How do I become a graphic designer?
I need to know, from square one, how to become a graphic designer. Right now I have adobe photoshop Elements (i can't afford cs3). I need to know what I should do from now until I become one what to do. I'm a freshman in highschool right now if that helps. Thanks (:
Comments
you go to www.becomeagraphicsdesigner.com
oh ya and u r going to need alot more than adobe u r goning to need thousands of $ s of programs for example AUTO CAD and GFI i know because my uncle is a graphics designer
You do not need AutoCad or anything similar unless you are going to get into 3 dimensional design or product/industrial design. Nor is Photoshop the most frequently used software. Graphic design covers many disciplines, nearly all these disciplines are, to some degree, involved with combining text with image – one area you should work on is typography get (and read) Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst (it can be daunting but the lessons learned here will serve throughout your career) and the Logo, Font and Lettering Bible by Leslie Cabarga (good grounding on creating logotypes), another area you could look at is the processes that follow design – printing or website creation these processes govern design to some extent in the professional arena.
In short, graphic design is not about software (true, the software does make up a proportion of your tools) it is far more cerebral than that.
Don't worry about what you can't afford right now. Start looking at graphic designs...It's a big field. If there's a bookstore near you, hang out in the graphics magazine section and look at what's being done. You need to practice seeing a graphics world. Little by little it'll come. When you find yourself studying cereal boxes, magazine covers, brochures, ads, logos and candy bar wrappers for the design and not for the product, you'll know you're there;-)
In the meantime, if you want to get acquainted with vector graphics, download and play around with Inkscape. It costs a lot less than Illustrator - it's free.
http://www.inkscape.org/
As you get to know more about design, things will settle down for you. You'll have a better idea about what you want to do and where you want to go with it.