the illustration department, and the graphic design department. Graphic design is the layout of text and images on a page. Like architecture, many artists have flocked to graphic design (webpage design in particular) as a supposedly safe and stable way to make money as an artist. As a result, the field is saturated with people who don’t love the job, and who find the pay and the job security to be less than they expected.

[kev ferrara]

Yeah, I followed the exact same pathway that you are talking about Nizza Waaaaaaaaarg.

Walked in on the strength of my illos knowing *nothing* and got a job. And struggled big time for a year or two in a fairly run of the mill small town agency.

But at some point I was exposed to the good stuff in the field and very quickly realized "hey, there's something here!". And went like gangbusters to learn everything there was to know! Got to looooooove type!!

And found out that the absolutely best way to improve your illustration was to improve you design skills! One of the things that people don't realize is what kind of phenomenal graphic designers artists such as Frazetta and Leyendecker and Sargent and Klimt are.

Anyhow... get to your local bookstore and scour the racks for the best magazines on the profession. You have a LOT of learning to do!

kev

[LEvans]

I've been a professional graphic designer for 10 years now... sort of accidentally ended up here when I had intended to go into illustration from college.

It's definitely not glamorous or entirely exciting unless you're lucky enough to work at an agency with some interesting clients. In Florida it seems most clients are hotels/resorts and medical facilities. It's basically a glorified layout job. Most graphic artists work in advertising or publishing (I've worked both). With the exception of the occasional corporate identity that needs to be made, where an original logo needs to be designed... you'll find yourself actually drawing very little. Its mostly just a matter of taking text and images and making them look nice together as well as getting a message across.

The most commonly used softwares are Quark Xpress and Adobe InDesign... and of course photoshop & illustrator. I suggest messing with InDesign so it wont be completely foreign to you if you do snag a job as a graphic designer.

HOW is a great magazine for inspiration and tips.

A good knowledge of fonts is essential as Elwell said. Alot of the time depending on where you work you'll be required to come up with slogans and catch phrases too... I hate doing this stuff... but it seems people think if you are "creative" it means youre a writer too!

Its definitely a different world.

[Nizza_waaarg]

so much for some easy cash to get me to sydney and then through art school :\

uber thanks for all the advice so far. This is turning out to be something entirley different than what i had in mind (though not too different), with only a few vague points linking back to illustration skills, and they're the skills i still haven't gotten around to yet.

Raiding the shelves at the local Borders tommorow, they seem to have stacks of books and mags on the stuff. And getting a copy of InDesign and Quark as well if i can afford it (gotta spend money to make money though, right? ...right? :\ )

[Elwell]

You won't be able to afford Quark ;)
InDesign, like all Adobe products, is also expensive, but they do have student pricing.

[Brendan N]

Try not to see a hard edged dichotomy between graphic design and illustration - they're far more interlinked than one might guess. As Elwell says, gotta love type to be able to work with it well. If you can't compose with type only, then you have some work to do.

[Ilaekae]

Graphic Design is the "hands-on" part of Advertising (which also includes Marketing, Copywriting and Editing, Traffic [mostly the coordination of ad placement and TV/radio time], Graphic Arts [physical typesetting and Pre-Press]), Publication Marketing and POP (Point-of-Purchase: Design and construction of on-site signage and "dumps").

Contrary to what most people think here, Illustration is a specialized part of the Graphic Design field. As a graphic designer, you need to understand type, production (assembling art for prepress--now usually done in Quark and InDesign--used to be called paste-up), color separation, illustration, layout, Corporate ID, some simple 3D construction, and other nitty-gritty shit like that.

Depending on how big or small the company is you work for determines what you end up doing. Large companies can afford to pop you into a "permanent" position of doing one type of thing, while smaller companies like versatility.

Being able to do only the type of illustration done in this forum is actually rather limiting if you enter the graphic design field, because illustration in the broader sense also includes graphics, spots, hard-edge, photo manipulation, layout indications and story boards and extreme type manipulation. It also is a point in your favor if you have experience with as many media as possible, again some of which are not generally suitable for this forum's purposes.

I personally believe that every illustrator should have a major exposure to the basic graphic design principals, because before you create on paper, you must create within your skull, and many (even working) illustrators don't have a rat's-ass idea of what happens to their work or why, or why they constantly have to make certain changes in overall layout before it's accepted. These details should be an obvious discussion up front, before you have fun. You ARE, afterall, producing work for reproduction, and that work includes typography and other elements that will work to enhance the final image if you know more about them than the clown you're doing the illustration for.

