GRAPHIC DESIGNING: A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO GETTING STARTED

WHAT IS GRAPHIC DESIGNING?

Graphic designing is the process of creating visual concepts to educate, inform and communicate ideas to consumers that inspire a certain outcome. A graphic designer is responsible for creating the layouts and designs which are used in print media, advertisements, reports, brochures, magazines, infographic, menu card etc.

The primary role of graphic designing is to be able to project ideas and experiences through visual content. It is the art of visual storytelling. Now, this can be achieved through something as simple as a logo or something as complex as pages of web designs. Graphic helps us establish a connect with our consumers.

Although graphic designing has commercial purposes like advertisements and business logos, graphics designing in itself is purely a means for artistic expression.

THE DIFFERENT SPECTRUMS OF GRAPHIC DESIGNING

Graphic design as a topic is composed of many different fields and specializations, ranging from print to web design, animation to motion graphics and so much more. Graphic design offers a multitude of opportunities and options for all kinds of interests.

Here is a list of the most popular specializations in graphic designing:

1. DESIGNING BRAND VISUALS:

Branding is the process of establishing a relationship between the business and its audience. Through the process of designing a brand identity, the designer aims at communicating the company’s personality to its consumers and helps build trust and credibility. When a brand has a strong visual identity, it makes it easier for the consumer to remember and recollect the brand, thus building brand loyalty. The designer through the help of shapes, images, and colors communicates the intangible qualities of a brand and evokes the necessary emotions to trigger a sale.

A visual identity designer often collaborates with the key stakeholders of a company to design creative assets that represent the personality of a brand. Assets like Logos, color pallets, images, typography are all important components of a brand’s visual identity that a designer must design. Since these designs are used across all visual media the designer must possess a general knowledge of all components of graphic designing

2. GRAPHIC DESIGNING FOR MARKETING & ADVERTISING:

A key component in a company’s marketing and advertising effort is to create visuals that are compelling enough to convince people into buying a product/service. A company will, therefore, depend on the graphic designer to create graphical content that is compelling enough to convince and influence the consumer’s decision-making process.

A graphic designer will have to closely work with the company’s marketing team to create assets that align with the marketing plan. A designer can specialize in a particular type of media or work with all the media styles.

Key areas of work:

• Designing email marketing templates
• Designing images used in websites and blogs
• Conceptualizing and designing infographics
• Designing ads for magazines and newspapers
• Designing postcards, flyers, posters, banners, billboards and other print media
• Designing signage and trade show displays
• Designing social media ads, banners, and graphics

3. DESIGNING USER INTERFACE:

A user interface (UI) Is a representation of how a user is interacting with your application or device. A UI designer specializes in the process of creating interfaces that make it easy for the user to interact with the platform and generates a user-friendly experience.

Generally, a UI designer works with all components that invoke an interaction from the user but a UI graphic designer focuses on design elements like visuals, buttons, menus and other micro-interactions. A UI graphic designer works along with the UX designers and developers to create an output that matches the company requirements.

Key areas of work:

• Web page designing
• Designing website themes
• Designing game interfaces
• Designing app interfaces

4. GRAPHIC DESIGNING FOR PUBLICATIONS:

A publication is a long and elaborate form of content that generally reaches the audience through a distribution network. Publications have traditionally distributed print media but over the last few years, there has been a significant rise in digital publishing. This has allowed for a new area of work for graphic designers to emerge.

Graphic designers that are skilled in publications often work with publishers and editors to design layouts, typography, and artworks for different publication materials.

Key areas of work:

• Designing graphics for books
• Designing graphics for newspapers
• Designing newsletters
• Designing directories
• Creating annual reports
• Designing graphics for magazines
• Designing catalogues

5. GRAPHIC DESIGN FOR PRODUCT PACKAGING:

A product often requires some kind of packaging to keep the product safe and for the ease of distribution and sale. A product packaging offers a good amount of space to market the brands message allowing us to communicate directly with the consumers.

A packaging designer develops ideas and concepts that utilize the product packaging to deliver important marketing messages to the consumer. To do this effectively a graphic designer must have a keen understanding of industrial production and design and also about all the different kinds of packaging materials and surfaces.
It’s not uncommon to find designer specializing in certain industries such as food, beverages, FMCG, etc.

