Where’s the Money???

Can you retire young, pay your childrens’ way through college, travel the world, actually enjoy your life? What is exactly the expected income of a graphic web designer? Can you do everything that you want to, or is it just paycheck-to-paycheck? The answers that I found, have helped me understand exactly what type of life can be lend, when working as a graphic web designer.

In May of 2008 IOMA published a survey on the salary of graphic web designers. The survey includes the average salaries of differently employed graphic web designers from company employed designers to freelance designers, how location can effect income, and how experience affects a designers salary.

According to the Two Surveys Detail Pay for Web Designers the average company employed graphic web designer earns around $68,138. The lowest pay is about $15,000 while the highest is around $200,000. But a freelance designer will also make around the same average salary of $67,499. This is the result of a survey conducted by the Coroflote survey.

Experience is also a factor that needs to be considered when looking into how much a graphic web designer will make. Payscale has come to the conclusion that a graphic web designer with less than one year of experience can expect to make around $35,627, while a designer with 20 or more years of experience can make around $50, 825. Where you actually are affects how much you can make. The East and West coasts tend to have the higher salaries, while the Midwest has the lowest. The demand for graphic web designers are generally more on the coasts than in the center of the U.S. because that is where many companies have there hubs.

Of course this is only the results of a few combinedsurveys, so it is no where near complete, but it can help anyone looking for information. What a designer personally decides entirely depends on what a graphic web designer wants to do. Freelance designer can make just as much as what a company employed designer if they are good enough. And of course the more experience a graphic web designer has the better their salary will be.

If you, as a graphic web designer, need more securityor a more structured environment, then working for a company as a designer is probably the better choice. On the other hand, the more out going and independent graphic web designer, should defiantly think about working as a freelance designer. I personally think that whither of no, you choose to work for a company or freelance that, considering a internship or an early job for a well know design company is excellent idea. It’s good for references and experience.

Sources:  IOMA’s Report on Salary Surveys. New York: May 2008

 

 

Schools Choices Degrees

When looking into school to study graphic web design, the searching can be hard going. Is a traditional university best, or should you go to a technical school? It majoring in a more established field, and minoring in web design the better route, or go should you go straight for the major in web design and get out of college as fast as possible? These are the questions that have been bouncing though my head for weeks. What is the right answer?

After searching the Internet for the answer and looking at site after site I have come to the conclusion that there is no perfect route. Many established graphic web designers from Digital Web Magazine have stated in a thread, “Formally Educated or Self-Taught?”, that most of them consider them selves self-taught designers. Before anyone despair, consider this. Most of these designers are established working men and women, meaning that they are from the generation that have developed the field of graphic web design. They were the one who created the careers that we are now interested in. Like all pioneers, there were no guilds to what to do.

But that is not the case anymore. After some research, some schools have come up that  offer courses in graphic web design. The Art Institute has over 40 campus location across the United States, including an on-line division. Yes, it’s true that The Art Institute can be seen as a trade or technical school and not as good as a four year university, but if it has what you need, and more importantly, what you want then that shouldn’t matter.

But it isn’t just The Art Institute that has graphic web design programs. Both the University of Washington and Washington State University have programs that have bachelors degrees. The University of Washington offers a course call Digital Arts and Experimental Media, or DXArts. At Washington State Universityy students can study in the field of Digital Technology and Culture. They both offer students a wide range of courses to choose from. Students looking into anything from 3D animation, photography to graphic web design have a good chance of finding what they need to do what they want.

The field of graphic web design is still young and it’s true that while there are still many things that will need to be self-taught, there are still many reasons a degree in a field that is related to graphic web design is important. Not only does it give you an edge over others it allows you to get some insight to what is meand to be in this field. In the end it gives you more choice, security, and directions to go in.

Sources:  Digital Web Magazine, The Art Institute, University of Washington, Washington State University

A World of Innovation

Exactly what is the heart and soul of graphic web design? Is it the combination of technology and art? Is it the pursue of keeping some beauty in a world that is being transformed into the digital age? What is the one part of graphic web design that with out, graphic web design wouldn’t even exist? That question had me asking friends and family what they thought was the soul of graphic web design. My conclusion? Innovation. Not art, not technology, not design, not marketing, but innovation.

Graphic web design could not be in existence with out innovation. Because innovation’s definition is to introduce something new or to make changes in anything established. Graphic web design is changing what medias are used in graphic design. It has come from the multimedia of newspapers to magazines and now to the web. The innovation of the graphic designers, computer programmers, and software developers has taken what used to be only seen by people on billboards or on posters to the screen of a computer so that anyone, anywhere, doing anything can see that work and be so much the better for it because of it’s beauty and how it changes their perspective of the world.

Without those designers, programmers, and developers the use of computers would be used only by those in communications and in the expansion of technology. The Internet and software would not be used as it is used today if graphic web design had not come into play. Those innovators changed the appearance of the web and everything on it, creating a completely new field. A field that is one of the largest entertainments of th world. A field that one day would have many young men and women studying to enter into that field specifically.

Not all artists see technology as a creative media. Photographer Tim Flach stated in the online magazine Adobe Magazine for Creative Professionals “Technology for it’s own sake is an empty vessel.” That can be seen as, if you don’t take art and beauty and combine it with technology, something great will never be achieved. Or it could be seen that in Flach’s personal opinion, technology isn’t an art form, but a branch of the scientific world.

But innovation isn’t just the evolution of fields already in existence. And while some may see that is how graphic web design came to be, I don’t entirely agree. Graphic web design evolved from the graphic design that has been in newspapers, and on billboards and posters across the world. But I also see that graphic web design came from the combining of different fields, even some which were at one time see as utterly unrelated. The innovation of those who saw to bring together art, technology, and programming into one field is what I see as the origins of graphic web design.

Sources: Adobe Magazine for Creative Professionals Tim Flach