The multimedia explosion in our world today is mind-boggling. Multimedia animation, graphics, and interactive flash are everywhere, from television, the Internet, the computer, and video games, to billboards and even your mobile phones.
This, in turn, is driving demand for professionals in the graphics and multimedia industry. Positions available in the industry are varied, including graphics/multimedia designers, flash designers, photo editor, and illustrator.
These require a certain set of skills to unite creativity and technology.
To be truly successful, you must keep up with the latest computer software available. These apps allow you to use the right tools for the right job.
The most widely used multimedia and graphic design software in the industry today include:
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe InDesign
Adobe Photoshop
Apple QuickTime Pro
CorelDRAW!
Macromedia Dreamweaver
Macromedia Flash
Macromedia Freehand
Microsoft FrontPage
Microsoft Editor
QuarkXpress
Graphic design is a field that is increasing in possibilities for artistically creative minds. With thousands of new websites popping up daily, it makes sense that now is the perfect time to be a graphic designer. All it takes is a bit of artistic flair and a willingness to invest the time learning the coding needed to turn your design talents into a more technical endeavor.
If you’ve considered a career in graphic design or this is something you might find interesting now that you’ve heard about it, perhaps you should consider taking an online course or two to familiarize yourself with some of the most popular software in the graphic design field.
Once you’ve learned a bit, you may want to get your feet wet by designing a site of your own or a few other sites for friends and family and using them as your portfolio. You can bid on the many tender sites that continually ask for help designing websites and graphics for their websites.
Start a virtual and real portfolio of your graphic designs. You can take the actual portfolios to local businesses, particularly small businesses that are not part of big chains, and offer them a website design. In fact, you can build your own business, which you can do from home, by sharing your graphic design skills with a few local businesses. The news will spread over time, and eventually, there will be people who will come to you for help with their website and logo needs. This is a time to start your own graphic design business.
Training for these applications is widely available through vendors, their authorized training centers, local computer training schools, on DVD, or even on the Internet.
Classroom training offers enormous benefits as there is a trainer available for the duration of the course to answer questions or provide additional case studies or real-life knowledge.
More people are turning to online training programs that offer the convenience of learning from their desktop anytime, anywhere. The key advantage of online training is that the programs are divided into several short lessons so that only one software feature is taught for a 5-minute training segment.
For example, a 2-hour training program in Photoshop will be divided into several categories, such as brush tools, color adjustments, effects, vector tools, and filters. Each category is then divided into several individual lessons on the key features or functions.
As a learner, you get more flexibility. You can focus only on the specific features you need to use for a particular design job on a particular day, giving you the best “on the job” training.
The need for website designers will continue to grow as the number of websites grows, and the number of people accessing the web continues to grow. It is estimated that more than 1.3 billion people searched the web in 2007. In 1994 there were approximately 3,000 websites, now there are more than 43 million. Obviously, the need for a website and graphic designers can only continue to grow.
The median salary for a website designer is $ 48,000, but the salary range varies widely. Level of education, experience, and specialty will influence salary ranges, with some game designers making $ 100,000.
An associate degree or certificate can qualify a person for a position as a website designer or technician. The field opens up as one gains more skills through an educational program, such as an online or distance learning website design education program.
An online website and graphic design program will include classes on website fundamentals, interface design, multimedia technology, HTML, javascript, DreamWeaver, Photoshop, IllustratorFlash, and Pagemaker. You will learn about website design, color, art, copywriting, animation, game animation, sales strategies, language development, and search engine optimization.
Online Graphic designing education
Online education in graphic and website design will include projects that will help build your portfolio when it’s time for that important job interview.
An online degree website will be able to provide you with information on the various colleges and universities that offer this program. You will be able to know the classes and online courses that are part of the study plan. An advisor will be available to help you make decisions about starting an online graphic or website design education program. Information on financial aid will also be available.
In these modern times, it’s easy to underestimate the power of paper marketing. With highly effective ad space on social media, search engines, and websites, is it worth spending money and resources on somewhat throwaway marketing materials? Or are the days of door-to-door sales now a thing of the past?
The evidence suggests not.
Studies have shown that customers are much more likely to remember a brand if they have something tangible to hold in their hands and not a fleeting flash on a computer screen, although online marketing is effective in its own way. The brochure is still a very valuable marketing tool, so it makes sense to use both.
But where do you start when it comes to creating effective marketing materials? Of course, you can design and print them yourself. But without the right technical and artistic skills, you could end up with the result that you are not happy with. You want to do is sell your business short – poor marketing is often more detrimental to a lack of marketing.
