Ultimate guide for a Career in Graphic Design – 10 Pro options

You want to make a solid career in graphic design, but not sure where and how to start?
Stick to this post till the end and you will have a clear mindset about the opportunities present in the field.

Graphic Designing as a career

Opting Career in graphic design feels both tempting and vulnerable. Specially, many designers feel insecure regarding the availability of job opportunities in the stream. The main reason goes back to the past. Since the evolution of graphic designing, graphic designers were always (majority are still) independent. No company seriously cared for hiring any dedicated employee or team for their graphical needs. Majority of such needs were outsourced. Either by hiring any design agency or any individual to perform the task. subsequently, payments used to settle through short term contract or pay per project basis.

Still, The situation has changed to almost none, even today. On the one hand only few design agencies with limited employees have made big in the scene but on the other hand, individuals are still struggling a lot to get their graphic design jobs going. Even today when, start-ups and influencers are rising by nights if not by days, graphic designers are still facing difficulty in getting paid or even just projects to work on. To sum up, just having a great artistic mindset and a creative workflow, won’t guarantee you payments similar to a regular employee.

Or Can it?

Scope for Graphic Designers

We should start seeing the picture on a bigger scale. There are already a plenty of design opportunities for those who are ready to develop new skills. Whether it be freelancing or driving your own design agency you can get potential projects to work on and earn the most. Here we have listed the best options for career in graphic design to opt and stand out as a graphic designer from wherever you belong.

Career in Graphic Design opportunities

#1. Print / Publication Designer

Designing for publishing needs ability to design Layouts, visual experience and designs for a range of printable requirements. Digital transform has added to it the ability to design digital friendly and appealing designs. Whether working as a freelancer of under any name you can be a Print/Publication Designer.

What you can Design?

Skills Required:

Graphic Designing Software like Adobe Photoshop, Sketch (Mac Only), Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Affinity Designer, CorelDRAW
Best Free Alternatives you can consider are Photopea (best free alternative to photoshop), Canva, Gravit Designer, Inkscape & GIMP

Where to get clients?

Register as a Freelancer on websites like: Fiverr.com, Upwork.com, Freelancer.com, 99designs.com, Dribble.com, Truelancer.com
Get Local clients from websites like: Justdial.com, Gigzoe.com, Indiamart.com.
Also register your services on Google My Business to get regional clients.

#2. Brand Identity Designer

A brand identity designer’s job is to create the visual elements of any brand. These elements should be unique to the specific brand and should illustrate and reflect the brand. You can additionally provide Social Media Optimization along with your services to get the most out of your task. Subsequently, the key to grow is that your design should be memorable and look established. Also it should spark desire and loyalty among the potential customers of the brand.

Design Specific to a Brand

Skills Required:

A good knowledge of how to make consumer appealing designs and provide Social Media Optimization.
Graphic Designing Software like Adobe Photoshop, Sketch (Mac Only), Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Affinity Designer, CorelDRAW
Best Free Alternatives you can consider are Photopea (best free alternative to photoshop), Canva, Gravit Designer, Inkscape, GIMP

How to get projects?

Register as a Freelancer on websites like:
Fiverr.com, Upwork.com, Freelancer.com, 99designs.com, Dribble.com, Truelancer.com, Toptal.com, designcrowd.com
Get on and promote your services on LinkedIn. Also register your services on Google My Business to get regional clients furthermore.

#3. Website / Email Designer

If you are in graphic designing for a while and want to explore something new, then you must get on website and email designing. Surely, the technology is advancing everyday and every business want to get their visibility on the internet. So, if you think you can design amazing website on any designing software then, I can bet that almost 99% of that design can be transformed to a website without using a single line of code.

Yeah, you heard it right indeed. To design a website you don’t need to do any hardcore coding. However, Invest some time on learning any website builder tool (Elementor for wordpress is free, powerful and recommended for beginners) through which you can translate your design from any software to the World Wide Web. Also there are a bunch of tool available to design Emails in the same manner without any coding.

What to design?

