How To Become A Visual Designer
A visual designer creates user interfaces and websites that delight and engage users and visitors. Using your knowledge of space, color, texture and others, you will be making web pages that communicate a unified look and feel for a product or brand.
As a visual designer, you will be working together with other design professionals as well as with technical professionals like programmers and developers. Coming up with a consumer-oriented website is a highly-collaborative process that requires creative individuals from various fields to work together.
You can expect a lot of meetings and discussions with members of the design team to brainstorm ideas on how a website should be designed and its elements arranged. Most of these sessions will usually take place in the beginning of the project although there will certainly be meetings while the work is in progress to discuss issues that may come up.
You may be asked to build a website from the ground up or you may be commissioned to work on already existing one. Whatever the work is, you will utilize your knowledge of visual design to come up with an intuitive website that consumers will love to visit over and over again.
To become a successful visual designer, you need to have creativity and a good sense of how the visual elements of a page work together to come up with a great website. You also need to have solid skills in CSS, HTML and Adobe Photoshop, among other programs. You must also be able to work together with other members of the design team as well as know how to meet deadlines. You should also have problem solving skills so that you can promptly address issues that will arise in the course of the project.
Why Become A Visual Designer
A career as a visual designer is well-suited for those who want to fuse their creative skills with technical design knowledge. It is also ideal for those who want to work in a collaborative team environment. As the Internet continues to bring more companies online, visual designers will continue to be in demand, resulting to good employment opportunities. It’s also a profession that provides the opportunity to work fulltime for a company or become self-employed.
Visual Designer Work Environment
Visual designers work for manufacturing, visual design, advertising and public relations companies. They also work for search giants like Google. Some visual designers are also self-employed. Although they may have more freedom when it comes their schedule, they also need to work doubly hard to secure work compared to their salaried counterparts. Thus, they may have to meet clients even after office hours. Self-employed visual designers can work in their home office.
Visual Designer Salary
The Occupational Employment and Wages report of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that the mean annual wage of all other designers, the category where visual designers belong to, is $55,360. This is a bit higher than the mean annual wage of graphic designers which is $50,670.
Visual Designer Career Outlook
Although the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics does not have the job outlook specifically for visual designers, the employment rate of the similar occupation of graphic designers may be used as a basis for determining the possible employment opportunities in store for these professionals. The employment rate of graphic designers is projected to grow 7 percent in the period covering 2012 to 2022, a rate that is slower than the national average for all job types.
The job outlook for graphic designers who will be employed in the computer systems design and related fields will be much faster than the average rate for all job types. The employment rate for these professionals is projected to increase at 35 percent in the same time period.
Visual Designer Degree
A bachelor’s degree, preferably in a design-related course like graphic design, visual communication, industrial design and fine arts or a computer-related course like programming, is the minimum entry-level educational requirement for a visual design career. Expertise in software design programs as well as of programming languages is also going to be necessary so enrolling in these programs is going to be needed.
