#18 in Architecture and design books
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Reddit mentions of How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul
Sentiment score: 8
Reddit mentions: 13
We found 13 Reddit mentions of How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul. Here are the top ones.
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If I had to choose one I would go with How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul. There is a lot of books on design theory but this one focuses on everyday problems of designers, wether you are student or creative director in your own agency, with very direct and specific answers and solutions.
Hey, I'm not too sure how much I can help with the college choices, I come from a different country so I don't know enough about that, but I am big on learning things myself and if you'd like to strengthen your knowledge in graphic design, maybe even while studying, here are some awesome books to get yourself going in the right direction:
Meggs' History of graphic design: I love this book. before I bought it I found another on design as a whole but this is specifically related to graphic design. with a lot of briefs it helps to know what kind of association your font choice will create, and it's useful to look back at old graphic design to see if there's something you can re-purpose for your brief. if that's the case, this book is for you. Megg doesn't leave anything out too! it starts all the way back from the beginnings of written language!
The A - Z of Visual Ideas: How to Solve any Creative Brief: Imagery is almost as important to a brief as type. You'll need to be able to create something that grabs attention and gets a message across as quick as possible. If you're having trouble finding a way to express an idea, flip open this book and page through countless ways you could do it.
How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul: Work experience is the best kind of learning there is. and if you feel like you're lost when you begin, this book will be your faithful mentor. There's a lot about freelancing and starting your agency too, it's just invaluable all around.
The Principles of Beautiful Web Design: If you'd like to become a web designer, this is a good book to start with. I'm an experienced web designer so I find some of the points a bit obvious, but I found a lot to learn all the same.
I don't like to waste time when it comes to learning things through the books I've bought so I can tell you first hand that these books are absolutely useful and won't just waffle on about what successful agencies have done. I'd also like to let you know that one of the finest graphic designers my previous agency had was a guy who came straight from high school and just really loved doing graphic design. When he left, he left a huge space to fill. On the other hand, I've met designers with honours degrees who didn't stay for longer than a year. But get a degree if you can, it helps to get your foot in the door. Getting a masters is awesome, and if you went magna cum laude I'm sure you would knock it out the park :) you aren't over your head in the slightest.
A personal favorite
Talk to a lawyer, then an accountant, in that order. Don't take advice about starting a business from the internet. I would also recommend getting the book How To Be A Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul, as it has good advice about getting started on the path you are talking about.
On a more practical note, if you are actually turning down work on a regular basis, then you are ready to get started with freelance. Otherwise you may not be able to cover your overhead. Good luck man!
Give this a read. How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul
These are all really great books:
Grid Systems in Graphic Design
Grid Systems: Principles of Organizing Type
Thinking With Type
Meggs' History of Graphic Design
Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits
Don't Make Me Think
The Design of Everyday Things
How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul
Within Australia, budgets for design are closely linked to advertising spend. This means that economic downturns results in downturns for design and vice versa.
Growth has been pretty consistent over a long enough period of time, IBIS World indicates an annual average of 5.36% between 1995 and 2008. The total number of designers in the marketplace has definitely exceeded that rate of growth however, so yes, you are in an over saturated market. Like others have made clear however, focus on your skills and pay attention to trends and you are maximising your chances of weathering it.
The key word you used is 'professional' - you'd be surprised how many people from supposedly top quality insitutions don't conduct themselves professionally.
Have you read How to be a Graphic Designer without losing your soul?
Off the top of my head I can think of How to be a Graphic designer without losing your soul. There's also the extremely famous (though not related to design) How to win friends and Influence people.
Just dive in head first. In the summers and after you've graduated, do internships, find mentor programs to be paired with working professionals (AIGA and similar organizations have these), take on freelance gigs - do anything to get some real life experience. The technical prowess you can gain from school is just your toolbox, you need to get working on something to learn how to apply those tools. Plus, doing internships and the like are a great way to get your foot in the door of various design departments, and could lead to a great, steady job.
Also, for a more specific suggestion - I highly recommend the book "How to become a graphic designer without losing your soul" by Adrian Shaughnessy. It is a very well written book about all of the details they never teach you in school - best ways to promote yourself, interview tips, networking, what type of design work environment could be the best fit for you... etc. Not to mention its beautifully designed.
Don't be discouraged by designers you admire, they had to work hard to get to that point as well. Use them as benchmarks and inspiration, and realize that you have a lot of self-motivated work to do before you can enjoy success as well. Hope some of this helped, best of luck! :)
Adrian Shaughnessy
There were a few books that were reccomended as staples in my Design degree.
History of Design
How to be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul
Making and Breaking the Grid
...and there was one caled 'Type' that I can't seem to remember the author of.
Which is, on occasion, a wonderful form of payment. As I outlined above, having friends or family pay you back with beer is (occasionally) acceptable.
And I'm sure it would have been hard to have anything remotely like the creative freedom you seemed to have enjoyed were the people paying you in cash.
However, the fact stands that without legal tender changing hands you are, at best, saying "the efforts of my labor are worth a few cold ones." At worst you set a dangerous precedent for this company, and other companies reading about them on reddit or other websites, to think that any creative work should be valued at a lower rate.
To put it another way: What if you'd walked into the restaurant and said "generally the going market rate for a dinner at a restaurant is $25/person. But why don't you feed us for $2/person and we'll tell all our friends?" The restaurant is hard up for cash, so they agree. You eat, they lose money on the deal, but they hope you bring in your friends. And you do... only you've told your friends "there's this great restaurant I went to that feeds you for two-bucks a piece."
A new wave of folks come in, they all want the same deal. The restaurant argues, maybe they get some people up to $5. They've increased their pricing by more than 200% but they're still losing money.
Suddenly they have a wave of people in the city talking about cheap meals. Other restaurants are hurting, so they have to slash their prices to compete. Which means that the first restaurant has no hope of arguing up in price because not only do they have a history of giving away food at absurdly low amounts, now the people next to them are doing the same thing so they have no choice put to match or they fail to compete.
Pretty soon, you can't charge more than $5 a head at a restaurant, wait staff are cut, quality of food suffers, customer service sucks... and now $5 for what used to be good is now looking pretty shitty.
Things go that bad, that fast. That's why the market comes to a natural, healthy level and people shouldn't drastically undercut it.
I'm sure you didn't think about that, and (in all honest) the restaurant you did work for probably doesn't have nearly the budget of... say... taco bell or chi-chi's or whatever they're competing with. But the fact remains that some greater value needs to be applied.
If this is a career you want to persue, I really recommend you check out this book. It applies mostly to the design world (print and web), but the lessons translate very well to any creative medium.
I know you're young and early in your career as a designer, but please, please, PLEASE don't create logos for $35. That tiny amount of money wouldn't even cover an hour of research, let alone the hours, days, and weeks it should take to create a proper brand.
Don't undersell yourself, and certainly don't undersell the work of other designers. If you're interested in pursuing a career as a designer, read this, get this, and keep up the good work.