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What programs is a professional graphic designer expected to know?

Great post

Sorry I came into this one late.

Love my position ... sixth year as a Creative Director. To consider myself marketable, here is what I have launched, driven for hours, directed, and hired for since Jan 1. Have 18 years of experience, I have an applied high-functioning knowledge base within following three mediums:

Print, Web, Interactive

Also, hold ongoing professional experience with: Still Photo, Video/Voice, Large Format (trade show), Environmental display, Lighting, Screen Printing, Outdoor Signage and yes, Presentations.

Across the board, the list of apps below are too much for in-depth knowledge. However, I have to be able to communicate with a concise understanding of constraints for budget, design and deadlines.

I gotta add: all these apps are sadly an overburden for any individual. I often work 65-75 hours a week (no kids or wife). Also, I have 27 employees in my department.

Here goes:
Seamless OS navigation/maintenance in both the Mac and Windows platforms
Adobe Suite: including mastery of: (* in the least, a novice working knowledge)
- PSD (mastery)
- InDesign (mastery) (Quark and Freehand - use is extremely rare but still needed)
- Flash (mastery -- but only by design -- knowledge with regards to the integration of XML and AS 3.0)
- Illustrator (mastery)
- DreamWeaver/Fireworks (mixed-mastery)
- Acrobat (mastery)
- AfterEffects*
- Premier*
- Bridge (mastery)
- Contribute*
Apple
- Final Cut *
- Aperture *
- Keynote *
All Microsoft Biz Products
- Word (mastery)
- Excel (mastery)
- Powerpoint (what a turd app - req. mastery)
- Outlook/Entourage (mastery)
- Publisher -- boring and pathetic but absolutely required

FTP (mastery)

PS, OTF and TT Fonts and their management software (mastery)

Maya/3DSMAX (quite limited knowledge and this skill is always sourced to the true professionals -- nothing in-house)

ListTrack - email construction and marketing app

CSS/HTML (also know what and where JS, ColdFusion, C+, ASP.net and PHP are needed)

Content Management Systems - client-side web content tool and support

Project/Production Management Software (mastery - Clients & Profits or BaseCamp)

Copywriting - got to know how to write, proof and create audience messaging

Pen/Pencil - for illustrating comps, story broads and general art direction (mastery)

Camera - both still and motion -- with constant lighting/strobe/grip (solid understanding of props)

Understand the changing landscape for SEO, web stats, and online content taxonomy (novice)

Know the proper implementation for a daunting array of final file types (too many extensions to list -- and yes GIFs count having delivered multiple GIFs for Fortune 100 companies with the last 48 hours).

Anyone within this "circle of influence" has a great understanding of verbal communication (tact) with on demand illustration/drawing skills, grammatically correct writing/proofing skills (AP style), and is a willing collaborator.

Finally you have to be budgetary wonk.
 
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jhead said:
Print.
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When it comes to print it's more so something that'd be a plus to know a lot about and if you know how to do it and or do it well. I know a few designers, including myself, who are awful when it comes to printing and print prep. I can do it mind you, just not very well and I am not a fan of Quark or InDesign.

You as a CD, do you have any designers who are designers only? As in then don't print although they may prep somethings for print and have someone else do it?

I know printing and print prep is not all that hard compared to some tasks like character rigging in 3D, but printers hate me, they really hate me.
 
GeraldButton said:
When it comes to print it's more so something that'd be a plus to know a lot about and if you know how to do it and or do it well. I know a few designers, including myself, who are awful when it comes to printing and print prep. I can do it mind you, just not very well and I am not a fan of Quark or InDesign.

You as a CD, do you have any designers who are designers only? As in then don't print although they may prep somethings for print and have someone else do it?

I know printing and print prep is not all that hard compared to some tasks like character rigging in 3D, but printers hate me, they really hate me.
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I know this question that isn't directed toward me, but I'll chime in.

I don't know what you mean about a designer who's only a designer? I have far less people working for me, but I'd say my designers are only designers... in that their job is do do creative work.

They NEED to know indesign. A designer has to in order to do any advanced print work, You can't layout a multi-page document or do any advanced typesetting in photoshop.

I also expect my designers to know how to code the html/css, because the developers at my company are development focused, and would butcher the integrity of any design layout we gave them to code. A designer codes layouts with a design focus, and attempts to preserve the integrity of the design in the process.
 
