A Graphic Artist is a professional skilled in Graphic Design and Art responsible for designing visuals that can convey subtle messages to the target audiences. Graphic Art is a set of processes that collectively is about creating creative visuals without worry about how they will be placed together in a design. Oftentimes, we tend to confuse Graphic Artist and Graphic Design since they are two overlapping roles that is why in this article we will make it clear what a Graphic Artist is. what are his/her roles and responsibilities along with some other information you should know about the role.
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What is a Graphic Artist?
A Graphic Artist is a creative professional skilled in Graphic Design and Art responsible for designing visuals that can convey subtle messages to the target audiences. Graphic Art is a set of processes that collectively is about creating creative visuals without worry about how they will be placed together in a design. The Role of a Graphic Artist is more on the side of creative art rather than web or application design.
A Graphic artist is expected to design visuals for communicating emotions, feelings, and messages to the customers. You can see Graphic Artists creating book covers, static images for movies, TV shows, etc., and designs on your T-shirt.
Roles and Responsibility of a Graphic Artist
Roles and Responsibilities of a Graphic Artist may vary from organization to organization, but here are the most common responsibilities that a Graphic Artist performs:
- Creative Thinking: Creative Thinking is essential to both a Graphic Artist and a Graphic Designer. For a Graphic Artist creative thinking is coming up with creative visuals that can convey a subtle message to the end consumer. These visuals or graphics are then handed over to Graphic Designers who will then implement these visuals in the overall design.
- Creating Assets: The primary role of a Graphic Artist is to design or create art or assets without worrying about how they will be used in the design. Graphic Artist creates those assets whereas the Graphic Designer puts assets together or modifies it to make it the final version.
- Graphic Design: Graphic art is a niche inside Graphic Design. A Graphic Artist therefore also responsible to work as a Graphic designer creating designing and implementing them in the overall website or application design.
- Graphics testing: A Graphic artist may also be responsible for testing whether the graphics are working well in different screen sizes or not. This may vary from company to company.
Tools Used by Graphic Artist
- Pen + Paper: The most important tool for a Graphic Artist it his/her Pen and Paper. This is where the real creativity happens, most of the design or the rough sketch is created in paper and later on designed digitally.
- Tablet: Graphic Artist also use Tablets and often times they substitute Pen + Paper with Tablet. With Software like Procreate or Adobe Fresco, tablets can easily replace pen and paper and it also enables the Artist to be more creative in his or her thoughts as well as design.
- Adobe Photoshop: Adobe Photoshop is most popular graphics editing software till date. It is the first choice of most of the designers for its extensive list of features.
- Affinity Designer: Affinity Designer is a software commonly used by Graphic Artists to design vector illustrations. These vectors illustrations can be icons, logos, brandings etc.
- Adobe After Effects: Adobe After Effects is the most popular tool among professionals for designing effects and moving graphics. It is a highly professional software that is used by Graphic designers for designing animations, VFX and other effects.
Skills Required
- Animations: Graphic artists must know to animate static pictures and images. This is a very helpful skill as well for getting a job or freelance work. On Platforms like Upwork there are more than 4,000 open jobs looking to hire people that can create animations.
- Digital arts: Creating Digital Arts is a core skill one must have as a Graphic Artist and is a bit different from traditional art. Unlike traditional art, Digital art is designed digitally using computer software, digital arts market has been growing since decades and it is project to continue grow.
- Drawing: This is the traditional form of art done on a paper or a Artboard. Drawing is the most essential skill for one to become a Graphic Artist, unlike Graphic Designers, Graphic Artists are expected to have good drawing and sketching skills.
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Soft Skills: Soft Skills are crucial for communicating and presenting your ideas when you work with or on any organization. The most important soft skills required as a Graphic designer are:
- Communication and collaboration within the team.
- Empathy for others.
- Time management and punctuality.
- Critical thinking.
- A passion for web design.
- Being up-to-date with new trends and technologies in the market.
Salary & Career Outlook
Being a Graphic Artist is definitely good for your pocket as a career comes with a handsome salary and good perks. According to a survey done by AmbitionBox, the average salary for a fresher in Graphic Art design without any experience in India ranges between 2.3 Lakhs to 5.6 Lakhs INR depending on the skill sets and the organization.
Meanwhile the average salary for a fresher without any experience in the US ranges between $55k to $65k depending on the skill sets and the organization. This keeps on increasing as the experience adds up in your resume.
Conclusion
Graphic Art is one such career option that enable you to think out of the box and implement it in your design without worrying about what exactly the stakeholders want. Graphic Art allows the creative juice to flow in you and if you really enjoy designing, you will not feel like you are working, you passion with converse with your profession. Graphic Artist are also paid very well when compared with the industry standards. Make sure to follow the points we discussed in this article if you are looking out of a career in Graphic Art.