How do Switch Careers from Graphic Design to UX/UI Design?
Changing professions can be tricky when you need a guide to the right steps. While the graphic design profession is very stable, it is okay to want a change. Whatever your reasons for a career change, it’s essential to be sure of your decision before you take action.
Breaking into UI/UX design is not a walk in the park, especially in graphics design. However, by following the proper steps, fueled by your determination to succeed in the new field, you can make a smooth transition. Thus, this article will explain the steps to switching your career from graphic design to UI/UX design.
Mark the Difference
Graphics and UI/UX design have much in common, yet they are very different. As a graphic designer, you create professional visual content to relate messages to an audience, including images, flyers, social media posts, and print designs.
Graphic designers also use vector graphics and illustrations to communicate a message in a way viewers can understand. You blend typography and pictures to offer a complete package to users. In comparison, user experience design is a design process that involves working on the graphical layout of a website or an application. It aims to create a website or product that an end-user interacts with.
UI/UX designers create prototypes to improve the user experience and the quality of a website or mobile application. UI/UX starts with wireframes of a project, creating a prototype, and building the website or application design. For these designers, customer engagement and customer satisfaction are everything.
So, understanding the difference between where you are now (graphic design) and where you want to be (UI/UX) would help you know what aspect you need to focus more on.
What do graphic design and UI design have in common?
Emotional Design
Graphic design is about emotional communication through typography, color, and images; serif fonts and dark, duller colors evoke seriousness, while san-serif fonts and bright colors tend to bring out a sense of joy or excitement. UX design is also concerned with shaping the emotions of the user, although it tends to take a broader, big-picture view of the entire user’s experience with the product. On top of focusing on the right typography and colors, UX designers are also concerned with motion design, the tone of the content, and information architecture, among others.
Creative thinking
Graphic designers and UX designers are both equally skilled at creative thinking. For graphic designers, creating visuals that adhere to conventions (and thus communicate effectively) while retaining a sense of originality (to stand out among the competition) requires some serious creative and critical thinking. In the same way, UX designers have to create products that solve users’ problems — and sometimes, conventional solutions aren’t always the best or most appropriate ones.
Prototyping
Graphic designers often create mockups and wireframes of their designs before delivering a finished design. It gives clients a chance to offer feedback on their designs and for them to improve them without having to start from scratch. UX designers create mockups and prototypes too, but these tend to be less focused on the “look” of the product and more on the “feel” of it. Is the prototype useful? Is it usable? Is it desirable? These are the questions a UX designer wants answers to.
The Differences Between Graphic Design and UX Design
User-focused vs. pixel-focused
Graphic designers tend to pursue pixel perfection in their designs. Ensuring that texts have perfect kerning and colors conform to brand guidelines often takes up a significant portion of graphic designers’ jobs — and for good reason, too. UX designers, however, are primarily focused on users. They study the interface between users and the product, finding ways to ensure that the product answers the user’s key needs. And they do so by conducting a lot of research — by talking to and observing users, creating user personas and stories, doing usability testing on the products, and many more. Graphic designers looking to switch career tracks will need to do a substantial amount of work finding out how to conduct user research.
Problem-solving
UX design is very much an iterative problem-solving process, and it can be very different from what you’re used to doing as a graphic designer. It begins with the identification of a problem; this is often found through user research, and if it’s not, it will then be confirmed through user research.
Multi-disciplinary vs. specialized
Graphic design is a specialized discipline, and there is a certain level of craftsmanship and a set of specialized skills (such as typography and color theory) required to produce great visuals. UX design, on the other hand, is much more multi-disciplinary and involves many schools of knowledge. UX designers have to constantly learn about human psychology, interaction design, information architecture, and user research techniques, just to name a few, to create the right solutions to a user’s problems. Don Norman, the man who coined the term “user experience,”, explains that user experience covers “all aspects of the person’s experience with the system, including industrial design graphics, the interface, the physical interaction, and the manual.”
The Big Benefit of Graphic Design Experience When Moving to UX Design
Aesthetics
The biggest benefit for graphic designers moving to UX design is that they can make things attractive. A very common misconception about UX design is that good usability trumps aesthetics. On the contrary, good aesthetics have been found to improve the overall user experience of products by making users more relaxed, creating a positive first impression, and generally just showing that you care.
How to Enhance Your Skills to Make the Jump from Graphic Design to UX Design
Is there a gap between graphic design skills and UX design skills? Yes, but it’s not an insurmountable one. Graphic designers already speak the language of design; they just need to brush up their skills to include those that are unique to UX design.
Learn the necessary UX skills.
Once you understand the skill sets you need to develop to be a UI/UX designer, you can start taking lessons. For example, as a graphic designer, your job is to communicate. Meanwhile, UI/UX design is all about usability.
Graphic designers attract viewers by using taglines and manipulating vectors, graphics, and illustrations. In contrast, a web designer sets up components of a web page to create a simpler, free-flowing user experience.
Online Courses
Interaction Design Foundation
We’d like to modestly present our course offerings for this, as the Interaction Design Foundation is the world’s largest specialist design education community. Don Norman, the same man who coined the term “user experience” and who is one of the world’s best-known designers, says that we’re “a goldmine of information on interaction design”; Forbes magazine says we supply an Ivy League level of UX design education!
Coursera
You might also want to try the folks at Coursera.org, which is a low-cost but high-quality education provider that delivers courses on a wide range of subjects, including UX. It does partner with universities and companies to offer courses, professional certificates, and degrees, and the courses are generally very good.
Udemy
Udemy is the world’s biggest broker of training. They don’t design their training; rather, they enable course creators to sell their courses on their platform. They offer thousands of courses in almost any conceivable subject.
Choose a user-focused design instead of a pixel-focused design
As a graphic designer, you create mockups and wireframes of your designs before you deliver a finished design. You would do the same as a UX designer to give room for adding or removing ideas. But you would create mockups and prototypes, focusing less on the appearance of the product and more on its general appeal. The primary focus is on the users. You would study the interface between users and the product to ensure the product answered the user’s needs. It would require a lot of research, but it is to ensure your design matches what users need, not just aesthetics.
Conduct accurate user research
UX design is a continuous problem-solving process that is very different from what graphic designers are used to. The first stage of research, the identification stage, is where you find the problem through user research. Unlike graphic design, in UX design, you don’t need to touch the whole design, just the ones the users care about.
Build your UX design portfolio
You don’t need a degree to become a UX designer. All you need is a well-built and impressive portfolio to prove your worth. Your portfolio can include different projects you have worked on, either individually or collectively. If you don’t have any yet, you can browse project ideas on the internet to begin.
Network and Stay Connected to Current Trends
Before now, you’ve probably had graphic designers as friends, which isn’t going to change, but you would also need to add UX designer friends to the mix. Doing this will connect you with potential employers and mentors.
Get Certified
There are many UX design certifications that you can earn. Getting certified can demonstrate your skills and experience to potential employers.
Begin a UX design portfolio.
A portfolio is a great way to showcase your skills and experience to potential employers. Your portfolio should include a variety of projects that demonstrate your ability to design user-friendly interfaces.
Remember, transitioning to a new career takes time and effort. Be patient with yourself and continuously seek opportunities for learning and growth. With determination and a solid foundation in UX design principles, you can successfully change your career from graphic design to UX design.
