Potential of Graphic Design as a Future Career in Sri Lanka
Over the last decade of my role in building Sri Lanka’s design education, I have watched students graduate as graphic designers. I have followed their careers as they got promoted, started their own businesses, won awards and seen the potential of graphic design grow, while a real shortage for qualified graphic designers also developed. This shortage is due to the big gap between the number of professional graphic designers being produced and the number of designers the country currently needs. This shortage is also increased due to the lack of understanding what graphic design means, and confusing professional graphic designers with people just playing around with Photoshop/layouts which leads to businesses hiring unqualified people to do serious graphic design work and having their needs unresolved. On the other hand, while other design sectors such as fashion design and interior design attract more youngsters, there are comparatively less students choosing graphic design even among those who choose design, so there are less graduating as professional graphic designers. This again, is because the potential of graphic design and the amazing role you can play as a graphic designer contributing both socially and in business is unknown. So, within this context where there is a lot to be understood about graphic design, let’s first understand its role in business and why it is in such demand.
Today, most Sri Lankan businesses need to compete globally and to do that, design becomes an absolute imperative. So, from having a brand’s corporate brand identity with a well-designed look, a memorable logo and a clear individuality, designing a powerful advertising campaign to reach the market to having impressive packaging that will appeal to international customers, design becomes essential. Whether it is a tea company exporting to Europe, clothing companies shipping to the US or a cosmetics company catering to clients in SL and abroad, design solutions are needed by all to stand out among competitors and reach the consumer. The profession that provides all these design solutions for every kind of business out there, is graphic design. So you can now begin to imagine how much demand is out there for graphic design and what a useful sector it is for businesses across the board; this paired with the previously mentioned shortage for qualified graphic designers, it is a sector that guarantees stable employment with attractive remunerations.
Despite all this, many still don’t understand what it really means; Graphic design does NOT mean some mouse-clicking, doing some Photoshop or playing around with a computer; it is really is about communicating through visuals. Graphic designers are the professionals who create visual identities for brands by designing logos, colours and letters that will suit the brand. E.g. Every time you see the Coca-Cola logo, letters or sometimes even the just colours, you identify that brand. This is because a professional graphic designer designed it that way. So every time a new brand comes about, a new hotel/restaurant opens up or a new product is launched, graphic designers are employed to design logos and brand identities. This means graphic designers are needed to think of colour psychology, what different shapes mean, what different target markets like and so on; it’s an area that requires a lot of knowledge, research and experimenting. As a whole, it is a very exciting sector with very rewarding careers for qualified designers.
Graphic designers are also hired by businesses to design packaging for products; they decide the colours and the materials that go with it, easy and interesting ways to open the package, interactive ways to give information about the product and so on. Packaging design is a very serious sector of graphic design that plays such a huge part in the product sales and the revenue of a company. Packaging design done by a professional graphic designer is valued by businesses and leads to highly financially lucrative work-projects for graphic designers.
Another exciting possibility for graphic designers is editorial design. This means designing magazine covers, layouts, webzines and newspapers, Book design for publishing houses etc. This too is a highly rewarding line of work for graphic designers where they get to design written content and work with exciting clients such as writers, magazine editors etc. In addition to this, there are many more areas that bring about new jobs for graphic designers. One of them is Typography where graphic designers are employed to design custom fonts for books, logos or even companies like Google that invest of collections of interesting font styles from different languages. For example, the unique shape of SriLankan Airlines’ logo letters was designed by a graphic designer. There are also areas like illustration and image-making that is used for posters of concerts, theatre, cinema and even media like children’s books, magazines and collectible posters.
So, what kind of education and qualifications are needed to get into a graphic design career? Today the accepted qualification for a graphic designer is an undergraduate degree meeting global standards. Currently, there is a 100% employability rate for graphic designers with this kind of education.
I think now, we all can see how graphic design is among the most exciting career choices for youth. Because of the high demand that graphic designers have, it is also a very stable and financially rewarding sector. As the competition within business increase over the next years, the demand for educated, qualified graphic designers will only increase more, creating more jobs and more opportunities for youth prepared to embrace this future. In this light, I think it’s very important for us to create this awareness on graphic design so that we all understand what this extremely important career means, and are able to seize the opportunities that it brings about
Today, most Sri Lankan businesses need to compete globally and to do that, design becomes an absolute imperative. So, from having a brand’s corporate brand identity with a well-designed look, a memorable logo and a clear individuality, designing a powerful advertising campaign to reach the market to having impressive packaging that will appeal to international customers, design becomes essential. Whether it is a tea company exporting to Europe, clothing companies shipping to the US or a cosmetics company catering to clients in SL and abroad, design solutions are needed by all to stand out among competitors and reach the consumer. The profession that provides all these design solutions for every kind of business out there, is graphic design. So you can now begin to imagine how much demand is out there for graphic design and what a useful sector it is for businesses across the board; this paired with the previously mentioned shortage for qualified graphic designers, it is a sector that guarantees stable employment with attractive remunerations.
Despite all this, many still don’t understand what it really means; Graphic design does NOT mean some mouse-clicking, doing some Photoshop or playing around with a computer; it is really is about communicating through visuals. Graphic designers are the professionals who create visual identities for brands by designing logos, colours and letters that will suit the brand. E.g. Every time you see the Coca-Cola logo, letters or sometimes even the just colours, you identify that brand. This is because a professional graphic designer designed it that way. So every time a new brand comes about, a new hotel/restaurant opens up or a new product is launched, graphic designers are employed to design logos and brand identities. This means graphic designers are needed to think of colour psychology, what different shapes mean, what different target markets like and so on; it’s an area that requires a lot of knowledge, research and experimenting. As a whole, it is a very exciting sector with very rewarding careers for qualified designers.
Graphic designers are also hired by businesses to design packaging for products; they decide the colours and the materials that go with it, easy and interesting ways to open the package, interactive ways to give information about the product and so on. Packaging design is a very serious sector of graphic design that plays such a huge part in the product sales and the revenue of a company. Packaging design done by a professional graphic designer is valued by businesses and leads to highly financially lucrative work-projects for graphic designers.
Another exciting possibility for graphic designers is editorial design. This means designing magazine covers, layouts, webzines and newspapers, Book design for publishing houses etc. This too is a highly rewarding line of work for graphic designers where they get to design written content and work with exciting clients such as writers, magazine editors etc. In addition to this, there are many more areas that bring about new jobs for graphic designers. One of them is Typography where graphic designers are employed to design custom fonts for books, logos or even companies like Google that invest of collections of interesting font styles from different languages. For example, the unique shape of SriLankan Airlines’ logo letters was designed by a graphic designer. There are also areas like illustration and image-making that is used for posters of concerts, theatre, cinema and even media like children’s books, magazines and collectible posters.
So, what kind of education and qualifications are needed to get into a graphic design career? Today the accepted qualification for a graphic designer is an undergraduate degree meeting global standards. Currently, there is a 100% employability rate for graphic designers with this kind of education.
I think now, we all can see how graphic design is among the most exciting career choices for youth. Because of the high demand that graphic designers have, it is also a very stable and financially rewarding sector. As the competition within business increase over the next years, the demand for educated, qualified graphic designers will only increase more, creating more jobs and more opportunities for youth prepared to embrace this future. In this light, I think it’s very important for us to create this awareness on graphic design so that we all understand what this extremely important career means, and are able to seize the opportunities that it brings about