Graphic Design Questions You Always Wanted to Ask

Graphic design is a fascinating industry that is constantly changing. It can be difficult to know which direction to go in, or which software to use. In this article, like in the video, I will be in the hot seat to answer the most common graphic design questions that creatives are asking. As an agency owner for over 15 years, I use my best judgment of the graphic design industry to answer these questions. Many artists in the graphic design industry have similar obstacles, and we are here to help you solve those problems.

Why Do a Q&A?

Graphic Design Questions You Always Wanted to AskToday, we’re going to do something totally fun and totally different. It’s the graphic design hot seat! Ian has questions, and I have answers as a pro. I wanted to lend some of my experience and some of my expertise to Ian’s questions. He’s going to throw them at me, and I’m going to answer them as accurately and as quickly as possible. So the Q&A-hot-seat video format is for entertainment purposes, but this article is for you to gain some knowledge.

Ian’s Graphic Design Questions: What is the most profitable niche in graphic design?

I think the time period matters for me: when I started my career, printing was huge. It’s still huge, but now that things are evolving online, the NFT space is a no-brainer. Companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Instagram are all picking up NFTs and they’re going to become more and more a part of our daily lives. If you can get in now and get ahead of the curve, you have a great opportunity to establish yourself as an NFT designer. That is something that Ian and I are currently doing.

Ian’s Graphic Design Questions: How can designers find good clients?

I think the best way to find clients is to educate the market so whether you’re doing youtube, Instagram carousels, or Facebook and Facebook groups actually adding value into the world and giving to people and sharing your knowledge and expertise is a really good way. Another way I would give you is asking for referrals from your existing clients – this has been a game-changing way that I’ve done it. And then really the last way is just to go out there and go to events and make new friends, meet new people, and just go out there and network. Those are the top three things that I would say.

Ian’s Graphic Design Questions: How can you make $100k as a graphic designer?

Oh, that’s easy – it’s a numbers game. Take a hundred thousand dollars and divide it by the type of work you’re going to do. So, if you’re going to do logo design (which is going to be on the higher end of the pricing table), you’re going to be at a thousand twenty-five hundred dollars. You just need to divide that 2500 (or that thousand dollars) by a hundred thousand dollars to get that number. That’ll tell you how many people per week, how many people per day, or how many phone calls you need to make.

When I first started my career as a graphic designer, I knew that I needed to call 50 people per day. Out of those 50 people, I was going to get about five that were going to do a business card and business card design and printing with me. That was going to be about a $150-$200 bill, not including any other upsells. If I just sold five of those a day, that was going to be my six figures. I actually beat that within six months. 

Ian’s Graphic Design Questions: When should you use Photoshop vs Illustrator?

I love this question. When should you use Photoshop and when should you use Illustrator? If you understand the principles of how they were created and why they were created, this will give you context and make it very easy to decide when to use them. Illustrator is paths so anything vector which basically means anything that has anchor points. If you’re going to do signage, anything large scale, or anything that’s going to be printed, I highly suggest that you do it in a vector format. Vector is paths, and Photoshop is pixels. Imagine yourself painting with pixels!

Graphic Design Questions You Always Wanted to AskWith Illustrator, you’re more likely to be cutting and carving shapes and those shapes form a vector path. The paths create an overall illustration, which means you can have shapes on top of other shapes with shades and gradients. However, on the Photoshop side, you will be painting. As such, you may have seen my video a few weeks ago – the tutorial where the lady is under the ocean. You can blend layers and it’s really like painting with photographs. So you can take images, photographs, illustrations, artwork, and blend things together. You can also cut things away, and they’ll become pixelated if you scale them up. However, at a certain point when you try to scale them up, they’ll become pixelated because they’re dots per inch. Vector art is different because there are only paths, so there are no dots per inch.

So that’s the difference between Photoshop and Illustrator. One is painting and one is more like cardboard cutouts; it’s more of like scrapbooking. that’s the way I would describe the two programs and how they’re different. So if you’re going to make something you need to be large-scaled – definitely go with Illustrator. But if you want to paint something very photorealistic, go with Photoshop.

Final Thoughts

Graphic Design Questions You Always Wanted to AskAll right, so that’s the hot seat. Ian had some questions, and hopefully, I got some great answers for you and for Ian as well. If you love this and you want me to do more stuff like this, I want to hear from you guys. And make sure you join the Instagraphics Pro Network; it’s a Facebook community that we are growing. We have our own private community as well off of Facebook, so check it out if you’re ready to level up. I’ll see you guys in the next article. I’m Adrian Boysel, and as always, keep looking up!