Five things you should never ask a Graphic Designer.

Believe me, we can be hard to communicate with. We have a design jargon & some software and people outside this graphic design world might have no idea how this works and what it means. So, if you are working with a Graphic Designer and want your final product that pleases everyone, please don't ask the following questions:

Can you design a draft till the time we finish writing a copy for you?

Ever since a designer takes his first design lesson, he is told that "Always Design around content". In fact marketing experts believe that "Content is king". Presenting already existing content in a graphic will of course look better than pushing content into an already existing design. Also, replacing dummy content with final content increases the turn-around time thus resulting in increase in cost. So, from next time get the copy close to its final stage before asking your designer to get started. This is best for both the parties.

Can you complete it by tomorrow?

Graphic Design isn't an hour's job.  Every design project will require a different time span for completion. Some designs can be accomplished in a day, while others might take longer. The completion time varies from project to project and a designer's creative process. Once you finalize your designer, tell him your constraints and ask him for a fair estimate on how long it will take to accomplish this task.

Can you create it in an editable format?

Asking a designer to create an editable design is like asking a doctor to give the patient a homemade medicine. If you want a quality design never ask for an editable version as you might end up changing it to a bad design since you will not have the design knowledge yourself. If you want to make edits regularly than you might like using options like 'Picmonkey' or 'Canva' where you can use already existing templates created by designers and customize them as per your need.

Can you create something exactly the same as this design?

No Designer is happy copying another artist's work. Creating something similar and creating something exactly the same are two different things. You can definitely ask a designer to take inspiration from a particular design and create a graphic in his own style but never expect him to copy the same design. Copying is not just a copyright issue which might lead to legal consequences but it is also a matter of ethics for a designer.

Can you make it look modern?

Terms like 'modern', 'fancy', bright' or 'pop' don't give a clear picture to the designer of what you are looking for. Make it clear and be more detailed about what you are looking for. Share some examples of something similar to your expectations. These things are important as the designer can't read your mind and instead of wasting his and your time, it's better to be precise about your expectations.

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Saloni Chopra

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Top 5 Reasons Why I Love Being A Designer

Being a Designer is more like a lifestyle for me. I live and breathe it and I am constantly getting inspired from what I am doing. If you wonder what it is like to work in the Design Industry, these are the top five reasons: 

#1 The number one reason why I love being a Designer is to Bring Ideas to Life.

My job allows me to think differently and creatively. I start with conceiving an idea and then bringing my thoughts to reality. Seeing an idea progress through different stages of Design and then finally seeing it live into action is what makes me happy and content.

#2 Learning Constantly

The second reason why I love being a designer is that it helps me learn constantly. Every website I visit, every poster I get to see on the streets, every advertisement that I watch helps me learn. There cannot be any one correct way to design something so everyone is always trying their own ways including myself. So we can learn from each other's work when we share which is pretty cool. Every time I work I tend to pick up some or the other new skills like motion graphics or web designing.

#3 Art and Science

Design is a perfect mix of art and science. A good design involves both creative thinking and analytical thinking like testing a UI/UX. Design is not just about making things look nice and beautiful but it's also about solving problems.

#4 People interact with your work

As a designer, you get to see people interact with your designs. Whether you see someone reading an e-magazine designed by you or using a website that have been designed by you, seeing your work into action is always motivating and satisfying.

#5 Finding it fun

I genuinely find Designing to be a fun activity. This is one such profession where you get paid for having fun and being creative. I absolutely love what I do so much that I do it in my spare time as well. It's not actually every job that you can do this way. I love the fact that Design can be a hobby as well as a career and they can together work well.

These are the reasons why I love being a designer, now I would like to hear why you love your job so please share your reasons with me in the comments section down below.

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Saloni Chopra

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What it is like being a Female Graphic Designer?

I did my bachelors in Commerce honours from an all-girls college, so feeling discriminated because of the gender was not a question at all, back in those days. After my graduation, I realized that this is not my cup of tea and took up an eighteen months program in Animation and Graphic Design. I had an almost equal number of male and female students in my class, so was lucky enough to not face any such discrimination.

