Graphic designer interview

Student Forum
#1

for my current project in a class, I am required to interview a graphic designer and turn the responses into a report. I would appreciate if I could get some responses from a couple of people. Ready for the questions?

1.How many hours a day do you invest your time into graphic design.
2. What was your first job as a graphic designer? Current job?
3. How many jobs have you had as a graphic designer. How many as internships?
4. What artists do you pull inspiration from?
5. How old were you when you discovered graphic design?
6. What is your biggest accomplishment? Biggest challenge?
7. What happens daily as a graphic designer?
8. What do you do, as a graphic designer, to stay motivated and creative?
9. Why be a graphic designer?

#2

1.How many hours a day do you invest your time into graphic design?
I usually do freelance designer 8 hours a day, but this may vary depending on the amount of work.
I also invest 2 hours which depends on the day I divide in studying, researching or designing for my portfolio / improve my skills and apply the studied.
So I try to invest 10 hrs a day.

2. What was your first job as a graphic designer? Current job?
My first job as a graphic designer was in a school stationery, my job was to make designs for schools, brochures, cards, diplomas, certificates, flyers, book covers and other things.

3. How many jobs have you had as a graphic designer. How many as internships?
I have had 3 jobs as a graphic designer and a 1 month internship.

4. What artists do you pull inspiration from?
There are many well-known great designers, but my biggest inspiration has come from work colleagues.

5. How old were you when you discovered graphic design?
It was in 2007 at 20 years old

6. What is your biggest accomplishment? Biggest challenge?
I would define my greatest achievement as making my clients satisfied. It is the main reason for my work.

7. What happens daily as a graphic designer?
I would like this question to be more specific, but if I can tell you something that commonly happens in the life of a designer is that clients do not know how to express what they want and we do not know how to read their mind, resulting in a point of pain.

8. What do you do, as a graphic designer, to stay motivated and creative?
To keep myself motivated I set personal goals of where I want to go as a designer. This keeps me active in the search to improve the aspects of my work and myself. One method that I use to stay creative is to create fake projects, only to encourage creativity and try new techniques.

9. Why be a graphic designer?
Because I like to provide solutions, it makes me very happy to be able to help my clients realize part of their dreams in terms of their business.
and because I love it.

I hope you find this helpful!

#3

1. How many hours a day do you invest your time into graphic design.

I’m semi-retired, so my hours per day is not typical. I measure in hours per year.

2. What was your first job as a graphic designer? Current job?

My first job was a freelance job, which is not recommended. You’re first job should be an internship. My first salary job was an in-house job as the sole designer, also not recommended. I recommend that your first salary job be a B2C design firm or ad agency where you work under at least 1 more experienced designer.

3. How many jobs have you had as a graphic designer. How many as internships?

Countless freelance jobs. About a half-dozen salary jobs. Zero internships.

4. What artists do you pull inspiration from?

I don’t get much inspiration from commercial graphic designers. I get some inspiration from fine art illustrators, and street artists. I get most of my inspiration from scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurial company founders.

5. How old were you when you discovered graphic design?

I was about 25. Before that I was into illustrating since the age of 7 or 8.

6. What is your biggest accomplishment? Biggest challenge?

My biggest graphic design accomplishment was earning the business of Cosmopolitan magazine for a short time. My biggest challenge was dealing with difficult co-workers.

7. What happens daily as a graphic designer?

When I was a salary employee, it varied depending on the jobs. The B2B in-house jobs often left me trying to look busy while waiting for meaningful work to do. The B2C jobs often had me scrambling to meet deadlines on some days, and scrambling to find work on other days.

8. What do you do, as a graphic designer, to stay motivated and creative?

Look for problems to solve that include graphics, but are more important than advertising or branding.

9. Why be a graphic designer?

To get paid a livable wage doing semi-interesting and creative work while avoiding muscle strain and dirty hands.

#4

1.How many hours a day do you invest your time into graphic design.
I work 6 hours a day, pretty much all design work

2. What was your first job as a graphic designer? Current job?
First Job - The only designer in a small family print business
Current Job - one of 2 designers in a small family print business

3. How many jobs have you had as a graphic designer. How many as internships?
I’ve had 7 jobs doing graphic design - none were internships

4. What artists do you pull inspiration from?
I get inspiration from many sources - usually someone else’s design work. No specific artists.

5. How old were you when you discovered graphic design?
mid 20s - I helped out on a punk fanzine

6. What is your biggest accomplishment? Biggest challenge?
My biggest accomplishment is never being out of work for 38 years - biggest challenge is to keep learning

7. What happens daily as a graphic designer?
A lot of repeat work where I only have to update details, sometimes I get to recreate a logo or a design that someone has had done somewhere else. Increasingly people have had a website done and want stationery / leaflets done to match, so recreate the logo, copy and paste / edit the text, rip out the pictures / find better quality versions to print quality.

8. What do you do, as a graphic designer, to stay motivated and creative?
I come in every day knowing that I’m going to enjoy the work

9. Why be a graphic designer?
It’s what I enjoy doing and I’m good at it

#5

I don’t design any more. Got tired of that rat race. I don’t have the patience for all the back and forth bullshit. All the work I do now is production. ie taking other designers’ files and realizing them in print, 3D signage, or a combination of both.

  1. hours depends on what comes in the door. Some days it’s all you can do to stay awake you’re so dead in the water, those are 8 hour days. Other days there is so much work, if you don’t have a plan, you will sink below the surface never to be seen again. Those are 10 or 12 hour days and might turn a 5 day week into a 7 day week, working weekends. Bonus. I’m hourly. Overtime over 40 hours.

  2. First job was creating custom clipart before the days of stock sites for a small trash and trinkets…er…promotional items company. Current job is production work in a busy print/sign shop as part of a much bigger company.