• Websites
• Web Pages
• Emails

Skills Required:

Website builder tools like WIX, Weebly, SquareSpace, websitebuilder.com
Best Free Alternatives are Elementor and Beaver Builder for wordpress. Both are great website/page building tools. Also Google has its own website builder available to use for free.
Using any design software/tool built for website designing like Figma or Invision Studio will help you speed up and be more creative with your workflow.
Further, for Designing Emails, website like Befree.io, Unlayer.com and Stripo will make your life easier.

How to get potential clients?

Register as a Freelancer on websites like:
Fiverr.com, Upwork.com, Freelancer.com, 99designs.com, Dribble.com, Truelancer.com
Get Local clients from websites like:
Justdial.com, Sulekha.com, Gigzoe.com, Indiamart.com
Get on and promote your services on LinkedIn. Also register your services on Google Map to get regional clients furthermore.

#4. UI / UX Designer

User Interface and User Experience designers have the task to create interfaces that are user-friendly and can make the use of complex technical data/product easy for anyone. However, this may sound a bit of a challenge. Although if you use proper tools in combination with your artistic workflow, your job is done and your life is easier.

If you are passionate about latest trends, devices and design flows, surely you can opt to be a UI/UX Designer. User Interface and User Experience designing are two complete different tasks. Nonetheless, if you keep developing your skills and workflow, you can master both and earn some serious money. Additionally, a little practice of HTML & CSS may help you in many instances.

Design services you can provide:

Skills Required:

Design and prototyping tools – Figma, Sketch, Proto.io, Adobe XD, and Invision Studio, Axure, Craft, Webflow.
Best Free tools are Figma, InVision Studio and Miro.

• Style Guides
• Visual Design – typography, buttons, color scheme
• Interactions – prototypes, interactivity, animations
• Cohesive branding through design elements
• Front-end development – Apps, Websites, Web Apps
• Analysis on design experience

How to get clients?

Register as a Freelancer on websites like:
Fiverr.com, Upwork.com, Freelancer.com, 99designs.com, Dribble.com, Truelancer.com
Get UI/UX design jobs through Naukri.com, in.indeed.com, Glassdoor.co.in
Get jobs through and promote your services on LinkedIn. Also register your services on Google Map to get regional clients furthermore.
If you get a degree in design and 5 years of experience, you can work for Google as a UI/UX designer.

#5. Product Designer

A Product Designer’s job is to design the user experience of a product, by taking decisions through the business goals and potential consumer of the client. Companies always tend to get benefit from a product or packaging designer as they play a key role in the stages of product development.

Product designing is more than just the look of the product, to become good at product design you need skills for Interaction or UX design, 3D Design, Visual design, Animations, User research, Data analysis, Prototyping and building Business strategies. Ideally, they all have been an individual role, they still are, but they are all essential for becoming good at Product designing.

Design Specific to a Brand

Skills Required:

Design tools: Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Sketch, Proto.io, Adobe XD, and Invision Studio, Axure, Craft, Webflow.
Other than any of these, having a hand on, 3D Modelling, Animation and product reserch tools (like Userbit) will bring your game to the next level.
Best Free tools are Figma, InVision Studio and Miro.

How to get projects?

Become a Freelancer through websites like:
Fiverr.com, Upwork.com, Freelancer.com, 99designs.com, Dribble.com, Truelancer.com
Get Product design jobs through Naukri.com, in.indeed.com, Glassdoor.co.in, Angel.co
Get jobs through and promote your services on LinkedIn. Also register your services on Google My Business to attract regional clients additionally.

#6. Game Designer

A game designer conceptualizes the plots and storylines within the game. As a game designer, you will have to design the levels and environments accordingly also the character, their interactions and other creative aspects of the game. Being a Game designer can be lucrative to opt as a career in graphic designing as there are not much of competitive individuals working in the field and the payouts are majorly attractive.

A game designer is the person who is in charge of bringing a game to life. They are usually a combination of a writer, an artist, and a programmer. Troy, has shipped over 100 titles on almost every platform and genre, says, “It’s a multidisciplinary job that often requires you to understand a little of everything”. You can either earn on the basis of game’s performance if it belongs solely to you or if you work for any client, you can easily make anywhere between ₹80,000 to ₹3,00,000 per month as a game designer.

