Career in Graphic Designing: Courses, Admission, Jobs & Salary

Do you love art? Are you full of creative ideas and excited to bring them to life? If so, a career in graphic design, illustration and multimedia could be the perfect fit for you!

Graphic design is a profession or art of visual communication that combines words, images and ideas to express information to the audience.

Graphic design is also known as Communication design & visual communication. In simple terms we can say that the role of a Graphic designers is to create visual solutions to the communications problems.

Career as a Graphic Designer

Graphic designing is one of the trending career options for arts students after 12th. 

Professionals who use different methods to combine words and images to create a visual representation of any information are called as “Graphic Designers”.

The term “Graphic Design” was firstly appeared in print in “New Kind of Printing Calls for New Design” by William Addison Dwiggins in the year of 1922.

Graphic designers are artists who design art or visual content in print & electronic media platforms such as magazines, television graphics, social media and websites.

Graphic Designer are generally employed in various fields including, IT companies, web designing  firms, Media houses, Software and gaming companies. They work quite closely with the web designers to give an awesome look to the images, web documents, videos and many other web applications.

Graphic designer is a flexible job and many companies search for new and talented graphic designer for various designing projects.

Not sure what to do after 12th?

Learn About Popular courses and Career Options after 12th

Graphic Designing Courses

So are you ready to start your career as a Graphic Designer?

The first step to become a Graphic Designer is to hold a diploma or a bachelor degree in this field. Students can pursue a diploma, certificate, bachelor, or master courses in the field of graphic design.

Some best graphic design courses that students can pursue after 12th are given below:

Certificate & Diploma Courses

• Advance Diploma in Graphic Design
• Certificate in Graphic Design
• Graduate Diploma Program in Graphic Design
• Post-Graduate Diploma Program in Graphic Design

Bachelor Courses

• Bachelors of Design in Graphic Design (B.Des)
• B.Sc in Animation and Multimedia
• Bachelors of Graphic Design
• Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design

Master Courses

• Master of Arts in Graphic Design
• Master of Design in Graphic Design

Along with pursuing professional courses in graphics design, Candidates can also take online education for learning HTML, CSS, Photoshop, and Web Design.

Also Check: Career in Animation & Multimedia

Eligibility Criteria

Candidates interested in pursuing graphic designing courses, must meet the following eligibility conditions:

Undergraduate Courses: If you are looking for admission in UG courses, you must have cleared at least 12^th or higher secondary education from any recognised board.

Postgraduate Courses: For admissions in PG programmes, you should have a bachelors degree in the related or equivalent stream.

Softwares Used by Graphic Designers

Apart from creativity and strong drawing skills, graphic designers need to be proficient in graphic design softwares. Some commonly used programs include:

• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Illustrator
• Adobe InDesign
• CorelDRAW
• Sketch
• Figma
• Canva
• Blender
• Cinema 4D
• Adobe After Effects 

Admission

In India, the admission in graphic designing courses is done on the basis of entrance exam. Many top universities offer admission to students on the basis of marks secured in the entrance examination.

Here we have listed some examination in which you can appear for admission in graphic design courses:

Some of the top Entrance Exams are:

• NID Entrance exam 2025
• MIT Entrance exam
• CEED Entrance exam 2025
• UCEED Entrance Exam 2025
• Symbiosis entrance exam 2025

Apart from the entrance exams, some universities offer admission on the basis of 12th merit score.

Top Design Colleges in India

Top colleges to study graphic design are:

• National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad
• Industrial Design Centre (IDC), IIT Bombay
• National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), New Delhi
• Srishti Institute of Art, Design, and Technology, Bengaluru
• MIT Institute of Design, Pune
• Pearl Academy, New Delhi
• MAEER’s MIT Institute of Design, Pune
• Symbiosis Institute of Design (SID), Pune
• Sir J.J. Institute of Applied Art, Mumbai
• Indian School of Design and Innovation (ISDI), Mumbai

Career & Jobs

As a graphic designer one has diverse career opportunities in Tech companies, news and media agencies, IT firms, Gaming Companies and education and film industry.