6. MOTION GRAPHIC DESIGNING:

Motion graphics in simple terms are graphics that have some kind of a movement or motion in them. This can include various mediums like images, videos animation, typography, audio and other effects that are used for online media, television, and films. Improved technology has skyrocketed the medium’s popularity in recent years as video content becomes the next big thing.

Motion graphics designer were previously reserved for TV and film productions but improved technology has reduced production cost and time, making motion graphics more accessible and affordable. Motion graphics can now be found across all digital platforms.

Key areas of work:

• Advertisements
• Animated logos
• Apps
• Banners
• GIFs
• Presentations
• Promotional videos
• Title sequences and end credits
• Trailers
• Tutorial videos
• Video games
• Websites

7. DESIGNING ART AND ILLUSTRATION:

There is a very subtle difference between a graphic designer and a graphic artist. The former uses design to communicate a brand’s message and solve problems while the latter uses designing as a form of creative self-expression. Even though art and illustration in designing are not technically types of graphic design, the functionality of one overlap over the other so seamlessly that you can’t talk about one without the other.

Graphic artists use creative combinations of different mediums and techniques to express their work. you will often find them collaborating with people from different walks of life for both commercial and non-commercial activities.

Most of the graphic artists and illustrators have some kind of education in fine arts, animation or architecture but more often than not they are people who are self-learned and are just finding a creative outlet through these mediums

Key areas of work:

• Designing Album art
• Designing Book covers
• Designing for Comic books
• Designing Concept art
• Creating Motion graphics
• T-shirt designing
• Video game Designing
• Website Designing

BEST GRAPHIC DESIGNING SOFTWARES AND TOOLS

1) ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR CC

• Highest quality and advanced representation interfaces
• One of the best Industry-standard vector designs programs
• Scale works of art to any size without compromising on the image quality.

2) ADOBE PHOTOSHOP

• Easy to utilize formats and instinctive dashboard
• Professional instruments for essential photographic improvements
• Draw, paint, plan with a large number of pens, pencils, markers, and brushes

3) ADOBE INDESIGN

• Premiere page format and structure arrangement
• Applicable for print, advanced, and web media ventures
• Professional format and typesetting instruments

4) CANVA

• Can be utilized by people who are just starting out or by people who already expertise in designing.
• Designed for undertaking coordinated effort and sharing
• The tool has all the fundamental settings you need for altering and improving Pictures

5) GIMP

• Has Powerful picture editing tool
• Professional tools and output
• Has a wide range of customization and extensible

6) PIXLR

• Free online picture supervisor, you can access and utilize from anyplace
• Use it to alter photographs directly inside your Dropbox

7) INKSCAPE

• Robust free structure programming that deals with any OS and gadget
• Compatible with a wide scope of record positions
• Has all the setting you need for vector symbolism

8) AUTODESK SKETCHBOOK

• Built for exactness and speed
  Creative portraying apparatuses that reproduce the vibe of
• conventional illustration
• Scan and import line pictures with straightforward foundation and fill them in with ink and hues

9) COREL PAINTSHOP PRO

• Extensive toolset for illustration, portraying, painting, and picture altering
• The picture to painting pre-sets use AI to change pictures into works of art
• Comes with five centre inventive applications

10) PIKTOCHART

• Extremely simple and easy to utilize infographic creator
• Comes with a substantial library of subjects and layouts
• Customize ventures with your marking and media components

11) PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS

• Auto-produced compositions and slideshows
• Intelligent altering capacities and well-ordered aides
• Automatically organize documents by individuals, dates, subjects, and so forth

12) VENNGAGE

• Short, straightforward procedure to make infographics
• Designed for advertisers and communicators
• Create infographics and different materials for whatever need and reason

13) GRAVIT DESIGNER

• Feature-rich vector visual communication application
• Runs on any program, gadget, and OS
• Clean and natural UI

14) PHOTOSCAPE

• Integrated illustrations altering and plan arrangement
• Available in more than 30 dialects
• Free, fun and simple to utilize

15) AUTODESK 3DS MAX

• Top-of-the-line 3D displaying, activity, and rendering apparatuses
• Interoperable with other movement and rendering motors like Unity and Unreal
• Modern UI and adaptable workspaces

16) ONSHAPE

• High-end CAD framework utilized by many organizations
• Runs on web and versatile
• Total control and security over your cloud workspace