What you can design?

• 3D/2D Characters and objects for game
• Interfaces and Environments
• Game arts and contents
• In-game UI and UX
• Scoring Systems / Timelines Engines

Skills Required:

Design tools: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Sketch, Affinity Designer, CorelDRAW
Softwares / Game Engines: Unity 3D, Unreal Engine 4, GameMaker Studio 2, Construct 3, Godot Engine
Other than any of these, having a hand on, 3D Modelling and Animation tools (like Blender and Maya) will bring your game to the next level.
Best Free tools are Unity 3D, Unreal Engine and Godot (Open Source).

How to get started?

Become a Freelancer through websites like:
Fiverr.com, Upwork.com, Freelancer.com, Topwork.com, Freelancer.in, Truelancer.com
Get Game design jobs through Naukri.com, in.indeed.com, Glassdoor.co.in, monsterindia.com and Guru.com
LinkedIn is the best place to to get jobs, promote and grow your services related to Game Designing and boost your career in graphic design.

#7. Advertising Designer

An advertising designer creates and manages ad campaigns. Their work involves increasing overall sales and brand awareness for a specific product or service. To achieve this, the designer creates design for media or press campaigns. For being a good advertising designer you will have to typically work as a graphic artist, and work on design and layouts for ads. Also you must have the understanding of creating designs which urge the tendency to purchase.

Whether to work as a hired employee or a freelancer, building your own professional portfolio would help you grow a lot faster and perceive a fulfilling career in graphic designing.

What you can design?

Skills Required:

Graphic Designing Software like Adobe Photoshop, Sketch (Mac Only), Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Affinity Designer, CorelDRAW
Best Free Alternatives you can consider are Photopea (best free alternative to photoshop), Canva, Gravit Designer, Inkscape, GIMP

Where to get started?

Register as a Freelancer on websites like: Fiverr.com, Upwork.com, Freelancer.com, 99designs.com, Dribble.com, Truelancer.com
Get Local clients from websites like: Justdial.com, Gigzoe.com, Indiamart.com.
Also register your services on Google My Business to get regional clients.
LinkedIn is arguably the best place to promote your advertisement designing services.

#8. Packaging Designer

A packaging designer has the job to create packaging of the product that helps in building brand loyalty. You have to use structures, materials, colors, typography and regulatory information in the most creative and appealing ways. Every company wants to get benefit from a good package design as it helps in brand growth and tracking product updates.

To be good at packaging design, you should considering not only designing the outer look of the product but also to keep focus on Market trends, collaborative environments of marketing teams and factors like conversion rates and ROI after revision in the packaging design of the product. Packaging designing mostly works on pay-per-project basis unless you work as a regular employee. Whatever the situation goes, on the both end you can make around ₹30,000 to ₹1,00,000+ per month.

What services you can provide?

• Product Packaging concept designs
• Product Packaging design
• Custom fonts/typography for products
• Ecommerce Product packaging design
• Packaging analysis

Skills Required:

Design tools: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Sketch, Affinity Designer, CorelDRAW
Best Free tool is Photopea which is also considered the best free alternative for photoshop.

How to get started?

I would suggest you to build and keep updating your professional portfolio, and
Become a Freelancer through websites like:
Fiverr.com, Upwork.com, Freelancer.com, Topwork.com, Freelancer.in, Truelancer.com
Get jobs through Naukri.com, in.indeed.com, Glassdoor.co.in, monsterindia.com and Guru.com
LinkedIn is the best place to promote and grow your services as you can find companies/start-ups and their product details and connect with your potential clients.

#9. Photoshop Artist

Photoshop as an art is an overlap between photography and digital drawing. As a photoshop artist, your role would be to combine photographs with digital elements to create the unique desired look. As a service, you can get clients belonging from even fortune 500 companies to individuals. The desired tasks in commercial purposes is to create unique graphics related to products and advertisements and for individual purposes it even can be a simple image editing request.

