How to Become a Graphic Designer Without a Degree

Daniel Scott

@dan

How to become a graphic designer

Graphic design is a burgeoning field with huge potential for growth. Graphic designers create visuals that communicate concepts, messages, and ideas. This includes everything from designing logos, posters, and marketing materials to maintaining a brand’s visual identity by selecting appropriate fonts and colors to creating and editing graphics.

To become a graphic designer you don’t necessarily need a degree but you do need a mix of skills (both software and design theory), a curious outlook and a creative mindset.

Getting started – which software should I learn first?

No matter which field of design you decide to specialize in you’ll need to learn 3 core applications first. Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop. I often get asked which is the best one to learn but you really need a solid grounding in all three.

You don’t need a degree to become a graphic designer but you’ll need a mixture of software skills and design theory. Image: Adobe Stock.

Illustrator

Illustrator is a great place to start if you have an interest in branding, logos and (as the name suggests) illustration. Illustrator’s main purpose is to enable you to create vector graphics. Vector graphics, rather than being made up of pixels (like an image in photoshop), are made of points and paths and are defined in the software as a mathematical statement. A vector format is essential for logos and icons as it means you can use them at various sizes without losing quality. It also means that you can quickly and easily play with different colour combinations (made even simpler with new Generative Recolor features).

Illustrator can also be used for design projects such as business cards, flyers, posters, packaging design, banner ads, social media graphics, website and app mockups and more!

Illustrator is your go-to application for logo design. Image: Adobe Stock

Other exciting features to explore in Illustrator are:

Type on a path (ideal for creating badges and logos)
Color blends/gradients
Pattern repeats
3D text
Converting a photo to vector (image trace)
Bending and warping text and graphics

and that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

If you are ready to get started on your design path by creating beautiful icons, logos, postcards and hand-drawn illustrations then you’ll want to dive into my course Adobe Illustrator Essentials Training. Or if you already have a good grasp of the basics then extend your knowledge and capabilities with my Adobe Illustrator Advanced Course. You’ll not only develop a fantastic foundation skills for a career in graphic design, you will also be fully equipped to specialize in branding, illustration or pattern design.

Photoshop

Photoshop skills are essential for any graphic designer. You’ll need plenty of core image-retouching skills

Cropping
Resizing
Color grading
Removing backgrounds
Combining images
Whitening teeth
Fixing bad hair days

If you have an interest in photography you can edit and improve your own photos, or take advantage of many stock image libraries (including Adobe’s) and use Photoshop to edit images to suit your purposes.

Plus you can learn all sorts of tricks for creating stunning visual styles and compositions.

As well as basic image editing, Photoshop can be used to create interesting collages and visual styles. Image: Adobe Stock

My Photoshop Essentials Course is a great place to start – as I set practical, real world examples and then teach you the tools and features necessary to achieve them. As you learn you will be creating pieces that you can use to build a professional design portfolio.

Once you’ve explored the essentials you can hone your skills, by diving deeper into the tools, or learning professional workflows & shortcuts to work more efficiently.

InDesign

InDesign is your go-to application for layouts. It is a powerful tool for combining text and images and the most efficient app to use for multi page documents, presentations, and any type-heavy documents.

You might have started your design adventures playing around with Canva but InDesign will take you to the next level! It gives you far more capabilities and a highly professional end result.

Its features offer you:

Fine control over the placement of text, images and objects
The ability to save text and object styles for consistency throughout your documents
Automatic features like page numbering and table of contents
Professional output options
Seamless integration of images and graphics from other Adobe applications such as Illustrator and Photoshop
Templates to get you started creating beautiful documents and presentations

Learn how to make professional documents with my InDesign Essentials Course. I will also cover essential design skills such as choosing and pairing fonts, setting up brand colors, making a document for print versus digital, how to use stock images and more.

Other Applications

Once you have these three core applications under your belt you can add to your repertoire with Figma (ideal if you are thinking of steering towards UI design), After Effects (for motion and infographics), Premiere Pro (for video editing).

Beyond Software

However becoming a graphic designer is more than software knowledge. There are also some key areas of design theory that you will want to familiarise yourself with.

Composition
Typography
Color theory

Composition

Composition is the way elements (text, photos, graphics and space) are placed on the page in order to create a clear visual message and hierarchy (order of importance). Some of the techniques used are symmetry/asymmetry, repetition, scale, grid, texture and color.

Typography

Typography is the art of choosing and using type. It goes hand-in-hand with composition and, in turn, helps your viewer to absorb the message easily. The graphic below illustrates some key techniques for creating visual interest and hierarchy with type.

These two examples illustrate how a deft styling of type can add interest to your design work - images from Skillshare.

In order to succeed at typography it also helps to have an understanding of

History of type
Type classifications
How to use punctuation correctly
How to choose the right typeface

Check out the ‘Type Talk’ series over on www.creativepro.com for a bunch of great articles to expand your typographic knowledge.

Even though much of our design is done on computers these days, it is still nice to have knowledge of the history of type and typesetting. Image: Adobe Stock

Color Theory

Color is another powerful contributing factor in design. Some topics that you should familiarise yourself with

how to create a color palette
psychology of color
how colors are used in branding
color systems such as CMYK, RGB and Pantone

Try my course Color Theory: Get Inspired by Color

Practice

As you’re learning these skills you’ll want to put them into action. It always helps to have a theme or brief to work to. As well as working through practical exercises in my courses you can join our BYOL challenges. Contribute to the current challenge or go back through past ones and give them a go.

Practice your design skills by joining our BYOL challenges. A great way to get used to working within a brief.

There’s a lot to learn to become a graphic designer, but it is a creative and inspiring career. So, simply start by picking a topic to learn. You’ll soon be on your way to becoming a Graphic Designer – without a needing a degree.

What 's Next?

Take your graphic design skills to the next level by joining BYOL. As a BYOL member, you will gain access to my 30+ additional courses on everything from Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and more. As a BYOL member you will also enjoy personalized support, earn certificates, and tackle exciting community challenges. Head here to sign-up!

See you in class! – Dan