Thirteenva said:
I don't know what you mean about a designer who's only a designer? I have far less people working for me, but I'd say my designers are only designers... in that their job is do do creative work.
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I guess I should have been more clear but you in a way covered it further in your post. What I meant was did he have anyone working for or with him that did one task. As you mention in the end of your post, you have your designers working with html and css, while the places I have worked usually did not have that. I know some html and css, but not enough to code a full website. You are right about the print though, most all the designers I know, myself included, know how to use InDesign and print documents and files, most of us just don't like it, ha ha ha.

When it came time for me to expand out of Photoshop into other areas? I could have gone with coding and what not, but I found myself moving into and enjoying 3D modeling and animation.
 
Thirteenva said:
Creativity is a large part, but still only a part.
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Showing up to work everyday, putting in an honest effort, and getting along with your clients and colleagues... being able to collaborate with others... not insisting on being the smartest voice in the room or the one who always gets his/her way is more important than knowing every keyboard shortcut known to man.

Experience with a program will get you in the door, but ultimately it comes down to how likable you are, how good an impression you make, and how strong your portfolio is. You might want to spend a little less time worrying about the programs and more time honing your interview skills.
 
citizenzen said:
Showing up to work everyday, putting in an honest effort, and getting along with your clients and colleagues... being able to collaborate with others... not insisting on being the smartest voice in the room or the one who always gets his/her way is more important than knowing every keyboard shortcut known to man.

Experience with a program will get you in the door, but ultimately it comes down to how likable you are, how good an impression you make, and how strong your portfolio is. You might want to spend a little less time worrying about the programs and more time honing your interview skills.
Click to expand...

Experience with programs won't get you in my door. Portfolio, creative talent, problem solving, working with others, ability to learn.
 
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Photoshop
Illustrator
InDesign
*Absolutely MUST know these*
--------------
Flash
Dreamweaver
Ability to handcode and troubleshoot HTML and CSS
*you could probably survive without these but they are definitely pluses*
 
Chris7 said:
Wondering what programs graphics pro's are expected to know.
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None. There are many people who know how to use scanners and Photoshop and Illustrator, but there are not so many people out there who actually can draw. And for that you don't even need a computer.

But then again, graphics designers are not necessarily artists, and they will make their living with mastering the Adobe Creative Suite.
 
Be well versed in CSS, XHTML, HTML etc. Being a good designer isn't enough these days. If you are trained in web, your opportunities will be much greater.

A wise person told me these things one day and I will never forget it.
 
Winni said:
But then again, graphics designers are not necessarily artists, and they will make their living with mastering the Adobe Creative Suite.
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Uh-oh... sounds like another illustrator bemoaning the death of his craft.

Not that I blame you... I sympathize.

But the truth is, the last person I'd want working on a magazine layout deadline is an artist who could render an apple so realistic that you'd try to take a bite out of it... but didn't know InDesign from a hole in the ground.

Skills are skills. And in the world of desktop publishing and design one needs to master the tools of the trade.
 
In graphics design generally two software mainly used. adobe photoshop and adobe illustrator and mainly depend which area of graphic design they will be working within that area like cad design, graphics design it's depend on that designing option.
 
Chris7 said:
Hello,

Got a friend who's interested in going back to school to become a graphic designer. Wondering what programs graphics pro's are expected to know.

Thanks for your time,

Chris
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Skills that a professional graphic designer need to know are:

Visual Ideation/Creativity
Typography
Design Software (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.)
Multimedia Design Software (Acrobat, etc.)
Color Theory
Web Design/Basic HTML & CSS
Layout/Conversion Optimization
Print Design
 
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The Adobe suite is standard, so yes, they'll definitely have to learn that. But as others have said, Flash per se is dying. Adobe has some tools in the pipeline like Animate which are aimed at the new world of HTML5 animation and XD for user experience prototyping, so look at those.

Beyond traditional print-centric apps as mentioned above, I would suggest learning the following for a strong basis in modern web design and prototyping tools. They don't have to be code experts or know *all* of this, but knowing at least a good chunk will take them much farther than print alone.