An interesting experiment to do--flip through the finished works shown on this forum and a few other less specialized illustration forums and mentally pick out what you think is "successful" from a DESIGN rather than a technique/painting standpoint (visualize it with type in place, or as a cover/promotional poster, etc.) and you'll quickly get a feel for what the professional hiring you is going to be looking for.

[JonZ_]

I studied in graphic design because I couldn't live up by being an illustrator :)

I agree, if you don't like to work with typos and grids then it not for you. If like me you don't care and you go in for the sake of having more areas to get more jobs then it cool, but again be extremely prepared because the real world is not glamorous as it pretend. It a very stressed environment and unfriendly because you have to work with an aggressive marketing environment or very hard to please clients. Don't let pass occasions to practice Indesign or Quark to gain speed experience because employers most of the time (or in my experience) will abuse of you, then they realize they made a too optimistic marketing campaign and you will be the first to be fired when in reality you did well (not in general, but to be expected). Also, you will probably do a lot of freelance, which needs you to have a very large field of contacts (but in my experience, freelance gives you a lot of opportunities to express yourself, your art). If you think you can endure this, then go for it :).

EDIT: Do they still teach Quark in college?? I visited the college I went to and they drop off the Quark teaching because 'it sucks now'!

[Ilaekae]

One major factor that nobody ever tells you about when you enter Graphic Design...

It is the single most intense, stressful and deadline intensive of all the art fields. We've joked here a few times about how many days we've worked without sleep--the part we don't joke about is that nearly all of the really good people I started with are dead, and they died from heart-attacks and stress--many before they reached 45. I lucked out. I didn't have my first heart attack until i was 48, but I was known in the industry for my stamina. My partner was considered one of the greatest conceptual designers in the field in his time, and he died at 41. Of 100+ of us who used to stay in touch during the 60-70s, only 15 made it past 52...

Take care...

ADD: JonZ, most have dropped it because of the cost, not because it sucks. Quark is one of the most expensive specialized production apps on the open market, and it's unlikely to be replaced any time soon. It's just too damn expensive for most people to play with.

[Crush]

I was known in the industry for my stamina.

Are we still talking about graphic design here...? hehe

Seriously though wow, so many to die so young, that speaks volumes about how stressfull the job must actually be. I hope you're taking it easy now Ilaekae!! :$

[Seedling]

I’m glad you survived that heart attack, Ilaekae. Ugh.

Thanks for the great info on graphic design!

[JonZ_]

One major factor that nobody ever tells you about when you enter Graphic Design...

It is the single most intense, stressful and deadline intensive of all the art fields. We've joked here a few times about how many days we've worked without sleep--the part we don't joke about is that nearly all of the really good people I started with are dead, and they died from heart-attacks and stress--many before they reached 45. I lucked out. I didn't have my first heart attack until i was 48, but I was known in the industry for my stamina. My partner was considered one of the greatest conceptual designers in the field in his time, and he died at 41. Of 100+ of us who used to stay in touch during the 60-70s, only 15 made it past 52...


Makes me want to change field aaarhhh... gharg.... seeing.... life... flashin-

[Ilaekae]

Oh, calm down, you idiot. It was a warning, not a prediction. You have control over how you spend your time, and you have the ability to determine your own limits. So...do it. Otherwise, the industry will swallow you and take over. Just don't let it happen...:$

[JonZ_]

Oh, calm down, you idiot. It was a warning, not a prediction. You have control over how you spend your time, and you have the ability to determine your own limits. So...do it. Otherwise, the industry will swallow you and take over. Just don't let it happen...:$

Geez sorry dude, I forgot sense of humor was forbidden here...

[Ilaekae]

A sense of humor is a requirement here. I liked what you said. i was simply joining in...

Sorry for the misunderstanding...








...idiot.:P

[davi]

Ilaekae that was little harsh...

[Ilaekae]

Davi, as explained, I was continuing his joke. I will say nothing from now on to make sure misunderstandings don't happen again. Apparently, he was right...a sense of humor is forbidden here...

[JonZ_]

No worries, but being grumpy is not good for the hart neither ;)

[Ilaekae]

I...am...not...grumpy...











