Animation and Other Career Specialties for Graphic Design Graduates

By Lisa Kroulik © October 14, 2011

The fact that you need an outstanding portfolio to enter the field of graphic design is no secret. In this extremely competitive career, you not only need a portfolio to get in the door, you need to be continuously updating it to stay current and be prepared for whatever the field throws at you.

What you may not have considered is that specializing in one particular area of graphic design will help you to stand out among the many graphic design program graduates who may have only broad knowledge of the field as a whole. In today’s electronic society, this is especially true if you choose to specialize in animation design.

In this Hub, I will be highlighting four career specialties of the graphic design field for you to consider, regardless of what stage you are at in your education.

As I just mentioned, specializing in animation graphic design in a smart thing to do. This is not just my opinion, it is a confirmed fact by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. They published a report in 2008 which states that the field of graphic design is expected to see double-digit growth through at least the year 2018 and that those who are trained in animation graphic design will be in especially high demand.

Which kind of website are you more attracted to? One that states the facts and nothing more, or one that engages you with animation and other multi-media? Since every business needs a website to survive these days, they need your skills to design a site that is going to draw attention to the products and services they offer.

Your skills will also be in high demand from those who create television commercials, movies and other forms of visual communication. The company that thrives in today’s economy is one that stays ahead of the times. As newspapers, books and DVD’s give way to electronic news, e-books and video streaming, the wise company continually monitors media trends and makes use of talented graphic designers to keep them ahead of the competition.

The second greatest demand for a graphic design specialty is someone who has experience and training in advertising. Businesses need to make sure that their name is constantly in the public consciousness, so they will need your talents to create advertising across all mediums. This may include helping to design a company logo, creating a marketing campaign to be used on billboards, television commercials and print media ads, coming up with an advertising campaign for use with banner ads and pop-up displays and much more.

While you are creating advertising campaigns, you may work for one client as a self-employed graphic artist or as part of a team employed by a large company. Although different skill sets are needed to be successful in each capacity, the one constant is that you will need excellent communication skills in order to understand who is doing what part of the project, when it is due and the overall message the advertising campaign is trying to convey.

If you are an artist at heart, you may get the most satisfaction out of your graphic design career if you focus on jobs that have you drawing or painting most of the time. Perhaps you could find employment working for a greeting card company or designing the artwork that accompanies calendars. You may create posters to advertise upcoming movies or illustrate books.

There are numerous career possibilities for an illustration graphic artist, and there are also many ways to achieve creating your design. You may choose to draw freehand in pencil or paint using a computer program. As long as the project gets completed on time, you don’t have to feel obligated to only one way of doing it.

Although print media is consistently losing ground to electronic media, there is still the need for people to work as publishing graphic artists. In this role, you may work for a book or magazine publisher and assist them with the layout of their publications.

The cover design of a book or magazine is especially important, as that is what first draws the reader’s attention and helps them to decide if the publication is worth spending more time investigating. You will assist your client or employer in selling books and magazines by creating cover art that is compelling enough to get them to turn to the first page.