Below are some of the popular career paths and roles in the graphic designing field:

Career as a Graphic Designer

As a graphic designer one can specialize in creating visual content for print, web and social media platforms. In this role, graduates have to specialize in using the softwares such as adobe creative suite, Canva etc.

UI/UX Designer 

As a UI/UX designer, candidates needs to specialize in user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design for websites and apps.

Some of the software and skills required for UI/UX designing are Figma, Adobe XD etc.

Motion Graphic Designer

With the rise of video content across the web, the motion graphics designer are very high in demand. As a Motion Graphic Designer, one has to design animations, video content, ads and using animation softwares and video editing tools.

Art Director

The art director manages the visual aspects of campaign by guiding the design team, supervises projects and responsible for brand design strategies.

Freelance Designer

A freelancer can work independently on various projects and can start his own designing studio. For career as a freelancer, candidates needs to be proficient in client communication and project management.

Skills Required

Skills needed in a graphic design job are given below:

• Innovative and Creative thinking to produce new ideas and develop interactive designs.
• IT Skills
• Problem Solving Ability
• Proficiency in the applications used in graphic designing.
• Basic understanding of HTML, CSS and other web designing languages.
• Communication Skills
• Ability to meet the client requirements.

You can easily find jobs in various design consultancies, advertising agencies, design studio, educational institutions, publishing and marketing firms.

After completing degree in graphic design, one can pursue career in entrepreneurship, and set up their own design studio or can work as a design consultant.

Role of a Graphic Designer

The graphic designers typically do the following tasks:

• Design layouts and select colors, images to use in the design.
• Create graphics and layouts for product illustrations, company logos, and websites.
• Develop graphic designs that meets clients objectives.
• Evaluate time and cost to complete the graphic designing or multimedia projects.
• Supervise other graphic designers or graphic arts technicians.

As a graphic designer, you can work in media and news companies, Software & IT companies, education and research and digital marketing agencies.

Job Profiles

• Graphic Designer
• Picture Editor
• Design Manager
• Brand Identity Designer
• Flash Designers
• Web Designer
• Visual Image Developer
• Logo Designers
• Video Editor
• 2D/3D Animator

Graphic designer also creates marketing brochures for products and services, design distinctive logos for products and businesses. Some graphic designer works for design firms while some can work independently.

Recruiters:

• Wipro Digital
• Tata Elxsi
• Flipkart
• Zomato
• Byju’s
• Swiggy
• Reliance Jio
• Infosys
• Cognizant

Salary

How much you will earn as a Graphic Designer?

Well there is no limit to the amount of money one can earn as a designer, this majorly depends on the individual creativity, area of expertise and the specific industry or company one is employed with.

The salary of a graphic designer in India can range between ₹4 to 18 lakhs per annum. The salary depends on candidate’s role, experience, job location and company.

The starting salary of a graphic designing fresher could be around ₹3-5 lakhs per annum.  Candidates working in product based companies like Canva, Adobe, Amazon, Google are paid much higher as compared to the serviced based companies like TCS, Tech Mahindra, Infosys etc.

Mid level designers with 3-5 years of experience and specialization in UI/UX or 3D Animation can earn anywhere between ₹5-8 lakhs per annum.

Senior designers with 5-10 years of industry experience, working in specialized roles can earn upwards of ₹10 lakhs per annum.

Books & Study Materials

Here we are providing some good books which will help you throughout your studies:

• The Elements of Graphic Design by Alex W. White
• Just My Type by Simon Garfield
• The Little Know-It-All: Common Sense for Designers by Silja Bilz
• The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher
• Design, Form and Chaos by Paul Rand
• Graphic Design Theory From the Field by Helen Armstrong
• The Graphic Design: Reference + Specification Book by Poppy Evans and Aarsis Sherin
• Guide To Graphic Design by Scott W. Santoro

FAQ’s on Career in Graphic Designing

If you have any other queries about Career in Graphic Designing, you can leave your comments below.