For this weeks blog post I decided to look into jobs a bit. I graduate this May and currently have a job working for a non profit business as their in house graphic designer and web designer. Basically, I make graphics in Photoshop and Illustrator for social media, thank you cards and fliers in InDesign, and create new content for their website using WordPress. I was interning there last fall, but they offered me a temp position this spring since they have been understaffed. I do have an opportunity to move up there, and apply for a coordinator position, but I feel that it has become somewhat of a stagnant job. There’s not really room for me to grow and develop as a designer. I will stay working there until June or July when I leave for Europe (my best friend lives in Madrid right now so I plan to go visit her and travel Europe for a month after graduating).
AFTER this though, I would like to be able to come back home and find a decent job in a design firm, rather than being an in house designer. I found this article that I thought was pretty interesting that discusses the difference between Graphic Designer jobs and Web Designer jobs.
http://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/design/blog/graphic-design-vs-web-design/
I guess I see myself somewhere in the middle. I think I lean more towards the graphics side of things and definitely enjoy this more as a hobby, although I do have a love for web design as well. In the article though, it says that web designers make almost 20 grand more a year than people who simply do graphic design. While the article compares the 2, I think it’s actually really important to have good experience on both sides of the fence, and while a person may be a good programmer/coder this doesn’t necessarily mean they have an eye for aesthetics, but if you are designing websites you will still need to know how to use photoshop/illustrator etc. I feel that if you are good in multiple areas, it makes you more marketable. This is sort of the reason I want to get better at After Effects and Premiere as well. Multimedia and video experience I think would really help me stand out.
Another thing that stood out to me in this article was the projected growth for each field. Web Design jobs are projected to grow almost 30% by 2024, where as graphic design only 1%. I think this is important to consider while job searching as well. The more saturated the job market is, the more difficult it will be to find a job. If web design jobs are a growing field, then there will be more jobs accessible and more to choose from.
Graduation is coming up really fast (and it’s a little scary to think about job searching) but I feel pretty confident that I will be able to find a good job that suits my need to grow and develop as a designer, and I will always be able to freelance on the side as well to fulfill my need to be creative. Tbh, the future looks pretty exciting.