17) XARA DESIGNER PRO

• Fast and adaptable visual depiction programming
• Integrated program for picture altering, page format, representation, website composition, and so on
• High-execution vector rendering motor

18) SVG-ALTER

• Runs as an extra for your program
• Fast, JavaScript-fuelled SVG drawing editorial manager
• Store SVG documents and altering inclinations locally on your PC

19) ADOBE DREAMWEAVER

• Intelligent and disentangled coding motor for simple creation and the board of dynamic sites
• Customizable starter layouts to rapidly get your site ready for action
• Supports multi-screen for Windows

20) RENDERFOREST LOGO MAKER

• Free adaptation. You can modify and download logos in PNG
• User-accommodating logo creation. You can rapidly discover comparable logos to what you need through its restrictive calculations and make the vital changes to the content, text style, and foundation to additionally customize and make it your own.
• Interactive logos. The paid alternative gives you premium highlights to redo and revive your logos.

GETTING STARTED IN GRAPHIC DESIGNING

IMPORTANT ELEMENTS OF GRAPHIC DESIGNING:

Graphic designing at first glance looks complex and intricate but when you dissect it down to its bare minimum designing contains the following components:

• Lines
• Shapes
• Colour
• Type
• Texture

A designer works with these components in different permutations and combinations to deliver the final output you generally see on the screen.

12 BEST DESIGNING GUIDES THAT WILL SAVE YOUR MONEY AND TIME

1. Alison Online
2. Book Cover Archive
3. Creative Bloq
4. Creative Pro
5. DesignLab
6. Envato Tuts+
7. Grain Edit
8. Hackdesign.org
9. Skillshare
10. Teach Yourself Graphic Design
11. The Noun Project
12. Udemy: Introduction to Graphic Design

CREATING A BRAND IDENTITY

Brand identity is very simple words is the company’s personality, values, and ethics as conveyed to your customers. Brand identity is important because It can create customer loyalty and employee satisfaction. Through Brand identity, you orchestrate how you want the consumers to perceive your product and brand. A designer creates a brand identity with the help of the logo, colors, design, symbol, and tagline

SIX KEY COMPONENTS OF CREATING A SUCCESSFUL BRAND IDENTITY:

• The clarity in the brand’s purpose and positioning
• Extensive market research
• Creating a brand personality that is likable
• Designing a Memorable logo
• Using an attractive color palette
• Using typography that looks professional

BROCHURE DESIGNING

10 KEY LESSONS ABOUT BROCHURE DESIGNING:

1. Be very clear with the objective of the brochure
2. Be creative and unique in your design
3. Think in terms of the Audience
4. Don’t compromise on Quality
5. Incorporate texture in your design
6. Include Call-To-Actions in your copy
7. Have a Visual Theme
8. Choose the right colors.
9. Always Proofread your copy multiple times
10. Design your brochure for Printing

If you need a team of experts to design your brochures for you, visit our page:

LOGO DESIGNING

8 COMPONENTS TO KEEP IN MIND WHEN DESIGNING A LOGO:

1. Understand the purpose behind designing a logo and what it needs to accomplish
2. Design a logo that is in alignment with your brand’s identity
3. Look for inspiration in and outside your industry
4. Sneak a peek into what your competition’s logos look like
5. Find and use a design style that you are comfortable with
6. Be conscious of the colors you will use in the logo
7. Choose the right typography
8. Make sure the logo looks good at any scale

A LIST OF THE BEST LOGO DESIGNING TOOLS:

There are so many different logo designing tools and software out in the market each with a varying set of features and its own pros and cons.

Here is a list of the most popular logo designing tools:

• Adobe Illustrator
• Canva
• Designhill
• Graphics prints
• Laughingbird
• Logaster
• Logo Design
• Logo Design Studio Pro
• LogoJoy
• Logomaker
• Logoshi
• LogoYes
• Sothink
• Squarespace logo maker

If you are looking to get professional logos designed at affordable costs our team of expert logo designers can make that happen for you

WEBSITE DESIGNING

HOW TO DESIGN A WEBSITE WITHOUT LOSING YOUR MIND:

• Keep the website design clutter free
• Design a website that is search engine compatible
• Design the website keeping in mind the need for it to be mobile friendly
• Design a layout that takes people through a sales funnel and gathers leads for the business
• When designing, place the contact details in an area that is easily visible and accessible
• Compress the images while designing the website.
• Keep the branding professional and uniform across the entire site design
• If you are selling a product or service make sure they are showcased well
• Do not compromise on the site load time
• Make sure your content is appropriate, catchy and has keywords.

