If you’re one of those artistic people, who loves to sketch, paint or doodle constantly, you’re also probably aware of the old ’starving artist’ adage. If you want to make a pretty good living as an artist, you can do it. How? Become a graphic designer and you’ll be well paid to do the work you love. There’s a big demand for good graphic designers. You’ll find a lot of work on the net, opening up plenty of work at home opportunities.

So what kind of education does it take to become a graphic designer? Although you can get your degree in Graphic Design, it’s not necessary that you have a degree. As with all the arts, the proof is in the pudding, so to speak, because your work speaks for itself. If your client likes the design, that’s all that matters. You make a sale and your client is spreading the word to friends and associates. Word of mouth referrals cost you nothing in advertising and often lead to new clients.

In order to become a graphic designer, there are certain skills you need:

1.You must have a good eye for color. This means that you intuitively can creatively combine color schemes that work. Ideally, your eye should be so refined that you can see a color and be able to make a precise match on the Pantone color chart.
2.You need to have a good handle on composition. You must also have a good sense of balance with color, and have a good understanding of effects of hue, saturation and contrast and be adept at adjusting red-blue-green (RGB) values.
3.You need to be an expert in a couple of sophisticated photo editors and have an array of small utilities to perform tasks your main editor doesn’t provide, or may not perform the task well or easily. Flash, Dreamweaver and other such graphic design tools give you more options.
4.You’ll want a sophisticated page design package. There are several out there, which generate the HTML coding for you, making it an almost exclusively visual tool.

People with natural artistic talent often possess intuitive skill with color and composition. However, there’s always room for improvement. So, if you’d benefit from a class in composition, go take one! Classes hone your skills and make your learning curve shorter.

What about the cost of software? While some of the heavy duty image editors can run you hundreds of dollars, there’s plenty of open source freeware to be found on the net. Look through your choices and download some of the ones you find intriguing. Play around with them and see which features you find most useful to your graphic design work. When you’re ready to buy, you’ll know what you need.

When you’ve got a sizable number of pieces, demonstrating the range of your skills, you’re ready for your website and you’ve become a graphic designer.

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