It simply depends on your creative imagination and implementation of it through the provided tools in Photoshop or such other software. You can always grow and expand your services based on your level of expertise on a single piece of software and a creative imagination and get started through your journey of building career in graphic design.

What you can design/provide service for?

• Product Arts
• Image Manipulation
• Photo editing
• 2D/3D environment creation
• Web Graphics
• Digital Arts

Skills Required:

Design tools: Adobe Photoshop, Sketch, Affinity Designer, CorelDRAW
Best Free tool is Photopea which is also the best free alternative for photoshop.

How to get started?

I would suggest you to build and keep updating your professional portfolio, and
Become a Freelancer through websites like:
Fiverr.com, Upwork.com, Freelancer.com, Topwork.com, Freelancer.in, Truelancer.com
Get jobs through Naukri.com, in.indeed.com, Glassdoor.co.in, monsterindia.com and Guru.com
Register your service on Google My Business to get local clients and also seek for potential clients through LinkedIn.

#10. Illustration Artist

An illustration artist’s job is to provide visuals that represents any idea or data. Illustration artists produce drawings that are used in advertisements, magazines, websites, packaging, books and can be a visual part of UI/UX designs. If you have a decent drawing skills the, to get started as an illustrator all you need is a pc and a pen tablet. With the help of proper tools, you will be able to translate your drawings on digital canvas.

Although Illustrators are in demand across many industries but usually it depends upon the Illustrator to create a demand for his/her work. That’s why it is recommended to have your own digital portfolio of sort to show it to your potential clients. Illustrators need to be not only good at their art but they should be good at their business part as well. Making and updating your social media profiles and portfolio on websites like Behance, Dribble and Coroflot may help you getting potential jobs.

What to Illustrate?

Custom Illustrations based on Ideas to use in:
Advertisements
All kind of Prints
Product/Packaging
User Interface elements (like Icons and concept illustrations)
Digital Typography and Calligraphy

Required Skills:

Be good at drawing and translating Ideas on canvas.
Design software/tool like Photoshop, Illustrator, Vectornator, Procreate, Affinity Designer. Best free tools are Inkscape (Open Source), Gravit Designer, Ira Design (Open Source) and Vectr.
Also being good at self marketing will help greatly.

How to get started?

Create your portfolio with above mentioned platforms (for free) and start promoting your work through Social Media on a regular basis. This will help you in getting jobs/projects with a potential. Next, Become a Freelancer through websites like:
Fiverr.com, Upwork.com, Freelancer.com, Topwork.com, Freelancer.in, Truelancer.com
Get jobs through Naukri.com, in.indeed.com, Glassdoor.co.in, monsterindia.com and Guru.com and seek for potential clients through LinkedIn.

Bonus – #11. Pattern Designer

Pattern Designing is the new serious job addition for the career in graphic design. Pattern makers are skilled artists who create pattern templates based on certain guidelines that are used to mass produce products such as clothing, shoes, Tiles & marbles, Wall decorations, plastic ware, packaging surface and much more. We have seen lately on freelancing services like Fiverr that the demand for pattern designers has increased. Also more designers are jumping over it quickly to get some serious money. Although patterns are just a template which become seamless on repeating and can feel easy to make but certainly the creative aspect is same as for any other task listed here.

If you are good at drawing and have your hands on any designing tool then you can start right now and start earning good easy money. All you have to do is to translate blueprints and design models into factory print ready patterns.

What patterns you can design?

Patterns are used everywhere, whether it be promotional material or product packaging. You can provide pattern designing services to be used in industries like:
Clothing
Shoes
Interiors
Wall Decors (Printables & Murals)
Plastic Wares
Product Packaging

Required Skills:

Basic ability to make templates out of ideas on canvas and knowledge of designing tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, Affinity Design, Coreldraw. Free alternatives to start with are Photopea, Gravit Designer and Inkscape.

How to get started?

Start promoting your work through social media (will help you a lot), build networks with clothing and textiles businesses and register your services on freelancing websites like Fiverr and Upwork. Fiverr even have a separate service for Pattern Designing under Arts & Illustration. Also LinkedIn will help you get new clients if you dig good enough.

Answering your queries related to career in graphic design