  3. 2 jobs, 2 internships. Both jobs came from internships.

  4. All the work we do is contracted by designers. I do what I’m told.

  5. I was forced into design when CGI became the norm. Was a student of Illustration. Pixar ruined that. So somewhere around 25-ish.

  6. Biggest accomplishment is keeping up to date on all the wide format print processes and materials available out there. Biggest challenge? Not becoming jaded. Too much re-inventing the wheel out there. I see things in the trades that people think are new, that we’ve been doing, better, for more than 15 years.

  7. There really is no “daily” thing with graphic design. That’s part of the fun. It also really depends on what part of the industry you are in. In my strange little niche, there are the fast projects that come together in a matter of weeks, and there are the slow projects which develop over the course of a year or more. I just recently completed work on a large stage presentation where the designers worked practically 24/7 for two full weeks. And we just completed a major museum project that had been in development since 2013. The designer did not work on it every day for 5 years, he had maybe a dozen such projects in various stages of development. There’s way more to design beyond flat paper and logos.

  8. To stay motivated? Seek out interesting projects and work like heck to land them. Educational museum exhibits are some of the most awesome work I’ve done. I love working with odd materials too. Sometimes it’s a day of going to Home Depot, buying a cartload of stuff and running it through the flatbed to see if the ink sticks (it used to be to see if they catch fire, but the lamps are no longer that hot. LOL.) Or ordering in sample rolls of new media. Or going to visit with vendors to see any new capabilities. We’re always on the bleeding edge of innovation here. Someone always wants to do something crazy with their design work and I’m more than happy to oblige.

  9. Why design? For me, first you have to get beyond the stereotypical world of flat design. There is a whole other world of possibilities out there that don’t involve standard paper or web code. There are thousands of materials out there that can be combined in unique ways. There are processes to be mastered. There are spaces to decorate. There is knowledge to be gained. Graphic design doesn’t have to be about the sell. It can be educational, it can be purposeful. Don’t let your horizons be limited.

For your viewing pleasure:
https://www.google.com/search?q=museum+exhibit+design&client=firefox-b-1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjc8cGNosXeAhUwWN8KHbwUBKQQ_AUIEigB&biw=1464&bih=869

https://www.google.com/search?q=wayfinding+design&client=firefox-b-1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNoL2vosXeAhWohOAKHdxdB_cQ_AUIEigB&biw=1464&bih=869

https://www.google.com/search?q=event+design&client=firefox-b-1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj89YboosXeAhXBl-AKHabXCaEQ_AUIEigB&biw=1464&bih=869

https://www.google.com/search?q=corporate+theatre+design&client=firefox-b-1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjl7fT3osXeAhWldN8KHWsjDxcQ_AUIEigB&biw=1464&bih=869

https://www.google.com/search?q=broadcast+studio+design&client=firefox-b-1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwid_KmNo8XeAhXxmOAKHadvDtIQ_AUIEigB&biw=1464&bih=869

https://www.google.com/search?q=branded+spaces&client=firefox-b-1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_1t7Lo8XeAhUFneAKHRH_DdcQ_AUIEygC&biw=1464&bih=869

https://www.google.com/search?q=office+signage&client=firefox-b-1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwis_LmOpcXeAhWmmuAKHYyuCIIQ_AUIEigB&biw=1464&bih=869

https://www.google.com/search?q=donor+panels&client=firefox-b-1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj8qdW1pcXeAhVjnuAKHQvdA7EQ_AUIEygC&biw=1464&bih=869

#6

1.How many hours a day do you invest your time into graphic design.

Between my full-time job, my freelance work and my typography design, probably around 11 or 12 hours per day, six days per week. That sounds excessive and probably is, but I’ve been working that way for a long time.

2. What was your first job as a graphic designer? Current job?

I’m not sure if it was really a design job, but I painted weekly sales signs for a chain of grocery stores while in high school. This was before signs like these could just be inexpensively printed out.

As for current jobs, which ones? My day job doesn’t really have a well-defined title, but it amounts to communication/marketing/creative director. The other job is, I guess, owner/designer.

3. How many jobs have you had as a graphic designer. How many as internships?

One internship in college and three part-time design jobs. Since then (not counting freelance stuff), probably eight different full-time design job.

4. What artists do you pull inspiration from?

Artists are different from designers. I love art, took lots of art and art history classes in college, but I don’t draw any inspiration from them regarding my design work. They’re totally different things that occupy two separate spaces in my head.

5. How old were you when you discovered graphic design?

When I was in, probably, jr. high school there was a really good made-for-television animated movie titled The Point (look it up). The commercials in the movie were for a paper company, I think, that was selling things like stationery, school notebooks and loose leaf binders. The guy in all the commercials called himself a graphic designer, and he explained why his job designing all this stuff was so cool. I had never heard of such a job, and it stuck in my head. When I finally took my first design class in college, I decided that’s what I wanted to do.

6. What is your biggest accomplishment? Biggest challenge?

I’m assuming you mean a design accomplishment, as in hardest or longest or biggest? I can’t really point to one certain thing, but the most time-consuming single project was a top-to-bottom, inside-and-out redesign of a daily metropolitan newspaper. That project took over a year’s worth of my time.

My current biggest challenge at work is convincing clients that it’s in their best interests to let us do what they’re paying us to do.

7. What happens daily as a graphic designer?

For me, lots of meetings (I’m in a long, boring one right now).

8. What do you do, as a graphic designer, to stay motivated and creative?

Nothing in particular. It’s just what I do — long-term habit, I guess.

9. Why be a graphic designer?

There is no good reason unless you’re compelled to do it. Most people can’t make a long-lasting career out of it. It’s not nearly as lucrative as becoming an attorney or a plumber. The field is oversaturated with designer wannabes, and most will never find steady work.