What makes a great graphic designer? This article identifies the traits and characteristics you need to make it in the design industry.
Note: This is a summary of the first chapter of How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul, which aims to educate aspiring graphic designers on the practical aspects of the field.
Cultural awareness
“Graphic design is a visual language uniting harmony and balance, color and light, scale and tension, form and content. But it is also an idiomatic language, a language of cues and puns and symbols and allusions, of cultural references and perceptual inferences that challenge both the intellect and the eye.”—Jessica Helfand
- Constantly scan, scrutinize, and absorb what goes on around you. Have curiosity about areas other than graphic design.
- When discussing a job with a new or potential client, demonstrate understanding, openness and receptivity. The designer who shows only signs of self-absorption and narrowness of focus isn’t going to inspire his or her client.
- A new client will be receptive to you and your ideas if you demonstrate some knowledge about the client’s field of activity, talk about the project at hand, and listen.
Communication skills
“This aspect of design work is frequently underestimated: an ability to use words clearly, pointedly, and persuasively is at all times relevant to design work.”—Norman Potter
“You have to listen carefully to what the client wants and be careful not to approach the project with a preconceived idea of what it should look like.”—Rudy VanderLans
- You must be able to talk about your work, especially with clients and non-designers, in a coherent, convincing, and objective way, without resorting to the language and idioms that you’d use with other designers.
- Listen. Your client has a point of view that you need to listen to carefully for clues and unspoken messages.
- The author says that he sometimes asks designers to describe what they’ve done—before they show him what they’ve done. Try this exercise.
- The way you present an idea is as important as the idea itself.
- If you know how to communicate well, you cease to let technological capabilities define your thinking. You are no longer enslaved by only working on ideas that can be mocked up on software.
- Develop and maintain a personal voice, but allow your client to have an opinion too. There has to be a balance of interests.
- Never say to your client, “I’ve done it like this because I like it.” You have to be able to articulate a genuine rationale for your work. Persuading clients that your ideas are right and that their money is being spent wisely requires huge amounts of carefully formulated argument. Never make your client feel (rightly or wrongly) that you are pleasing yourself at your client’s expense.
- Communicate meaning and value to your clients, and you will reap the benefits. The easiest way to do this is to remove the personal from the equation. Do this and you’ll find clients keener to accept your ideas and take your guidance. Less you means more you.
Integrity
We designers either give away integrity in return for a high-paying job, or hang onto it and do the work we want for little or no money. It’s tough to retain integrity and make a living, but it’s not impossible.
- Have integrity in your work.
- Have integrity in the way you deal with fellow designers, suppliers, and other professional acquaintances.
- Have integrity in the way you handle the creative work of photographers, illustrators, and other creative professionals.
- Have self-respect in order to earn the respect of clients and other designers.
Talent
You need talent to be a graphic designer, but talent in graphic design comes in myriad forms. There is no foolproof way of measuring it. Also, graphic design accommodates so many sorts of “talent.” Yes, you will need talent, but a little talent can go a long way if it is supported by the attributes listed above.
In summary
The ideal characteristics of a graphic designer are:
- Cultural awareness
- Communication skills
- Integrity
- Talent (sort of)
