I am a beginner and i need expert advice

i am beginner and i am interested in graphic design.
can somebody tell me where and how to start it and what is the scope of a graphic designer today and in future.
your help means a lot to me ,thank you

How it will pan out if the futureā€¦ If I knew that, Iā€™d be far wealthier than I am now!

The way to start ā€“ and continue ā€“ is education and then experience. In todayā€™s market, if you want to play with the big kids, you wonā€™t even get a look in without a good degree from a good university. Studios are almost certainly going to discount any application from self-taught designers, unless they truly have a stand-out portfolio, but the chances of this are pretty slim. If you want to bottom-feed, earning $50 here and there from competition sites (if you are lucky), then YouTube and Canva are the way to go. If you want to understand what design is and what you are doing then there is no substitute for actually being qualified ā€“ at very least a mentored entry level job, where you learn on the job for a few years.

1 Like

Your screen name is ā€œthe illustratorā€
Word of warning.
Graphic Design is NOT about your Art. Far from it. It is about conveying another personā€™s message to another group of people, and neither may have anything in common with your Art.
Far too many students ā€œinterested in designā€ are interested because they are ā€œartisticā€ or ā€œhave a natural flairā€ or whatever. If that describes your interest in design, find a better paying field of employment and keep your Art as a hobby.

If that doesnā€™t describe you, then what Sprout said. In the US, an entry level graphic design position is a 4-year degree AND 2 years of experience. If you arenā€™t working internships or part time jobs starting in your junior year, you are behind the eight ball. The road to freelance is having a full time job in the filed for 5-10 years, learning all the ropes you can (there will always be new things to learn) and then after you have the contacts and the chops maybe decide if you are ready to run a business on your own. Freelance is a business. Taxes, bills, overhead and all. Design is maybe only 30% of a freelance gig.

1 Like

Here in the US, as PrintDriver mentioned, a relevant 4-year university degree and good internships are becoming increasingly important to find a position as a working design professional.

In other parts of the world, that might not be the case. You might get more relevant advice if you mentioned where you live and what your objectives are.

Graphic design is a great career with bright future for people who are creative skills and enjoy art, technology, and communication abilities.

Which vertical you want to make future like Website Design, Publishing Design, Animation Design, Product designā€¦etc

Amen to that!!

I would kinda agree with Just-B, PrintDriver, and sprout. A good degree from a great school does help! However, I have 2 degrees and the companies that I worked for never asked about them. I did however get to work with all the big Hollywood studios because I grew my skill level and found my ā€œvoiceā€ in a big industry!

Just keep learning and learning! Get the degree and while your going to school do online tutorials and sign up for memberships with Lynda.com (does she still exist?) and Skillshare where you can learn from professionals.

Key thing to remember is that you need to put the work in and donā€™t stop! If you go to school and donā€™t land a job immediately then keep learning! And absorb everything you see and touch. You never know when or where you will get some spurt of inspiration!!

ā€¦ oh and you have to love what you do! You will find that with all of the great designers in this community!

As Just B pointed out recently, if you didnā€™t have that degree no one asked you about, you probably wouldnā€™t have been interviewed for the jobs you had.

I think Sprout might have mentioned that too, but Iā€™m not quite sure.

When I was the CD or AD at jobs, I donā€™t remember ever discussing an applicantā€™s education during an interview. It might have come up on occasion when there was something unusual about it, but it was never part of the questions.

Iā€™m sure places exist that donā€™t emphasize education, but nearly every place Iā€™ve worked required a relevant bachelorā€™s degree. No degree listed on the resume automatically meant no further consideration ā€” not even a cursory look through an online portfolio. For that matter, our HR people filtered them out before I even saw them.

From time to time, Iā€™d have someone track me down to ask if Iā€™d gotten their application. When I didnā€™t recognize them, Iā€™d ask if they listed a relevant bachelorā€™s degree on their resume. When they answered no, Iā€™d tell them that HR filtered them out for not meeting a minimum requirement.

Iā€™m sure we ruled out many qualified applicants doing this, but with 150ā€“200 applicants per position, we needed across-the-board cutoffs to bring the numbers down to manageable sizes. A college degree showed they had already been vetted by a university and managed to pass muster. The degree was also a solid indicator of someoneā€™s commitment and resolve.

One time, we were looking for a full-time videographer. An applicant showed up at my office. Iā€™m not sure how he got into the building, but he wanted to know if I had seen his work. I told him the story about needing a bachelorā€™s degree, but he insisted on showing me his work. He had worked on movies and television and had some documentary work under his belt. His work was precisely what we needed, which is why he applied.

He was arguably the best applicant, but we had to turn him down. Some of our projects involved federal money, with stipulations regarding fair hiring practices. If we had made an exception for him, we would have had to remove the degree requirement for every other applicant for that job, which because of deadlines and workload, wasnā€™t doable.

I suppose my point is that a relevant university degree will often open doors that would otherwise remain closed for various reasons, despite ability, talent, experience, and a great portfolio.

If you are an creative person then this would be an great career for you. There are many design needs across every industry, so Graphic Designers have many opportunities.

While opportunities are out there, you sorta have to have a goal in mind when you enter this field or you will be ā€˜doing business cardsā€™ and scrapbook ā€˜logosā€™ for pennies.
Graphic Designers are a dime a dozenā€¦no more like a dime a grossā€¦and to make a living wage you really have to be out there on the furthest branches of the design tree - and be really really good at what you do. Just being a ā€˜creative personā€™ does NOT cut it out there. You have to be good, you have to be fast, you have to produce measurable results for your clients. You have to be business driven. The number of designer students who tell me ā€œI canā€™t do mathā€ or ā€œI hate doing researchā€ should just pack it in right then and there (Iā€™ve had prospective interns actually say both of those things in interviews. Yes, we interview interns. Not all of them get placed.)