When I joined my first job in a Television channel, I was the only graphic designer in the company for a very long time so again I didn't feel any such discrimination. Though at times I got opportunities to work with both male and female designers but that didn't make me feel discriminated. It was when I decided to shift into Web Designing, then is when I started feeling that the design world is very male dominating. I joined there as the second female designer and there were around 12 designers working already, as you can judge the ratio was not very great. But luckily I was never treated any differently because I was a woman but it is interesting to notice that most of the designers already working on the team or were being hired were all male. I didn't really notice this until recently when I  started to increase my web designing skills. Actually, I feel like the whole tech industry specially design is dominated by male designers. I have not collected any statistics over this but its just a perception that I have developed over a period of time as I see more male designers speaking over in conferences, writing and talking confidentially over design. Also, a lot of design discussions that I get to see online come from male designers and there are a very few female voices.

By talking about this, I am not trying to attack anyone. Its just my idea and I felt its important to talk about this as diversity is needed and we can all learn from this. Right now in my current job, I am on a very small team, it is me and one more designer who happens to be a male. 

I have started to feel that I have been surrounded by so many male designers that my style now looks influenced by them and this gets reflected in my designs. In fact, sometimes I start a design and head towards a direction and then stop myself from doing it, perhaps thinking that this is too feminine and I should be doing something else to make it look more professional. Somewhere in my mind, I had that my professional design cannot be feminine which is not true at all.

After reading and discussing this with a lot of my designer friends now I can strongly believe that Design does not have a gender and this is not something that I should be worrying about. 

In this blog post, I just wanted to share my experience as a woman in the design industry and how I got affected by it, not necessarily in a negative way. I would really like to know your choice of female designers if any in the comments below. 

I would like to name my favourite Designer Carolyn Davidson, the designer of one of the most famous logos of all times, Nike.

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Saloni Chopra

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My Biggest Fear as a Designer

When I think of my biggest fear as a designer, the first thing that comes to my mind is my most recent design.

Some will think that my biggest fear would be what if my clients don't pay me on time, or what if I lose my job, or what if computers take away a designer's job.

But none of these are my fears. My Biggest fear right now is if I am competent enough to do what I am doing or my designs are not competent in respect to what other designers are doing. I believe it is very normal to feel impostor syndrome and I think if we never feel this syndrome then perhaps we are not challenging ourselves enough. I have been in this industry for more than seven years now and I just always feel that I should be better for the amount of time that I have been a designer. Especially when I am writing blogs and talking about Design. 

As I am doing more and more of this I start worrying more because I am opening myself to criticism and that I am not good enough to do this.

As more and more people check my designs instead of being happy, I start to worrying more. It gives me a sense of responsibility to do justice to my profession and to my designs. I start focusing more on my projects and my skills.  I start trying to improve my skills by learning more. Honestly, I do this not to make someone happy or reach a certain milestone but because I want to be a leader in the design community. I know I am thinking far too much but I feel as a designer if I don't think I don't do it.

I strongly believe that if I as a Designer start feeling that I am the best and have learned enough, then is the time of my downfall. Till then I have scope to grow and reach where I want to reach.

*I was trying to find a relevant image for this post but ended up posting a recent illustration as that's what my biggest fear is :)

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Saloni Chopra

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The importance of Graphics Card in a Graphic Designer's life

Graphics card play a vital role in a graphic designer's life. A computer user might not undestand what a graphic card means or does but a graphic designer will surely know its importance.

Now what is a Graphic card? 

A video card or a graphics card is a computer hardware that is responsible to display an image on to your monitor. This is done by converting data into signal that a monitor can understand.

A graphics card can be integrated or discrete. 

Integrated graphics card is built into the motherboard while a discrete graphic card is an additional graphic card plugged into the motherboard slot or a separate chip on the motherboard. While integrated graphics card use a portion of a computer's system RAM, a discrete graphics card is a separate system having its own RAM and processor for generating its images. 

Coming to the importance of a graphic card in a designer's life. Better a graphic card, faster a computer runs. A computer or laptop with a better discrete graphic card will make an application work faster as it will put less pressure on a computer's memory and cpu.

Now the question arises how this happens?

A computer's processor is busy performing other tasks, so this happens through GPU - Graphics Processing Unit. A processor specialized for such calculations. This is sort of a brain of the graphics card and is responsible to create visuals that we see on the screen. GPU takes the data coming from the CPU and converts it into images. Thus, letting the main processor do its job and let the computer run at a full speed.

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Saloni Chopra

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When Is It The Right Time To Rebrand?