STATIONERY DESIGN

GETTING STARTED WITH STATIONERY DESIGN:

• Invitations & Stationery
• Getting Started in the Stationery Industry
• Sell Stationery Online: A Step-by-Step Guide
• How Anna Bond Turned a $10,000 Dream into a Million-Dollar Business
• #Girlboss Interview Series: Kalyn Johnson Chandler on the Stationery Business

Get professional stationery designing services at

EMAIL GRAPHIC DESIGNING

FIVE PREPARATIONS YOU SHOULD MAKE BEFORE USING EMAIL GRAPHICS:

• Include compelling Call to Actions in your email content
• Create a Visual Hierarchy to make it easy for users to understand the content structure
• While Designing make sure you incorporate the designing rules that apply to Mobile Devices as well
• White Space is powerful. Try using it in the email design
  Try incorporating your content within the email header and Footer
• Include Infographics to communicate complex information visually
• Choose a color theme based on what emotion and action you are trying to invoke from the users.
• Use Fonts that are easy to read
• Use a Clean, systematic and Organized Layout for your email design
• Use attention-grabbing Images in your design

DESIGNING INFOGRAPHICS

SIX RELIABLE RULES FOR DESIGNING INFOGRAPHICS:

• Break up your infographic into small segments. Designing a proper structure in your infographic will help the users to understand what is important in terms of content. They can also quickly scan the content.
• Design your infographic keeping in mind your target audience. A really well-designed infographic won’t perform well if it does not resonate with your target audience.
• Keep the infographic simple don’t over design it. The best infographics have a minimalist approach to designing that conveys the message while keeping the content visually appealing.
• Make sure you allow your info graphs to be shareable. Make it easy for your users to share your content by adding social sharing buttons into your design
• Start with good content.
• Remember to use a call-to-action in your infographic to guide users into the next most logical action that they would take.

SOCIAL MEDIA GRAPHIC DESIGNING

10 SOCIAL MEDIA GRAPHIC DESIGNING TIPS YOU NEED TO LEARN NOW:

• Use different image sizes on different Social Media Platforms
  Include your Logo in all your images and visual content
• Set a Goal and the metrics to monitor for it
• Try to use a Blend of Shapes and Images in your content
• Avoid too much Text
• Maintain Consistency in your content designing style and posting
• Be Creative in the kind of content you put up
• Use different kinds of Typography
• Use the power of Negative Space
• Have your Branding visible so that you increase your brand’s awareness

If you are looking for a creative agency that can design your social media needs, then look no further:

MENU CARD DESIGNING

8 MOST POPULAR TIPS FOR MENU CARD DESIGNING:

1. Understand the eye scanning patterns of your consumers
2. Make sure you divide the menu into logical sections so that it is more cleanly organized
3. Use as minimalistic photos as you can
4. Experiment with using illustration in your design
5. Don’t overly emphasize or draw attention to the currency signs
6. Consider using boxes to segment different parts of your menu
7. Experiment with the different kinds of Typography
8. Choose appropriate colors on the menu

Want to design a menu card? get in touch with our team of experts

STICKER DESIGNING

5 FUNDAMENTAL RULES YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO IGNORE WHEN IT COMES TO STICKER DESIGN :

1. Think your colors through. Use colors that are bright but also consistent with your brand’s colors and all of the other promotional tools
2. A good sticker is a great design but a great sticker design is a simple design. The most popular sticker designs are simple, have good recall and are on-point.
3. Design your sticker in CMYK instead of RGB in case you want to print them.
4. Create vector images while designing stickers so that you can scale them to any resolution
5. To avoid white borders after trimming add a bleed area to your sticker design

Get a quote from professional sticker designers

PHOTO EDITING AND DESIGNING

3 IMPORTANT FACTORS THAT YOU SHOULD CONSIDER FOR A DIGITAL IMAGE:

1. Shoot your images in the RAW format. This allows for easy editing, like fine-tuning your exposure levels and white balance.
2. Give yourself room to crop, go as wide as possible. You can always crop images in the post editing process.
3. Shoot with as low an ISO as you realistically can. You can get the best possible range

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