...you idiot. ;)

[JonZ_]

So what is the most stressful? The graphic design industry or game industry? I always wondered these two.

[Ilaekae]

If I had to choose, I would have to pick the Graphic Design/Advertising industry over games.

This is based on deadlines and long prep time to that deadline. The games people can and have stalled, or missed deadlines without more than a small financial penalty, because the game doesn't have to be done by a specific time other than because "we wish it so...maybe...please..."

The same cannot be said for the people who must promote that game (or any other event/product) to a specific wide-spread and interlocking schedule with barely any leeway and great financial punishment if deadlines are missed.

The June copy of your favorite art magazine can't insert any late ads AFTER you receive your copy on time.

No one was ever elected President of the US by running TV ads after the innauguration.

And no game was ever sold as a "July 4th Special" with newspaper ads that appeared in August because their ad agency took the summer off.

[Seedling]

The games people can and have stalled, or missed deadlines without more than a small financial penalty. . .

*cough* *choke* Hahaha! That "small financial penalty" has killed many game companies.

[Ilaekae]

okayokayokay...but y'gotta admit it's relatively rare for the games industry to have ironclad deadlines...

[Nizza_waaarg]

well i've been reading into the issue heaps more, learning much about type as well as image and colour. One thing i gotta know though, is there any real way to practise this stuff. Eg: I'd study anatomy, do heaps of life drawing and then study specifics such as form, volume, value, etc to get better at drawing characters.

Is there any standard way to go about practising all these graphic design principles i'm reading up on?

and all the heartattacks and stress related deaths is a little disconcerting Ilaeke, but good to know i'd most definitley be getting alot out of learning graphic design that relates back to illustration.

edit: and found a copy of InDesign lying about a friend's place :D, playing with type layout

[Elwell]

I can't speak to type etc. specifically (I'm sure others can), but for general design principles:
Visual Literacy by Richard Wilde (http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Literacy-Conceptual-Approach-Graphic/dp/0823056201) (added bonus: see some of my student work, FWIW)
Picture This: How Pictures Work (http://www.amazon.com/Picture-This-How-Pictures-Work/dp/1587170302) by Molly Bang

And for design history, anything by Steven Heller (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/103-0197815-1465451?%5Fencoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Steven%20Heller)

[seba_boi]

Don't fail to check out great graphic designers of past eras like Alphonse Mucha for the Art Nouveau, A.M. Cassandre for Art Deco, Josef Muller-Brockman for the Swiss style (ITS), Saul Bass for Late Modern, Andy Warhol for the Psychedlic/Pop-Art, and Tadanori Yokoo for Post-Modern!...

[Ilaekae]

Here are a few sites that might get you at least started in the right direction. I'm not recommending one over another, but they all have info and sources that could be useful...

http://www.allgraphicdesign.com/historyof-graphicdesign-arts.html

http://www.google.com/Top/Arts/Graphic_Design/History/

http://www.typophile.com/books/advertisingdesign

There are also a number of excellent publishers with books that could be useful. I don't remember the names off hand, but if you can get a copy of Print, Graphis or CA magazine, they would point you in the right direction.


It could also be helpful to do a search on Google for:

Herb Lubalin
Saul Bass
William Morris
Paul Rand
Jonathan Ive
Leo Burnett
Milton Glaser
William Bernbach
David Ogilvy

Any information on the way these people approached their work would be useful...

[Weeda]

Dammit. I thought I finally settled on Graphic Design as a major because I've always enjoyed it and I sincerely doubt I could make it in just art, but given my family history of heart attacks and my own poor lifestyle choices, I don't know anymore.

[Ilaekae]

But...it IS a fun ride...:) :$

[JonZ_]

Dammit. I thought I finally settled on Graphic Design as a major because I've always enjoyed it and I sincerely doubt I could make it in just art, but given my family history of heart attacks and my own poor lifestyle choices, I don't know anymore.

The only thing I can say is to look forward for all avenues you can fill that would make you land on a job with less stressful deadline. I learned it the hardway, and today I am working for a company that is very flexible, and I rarely do overtime now.

[seba_boi]

There are also a number of excellent publishers with books that could be useful. I don't remember the names off hand, but if you can get a copy of Print, Graphis or CA magazine, they would point you in the right direction.
In addition to this, if you're a sucker for magazine design, you must check out the SPD (Society of Publication Designers) books they put out every year!... They chronicle some of the best magazine/editorial design for the year...

