Multimedia is a great field to be heading into.
Try and sign up for a English refresher course while your there.

please don't post the same thread in multiple areas of the forum. If anyone has any comments, they will post them here - just be patient.

Duplicate thread has been removed.

wht is this english refresher course ....

he's talking about this:

A lot of people are put off by "chat speak". If you mean "you", type it out instead of typing "U". Use "and", instead of "n", "what" instead of "wht", etc. It makes your posts easier to read, people will take you more seriously, and more people are likely to respond.

dings, you use a lot of "text message speech". Makes you come across as either a) lazy or b) not that good with the English language.

My two cents. And I suspect the point of Neballer's post as well.

Iam sorry about the text speech.....and for the record i am a graduate in English Literature and neither am i a lazy bum to type ...jus thought it would be easier and would save some time for everyone....
Anyways, will make sure i type the whole text....Sorry about that...

That'd be nice, dings. Thanks.

We're not the typo or contraction police here, simply saying that there's no need to shortchange us on vowels and proper spelling, either.

you know, cause we're lazy. We don't want to have to think when we read.

I'm definitely lazy in that respect. If I can't read it, I don't answer it.
And it's 'field'...
What was your major again?

Sorry. Couldn't resist...

I just checked out the course list. Looks pretty darn basic enough to step into without even knowing how to turn on a computer. I'd visit the college and ask the students and professors just how basic this course is. And OMG they actually have a course named Prepress...! Good for them. Now let's hope it teaches at least the basics and the prof can recognize a crap file when he or she sees it. <I won't mention they aren't mentioning large format stuff LOL!>

Do you have an artistic background? Can you draw or sketch? If you are not passionate about doing this for a career and ready to work hard at it, you will go nowhere. Competition is high, position availability is low. Check out the posts in the FAQ section regarding school, degrees, and job availability. Not saying you can't do it. You gotta wanna though.

First, of all thanks to everyone for replying ....

I have a few more qusetions regarding this topic....
1. What is the pay of a graphic designer and a web designer for an entry level job?
2. What is the typical day of a designer and what kind of environment do they work in ?
3. Is it a very stress full job?
Thanx
Dings

fixt


1. low, ~30-40k.. I would laugh in their face if anyone ever offered me less than 30k with a college degree (middle of the country C.O.L. here).
2. really really depends.
3. yes, but no omg omg if I don't do this my life depends on this stressful... so "regular" with an extra headache or three when you deal with clients.

I started at $30,000NZ a year doing prepress and design but that is only about $24,000US per year! So it depends on your location and your company.

I start at 8.30am and finish at 5.00pm. During the day I might have meetings with 1 or 2 clients but mostly I interact with the account managers. I work in an office my room has 2 of us in here.

It didn't used to be, but because of circumstances beyond my control, my work is becoming much more stressfull. The deadlines in prepress are quite different to deadlines in design. Working in a print company, there are often times when I have an hour to knock out a design.

Buda, the only difference between deadlines in Prepress and deadlines in design is that sometimes the design is done the same day the print is due.

Is there a high school career questionaire out there that these same questions keep coming out from?
How did you get your job?
Do you have a degree?
How much was the starting pay?
How much do you make now?
How long have you been in your career?
What is a typical day like?
What is the stress level?
et cetera ad nauseum.

There is no set answer to how much the entry level will pay. You have to understand right off that 'Entry Level' in the Graphic Design field requires 2-3 years of experience. What you get paid while gaining that experience isn't necessarily a living wage.

A newbie designer fresh out of college doesn't stand a chance at gaining a position over someone with a really good book showing true design skills who may have no college education. Not everywhere, but as a generality. Knowing how the print industry works goes a long way in helping level that out. That's why Entry Level is 2+ years experience. You can't be costing a company money while you learn the Real World ropes. Hence my comment about the Pre-press course.

Then the typical day and the stress level varies with which portion of the field you are in. You can have a steady freelance work-at-home paced job where you set your hours while having varying levels of stress depending on client whims and product release dates. You can have a corporate 9-5 job. You can have a studio job doing marketing pamphlets and flyers etc and/or maybe websites -again with varying levels of stress depending on client whims and product release dates. Or you can have a studio job where a project may be in development for 3 years or more (some educational museum projects are on the books for 10+ before being realized) and the stress comes at the very end of the project when the fabrication is taking place. Or you can have a studio job that is much more schedule hectic where your designs continually lead up to either a big product release or a big corporate event where you work until you drop - but you better not drop because there is always another hungry tiger just waiting to fill your shoes.

What all of these different designers do in a single day varies from person to person and from day to day. Where I work, we never know what is going to come through the door from day to day and the designers who hire us work the same way. The joke about the napkin sketch isn't a joke here. It's a reality.

You need to do a LOT more research into what you think you want to be doing in this field.