First of all, lets throw some light on what does branding actually means. Branding is not just creating a logo or fixing some color scheme for the company. It has a much more broader scope than this. Branding means creating a visual presence for the company in the market through its visual image which can be through logo, colors, icon, business card, website, advertisements, brochure or any kind of marketing material.

Whether a company is small or big, all companies build their brand these days. The purpose of branding is to help your customers understand what you offer to them. Brand builds a connection betwwen a customer and company.

All these companies at some point of time plan to rebrand. Now, what is rebranding?

Rebranding is creating the new look of your company or product. However, sometimes its impossible to recogonise the changes that the company has gone through.

The next question that comes to our mind is why and when a company needs Rebranding.

Change in the vision, mission or business of a company

Every 10 years, we get to see a lot of positions holding a say in the company change and new people takeover those positions. These people have different vision towards running a company. They look towards the market with a different perspective. So, in order to reflect this change companies plan to rebrand. Also, sometimes the company's purpose or scope of business either changes or expands so the companies rebrand in order to accomodate the new scope.

Globalization

Sometimes the companies plan to go global so local names and branding would not work in international market. In order to bring this change rebranding is essential

Competition

Every year brings in new color, font and website trends. In order to become competitve we need to adapt to these trends every now and then. If we donot adapt to these changes with time our brand gets lost in the new trends. Our Competitors who would be rebranding and adapting to these changes will leave us far behind.

Bad Reputation

A bad reputation of the brand may have a negative impact on the buiness of a company so in order to compensate that Rebranding might help. This rebranding will change the image of the company further leading to better reputation and good business.

Connecting with new audience

Sometimes a product or service is for a particular segment of income or particular age group and the company plans to expand its segment or age group and cover either all segments or more segments so in that case as well new branding image is required to let people know that now the particular product or service is available for others as well.

In the end to conclude these are just a few basic reasons for rebranding and a lot more points can be listed as a reason to rebrand.

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Saloni Chopra

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How to get your FIRST Graphic Design Job?

Begin the SEARCH

Check for all entry level jobs and their description. The job description will say exactly what skills a qualified candidate should possess. This might not be your future job but it will help you prepare yourself for similar positions and will also give you an idea of how you should be presenting yourself.

Create a Portfolio

After looking for what kind of job opportunities are currently available in the market and what you want to apply for, start working on your portfolio. Your portfolio should match the well written job description that you searched. 

The employer doesnot want to know your personal history or see all hatever you have designed uptil now. The employer just wants to know and see whether you are a suitable candidate or not for a particular position or project. He wants to know what skills you alraedy possess and what skills will be required to be imparted. 

Rather than getting obsessed over the deisgn of the website, you should make a perfect decision of what is required to be potrayed on your portfolio. If you are not sure of what to put check the list that you created while reading the job description. Pick your portfolio items depending upon the list. For instance if they require someone with good typography skills, display a relevant example in your portfolio.

Resume

The first thing that comes to an applicants mind when he hears this word RESUME is a word document. Everyone who is looking for a job have a resume, but what is different for a designer? A designer should have a creative resume which reflects his skills and not just another word document 

Try to print your business card and stationery along with your resume. This might add an additional point to your candidature. 


Start applying for jobs

Once you have completed the above steps, you are ready to start applying for the jobs. 

Getting the interview 

You might start getting interview calls in a span of a few days or weeks. 

Go to any interview that you’re invited to

There might be a few calls from employers you no longer wish to work with. Even then, you should go to an interview. This is one of the best ways to learn how to have a professional conversation with someone you don’t know. 

In The Interview

The first interview is always the most stressful, so prepare with friends and family for mock interviews and get feedback. Once you are in the interview act smart. Ask questions about the company, position and projects. Explain how your skills are beneficial to their company. Do thank the interviewer for his time as this will help the interviewer to remember you.

Job Offer

If everything had went well you will get a job offer from the company stating your duties, timings and salary that the company will be offering you. In excitement do not forget to negotiate and directly say Yes.

If it takes you a day or so to decide, the employers will not mind as he understands and respect the fact that it takes time to consider the conditions of employment.

To conclude, 

Your first job will be a valuable learning experience and will help you understand about the various ways in which design is practiced. Also, whether soon or after a few years this experience will help you find your second job easily as by now you must have gained a clearer vision of how the industry works. 

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Saloni Chopra

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