[Nizza_waaarg]

yet more massive thanks for all the great info guys, helping me no end on my quest for graphic design powah!

one last question (not really): i've picked up the general idea that with illustration and concept art, your folio of work is more or less the only deciding factor in being chosen for a job (more or less!). Can the same be said for the rest of the graphic design industry in that a portfolio will generally overrule your education (or lack thereof), or do most employers just go straight for the education background?

My current uni course would most likely cover me (creative media/digital art), but would i have to spend an extra couple years in uni doing yet another course specifically for graphic design just to make sure or somthing? Keep in mind i'm only trying to scrounge together enough cash to get to sydney for a really awsome traditional arts school for my illustration, and possibly when illustration jobs aren't as readily available.

thanks again all :yayca: :bow:

[kev ferrara]

Nizza... Things very well might be different where you are...

For the average agency, in my experience, two things in a portfolio tend to impress...

Slick Work of the various types the agency makes. (find out this info before sending portfolio.. check their website!)

Recognizable Corporate Names.

Depending on the agency and the art director and the position you are going for, one or the other or both (or neither) is more important.

Understand: Some art directors just need production people. Somebody who knows how to use InDesign. Or can silhouette figures in photoshop. Although mostly, in my experience, the big agencies just need coders.

As an entry level guy, I'd expect you to enter in the production field. If you know Photoshop, InDesign, and this week's hot web program... I'd expect you'll do fine in the early stages.

Btw, the really talented people in the profession are *really* talent. Don't underestimate how talented and smart designers and typographers and art directors can be. Don't underestimate how much there is to learn.

kev

[Jabo]

Joining in the drama made up here. First of all, this field is big, and there's a variety of jobs you can land when you're interested in graphic design. The work you do can range from mind-blowing and expensive advertising campaigns in an in-agency to a job in just another agency where you merely design, but mostly process things every day. You can even work in a print shop if you want. The borders melt nowadays.

Maybe my experience isn't exemplary and I've worked in the field for just 4 years now (after some more years of mediocre part-time pixel pushing), but I found out the job really has two sides. The one where you finish a project that works well and makes you believe in what you do, and the other side where you beg for the coup de grace. It's not the difficulty of the design work that made me grind me teeth (it's your job, so if you master it, that is a mere obstacle), but it's working with clients failing to see what you do. How many times have I sent the neatest solutions to my client only to receive a ton of unnecessary things to add, so that the result was something I'd not even use to wipe my ass. Of course one could argue that I'm not a good seller, but from what I've heard from other people working in advertising, it's the same all over the world. If you can handle having your ideas crunched in a split-second without a chance to change the destroyer's mind, it's cool. But it's a tough job.

About variety of jobs: "Graphic design" is often used for a collection of jobs that have nothing in common. I've worked in an agency that does everything from concept to graphic design to production. So as long as you don't land a job as art director on your first try, you will probably do some dirtwork first. A list of things that I've done apart from the "design"-parts of the job:

Scanning
Days and nights of it. Sounds like an easy job, but if you're reproducing antique paintings or modern art, it's nit-picking all the way. Which leads to...

Color correction
So I had the original of an abstract watercolor painting in my left hand and the mouse in my right. The colors of the original are neon-colored, the printer is simple CMYK. Try explaining to the office-bred client that there's no way you can print it that way. I ended up revising the image 20 times over a period of six weeks, changing the tonal values in 2/255-steps.

Layout
Anything from whole brochures to 2x2 inch print-ads (in black/white, and with 6 claims that have the same priority :D). It's the thing that you usually get really good at when you're doing the job for a certain time. And still, I never get tired doing it. The plain beauty of a headline with their accompanying smaller text-counterpart, all lined up precisely so they fit... I love it.

Clipping paths
Parsley is my favourite object. Hay as a decoration put in by the photographer is also nice to extract. Hours of humilation.

Removing dust from photographs via stamping-tool
Cool thing to do. Removing wrinkles and zits from company-portraits, removing lube oil from machinery, removing logos from photos. You name it. Again, hours of fun work :\

These are some of the things everyone has done in the biz. Just to give a small insight into the downsides of the job. I've seen people getting crunched by it, they left the job and became secretaries. Apart from that, it's also A LOT of stress, the strictest deadlines you can imagine and remember it's marketing. The smallest mistake can be your lay-off.