  • Sketch, by Bohemian Coding. Rapidly become the de facto vector-based design tool for doing interfaces and screen prototypes. I see many, many job listings asking for this.
  • Pixelmator - an excellent pixel editor that rivals Photoshop (if you don't want to go the Adobe route). Not mandatory but good to know.
  • HTML / CSS & Javascript - you can't get around knowing these. Newer CSS standards like CSS Grid and Flexbox actually make it a lot easier to do layouts.
  • Knowledge of jQuery, one of the largest Javascript libraries, is very standard, especially for UI animation and feedback.
  • Knowing Sass, which is a sort of meta-version of CSS that lets you work with it in a more programmatic and modular fashion, and compiles down to regular CSS for production. It's usually installed via the command line, but there are graphical tools like CodeKit that can make it a lot easier to work with.
  • I strongly advise beginners to learn to code by hand. Any good text editor that supports syntax highlighting will work - popular ones for Mac are Microsoft Visual Code (free!), Sublime Text (not free!), and Panic's Coda
  • Learning to work with the command line can be scary at first but it's another superpower; modern web tools are often distributed this way. Learning how to install Ruby gems, Node + npm (Node package manager) apps, and work with automation tools like Grunt and Gulp will be necessary in a web design environment. There are many good tutorials for this, and one I recommend is Wes Bos' series.
  • SVG - Scalable Vector Graphics. The native vector format for the web. If you're designing icons, logos, or other graphics for internet use, understanding SVG is a must, particularly how it can work in responsive design and also SVG animation. If you want to dive in deeper, look up the work of Sara Soueidan, Sarah Drasner and Rachel Nabors.
 
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ChicoWeb said:
You guys forgot, Word. Word is good for effects and logos. Also, Powerpoint is good for re-sizing and sending images to clients. MS Paint, especially the pencil tool. I'd say anything Microsoft related is a must these days.
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Word is "great for effects and logos" if you're someone's intern or an office manager making signs for the break room. Nobody with "design" in their title is using Word unless they're forced to -- and if they are they should probably be let go. Same with using Powerpoint to resize and send images. The less you have to deal with Microsoft Office, the better. That stuff is garbage on many levels.
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decksnap said:
Must know:
Indesign
Quark
Illustrator
Photoshop
Type manager software (FontXplorer, Suitcase, etc)
FTP clients

Should know if you actually want a job:
Fireworks
Dreamweaver and the like
Keynote & Powerpoint

I would say though that learning the programs is the easy part and doesn't really qualify you for any job above straight production.
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My old boss was crazy about Fireworks, but also it hasn't been updated in years. There's a legacy version around, I guess but it's basically abandoned. Too bad, because I gather it's amazing. I never got into it, myself.

If you can get away with using Keynote, you can absolutely blow away your clients with the quality of what you can do -- especially in conjunction with Illustrator. You can freely copy/paste vector objects between the two, which is a beautiful beautiful thing. Some of the stuff I was able to pull off in my last job looked so cool you'd think it was done in some kind of motion graphics program. Not saying that to toot my own horn so much as evangelize how great Keynote can be if you use it properly. PowerPoint has gotten way better in recent years, but the smoothness and sophistication of its effects still pale in comparison to Keynote. Sadly, there's no real way to export a Keynote deck to work well on a PC (believe me, I've spent a lot of time trying).

Also: Quark? Seriously? I haven't touched it since 2002 or so, nor have I encountered a single Quark file in years and years. As far as my experience has been, InDesign ate Quark's lunch and **** out the bones over 15 years ago. Maybe there's some secret underground community of Quark devotees I've never heard of, though.
 
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I'm pretty sure that first post you responded to was sarcasm.

And both posts you quoted were written in 2010 :)
 
...cool to see how things have changed since 2007. "Graphic Design Ten Years Later" should be an article headline...
 
If you look at some of the (few) job listings out there, the short answer is, apparently, ALL OF THEM. But the practical reality is the software your Employer/Client uses in their shop. Which could be state of the art everything on cutting edge machines, to legacy dedicated applications from the 80s running on ancient Windows NT boxes they can't update, as the software publisher went under in 1997.

As a battle-scarred veteran of the Desktop Publishing wars, I entered the field in 1980 B.C... Before Computers. When DTP came along in the 90s, it was heavily marketed as a way to eliminate entire art departments. Since then, it has been discovered that training, taste, the ability to draw, and understand principles of Design still makes a difference. Then the idea took hold that giving Creative Pros robust tools was more effective than giving them to High School interns. However the ubiquity and strength - what nuclear missile guys would call "throw weight" – of our digital tools has put a LOT of talented people to pounding the floors in Walmart, if not on the street.

But I can saw with absolutely zero irony, if you hope to make it as a purely print designer in this economy, you have to be driven, very very good, and LUCKY, and as good a self promoter as a Designer - or you will straight up starve to death. We have reached a point that the majority of simple print design can be done directly by clients in MS Office (maybe not well, but hard to compete with what's perceived as "free"). Even the much maligned Vistaprint now has a not-entirely-horrid online designer interface that most people can shove something fairly presentable out of.

