Are you planning to kick-start your graphic design career but need help knowing where to begin from? According to HubSpot, it’s demanding for a beginner to start a successful career in the graphic design industry. That’s because, more often than not, as a novice graphic designer, you’ll have to compete with well-established graphic designers with impressive records. However, you can penetrate the stiff competition and find your space in this industry with the right skills and tips.
Read on to discover nine tips that can be useful for you as a beginner looking to kick-start a career in graphic design. These tips include:
1. Develop a Diversified Graphic Design Portfolio
When venturing into the graphic design industry, you must ensure you have a wide selection of graphic design software you’ve developed to showcase to your prospective clients. And because there are several thousand, if not millions, of projects clients would want you to work on. Therefore, you must create a diversified portfolio demonstrating your graphic design skill sets.
You can showcase your style, quality, and skill level through your diversified portfolio. That way, you can attract prospective clients to your platform, successfully helping you establish a functional graphic design career. Therefore, if you’re looking to begin a career in graphic design, start by building a diversified portfolio that can convince potential customers of your ability to design impressive graphic art pieces.
2. Promote Your Graphic Design Work on Social Media
The next tip is strategically placing your portfolio on publicly accessible platforms, including Instagram and Facebook. You can also post your portfolio on specialized art platforms, such as Pixiv or Deviant Art, where potential clients can view your work. An excellently organized gallery of your greatest art pieces is the best way to promote yourself, as such pieces speak much about your talent, skill, and experience as a graphic designer.
Moreover, you can create and post short clips of how you create your art pieces on different platforms, including Reels and TikTok. Often, many prospects are keen on viewing the process you go through until you create the final art piece product. By posting such short clips, you’ll showcase your expertise to more potential clients, increasing your chances of becoming successful in the graphic design industry.
3. Communicate with Potential Clients Professionally
To run a successful graphic design career, you must learn how to communicate with your prospects professionally. You must learn how to effectively converse with your customers and prospects, ensuring they understand each aspect. If something is unclear during your conversation with your client, don’t assume it, but rather clarify with them.
Additionally, you must ensure you always reply to client inquiries promptly. After all, your prospective customers might have contacted competitors, and if you fail to respond on time, you might lose them.
4. Request for Feedback from Clients
Whenever you complete and submit a project to a client, ensure you request them to provide their feedback with recommendations. Even when you fail to work on a prospective client’s project, understanding how they perceive your graphic design career will help you enhance your output. Therefore, feedback from clients and prospects matters in rowing your graphic design career, and you should collect such feedback.
5. Take a Reasonable Number of Projects at a Time
One of the biggest mistakes new graphic designers make is taking on several projects at ago that they need help to complete. If that occurs, you might rush to complete projects to meet the deadlines without doing quality work. That might lead to customer dissatisfaction and, ultimately, failure of your graphic design career.
6. Look for Clients on Freelance Platforms
To promote and grow your graphic design career, you must go where potential clients are. You can start with freelancing platforms such as Fiverr, LinkedIn, or Upwork. Irrespective of the platforms you decide to search for your prospective clients on, you must first set up a professional profile and portfolio.
7. Keep Up with the Current Graphic Design Trends
Nowadays, prospective clients are looking for graphic designers who are up to date with the present graphic design trends. Therefore, you must position yourself in a way that will keep you updated since this is an ever-evolving industry.
8. Select an Area of Specialization
The graphic design industry is vast, and it will only be prudent for you to venture into this field with a specialization. By specializing, you can advance your skill sets in a specific area, thus sufficiently catering to the needs of the clients in that area.
9. Keep Learning New Skills
As mentioned earlier, graphic design is an ever-evolving industry that requires new and experienced graphic designers to keep learning new skills and tricks. Therefore, to establish a successful career in this field, you must ensure you learn a new skill every time.
Conclusion
Although the graphic design industry is very competitive with well-established practitioners, novice graphic designers can also make a name for themselves. If you’re one of the individuals looking to start a career in graphic design, begin by following the above nine tips.