Our market does not start till clients want to look better than what they can do themselves, or are willing to pay someone to do something they would rather not - busy doing what they are good at. Or by the diminishing market that values our experience and expertise for what it is.

That said - The Adobe Creative Applications still largely rule the Creative universe - but Adobe is not as overwhelming as they used to be, with more and more 3rd party apps coming along to compete legitimately with Photoshop, Illustrator and their other apps. Many creatives on tighter budgets bristle at the pain of a monthly subscription fee for Creative Cloud, creating a market for alternatives. Apps like Pixelmator and Acorn among others have seen considerable traction, and Sketch is displacing Illustrator in producing Web and Mobile App Graphics. You will also need the ability to generate and edit PDF files. The advantage of Creative Cloud is you have access to a LOT of professional class software for the monthly fee. (Made sense when I suddenly needed to work on a project in After Effects.)

For Print Layout, InDesign is still the reigning industry standard, but Quark Xpress is still out there. Avoid MS Publisher, it's toxic. The Open Source Scribus has become surprisingly capable, if not as full featured as InDesign.

While Pages, Numbers, Keynote are very capable, professionals interacting with the general business world absolutely must be adept with MS Office, who OWNS that space, despite the rise of alternatives like Open Office and Google Docs and such. - not least of which is the ability to deal with the variable competence level content they send us. Also, I have received incessant requests to convert designs made in InDesign into Word Templates, especially letterheads. So much for bleeds.

If you are going to survive, especially as a freelancer, you're also going to have to delve into the realm of Web Design and Development. Some Clients/Employers can't differentiate, and feel "it's all the same s**t". Others can't imagine they have anything in common - If your first assignment for a client is a print brochure, they often don't think you can build a web site, and vice versa. But youll need to learn HTML, CSS, Javascript, JQuery, PHP, also CMS Systems such as Wordpress or Joomla, perhaps frameworks like Bootstrap or Foundation. So you'll need specialty text editors, coding environments, perhaps Web Development apps, and being adept with FTP software. Beyond Dreamweaver, there is a vast menagerie of Web Development applications, Coda, Rapidweaver, etc... not to mention online builders.

But in this age, Designers, especially freelancers and folks in One-person Art Departments - essentially Multi-Disciplinary Creative Pros will be asked to to Print Design, Presentations, Animations, Web Design, Email Campaigns, Videos, Podcasts, anything creative, as well as being tech support for all things computer (I rather resent being introduced by colleagues as a computer wizard than as a Designer) and managing Social Media – so be prepared to cross-train and learn – and then discard – a LOT of software and online services over a career.

This is just scratching the surface, there's way more, but you get the idea.

However, I'll end with that I think the entire Design and Publishing community should vigorously push back against any employer or clients desire to use Flash. It's a dead, insecure, resource-hungry, depreciated technology and back in the day, sported the most user-hostile development environment I've ever seen - requiring the combined skills of a Graphic Designer, Animation Director, and Object Oriented Programmer to make it look half decent and then actually do anything useful. Grrr Arrgh.

Good luck out there, folks.
 
There are really two areas of study for a Graphic Designer; print design and experience/web design, with some overlap.

The holy trinity of required software: Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator.

Dreamweaver is a must for web, familiarity with HTML/CSS. Adobe Muse has come a long way for expansive web site design across multiple platforms. Quark is no longer relevant unless you work in the publishing industry or some crusty old agency. CorelDraw is not and never was professional software, and is windows only now. 3D is a whole separate thing if you ask me.

Obvious skill to know is Font management. Acrobat Pro PDF editing skills are also useful.

Biggest asset is being a problem solver and able to pick-up something and learn it quick on the job. The ability to communicate and write concise, professional e-mail is an underrated asset as well. Best thing any budding Graphic Designer can do is to learn some solid prepress production skills.

Oh, and don’t ever say “graphics designers”.

Chris7 said:
Hello,

Got a friend who's interested in going back to school to become a graphic designer. Wondering what programs graphics pro's are expected to know.

Thanks for your time,

Chris
Click to expand...
 
jeremy h said:
I would rather take someone on who has taken the trouble to learn the fundamentals on what a vector graphic is, resolution, why CSS is better than tables, what a renderer does in a 3d program etc etc than someone who has picked a couple of bits of software and parroted a few specific techniques in an attempt to wow me
Click to expand...

Aaaaand surely typography 101, so often neglected?
 
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