12 Essential Graphic Design Skills: Your 2025 Guide

Using a blend of creativity and other abilities, graphic designers convey ideas, messages, and information visually through design. Various projects graphic designers work on might include company logos, book illustration, product packaging, and website layout. Knowing what types of skills these creative professionals use may help you determine if you want to pursue a graphic design career path. Explore 12 skills needed for graphic design and learn how to develop them.

Essential skills for graphic designers: Technical skills

Technical skills involve measurable abilities that you use to perform your specific graphic design job. Examples of key technical skills used in graphic design include:

Branding and identity design

Branding involves how a company differs from similar companies in terms of products, services, structure, and reputation. Graphic elements like color, fonts, and logos all help distinguish a company’s brand identity, so graphic designers with branding skills provide value to employers.

Knowledge of color theory

The choice of color in design may have an effect on mood, so learning about color theory plays an important role in graphic design training. Color theory explores color complements and contrasts, different meanings associated with colors, how cultural trends affect color choices, and more. 

Understanding of additional design principles 

In addition to color theory, other design principles can help you achieve success as a graphic designer. These design principles include:

• Alignment: Placement of design elements for connection and consistency

• Balance: Layout of color, objects, space, and texture to achieve equal visual weight 

• Contrast: Use of opposing colors, fonts, lines, and other design elements to draw the viewer’s eye

• Hierarchy: Adding the most visual weight to key areas of focus

• Negative space: Use of blank or white space to reduce clutter and promote clarity

• Proximity: Closeness and connection of visual elements

• Repetition: Consistent appearance of design elements like colors, fonts, lines, shapes, symbols, etc.

Design software proficiency

Depending on the project involved, you might use varying types of design software. Examples include:

• Adobe Illustrator for vector creation and editing

• Adobe Photoshop for creating and editing photos and other images

• CorelDRAW for vector creation and editing

• Krita for digital painting projects

• Lunacy for UI/UX web design on Windows

• Procreate for digital illustration and painting

• Sketch for vector-based drawing and animation

Experience with typography 

Graphic design involves the selection of typography, which refers to the size, style, color, and placement of the typeface. Knowing how to arrange different styles and sizes of typeface on a page can help make designs more interesting and appealing to viewers.

Visual storytelling abilities

The ability to tell stories with graphic design can help build connections with viewers, and meaningful connections can lead to greater brand recognition and loyalty. A skilled graphic designer learns about their target audience and uses design to create a story that addresses their wants and needs. 

Essential skills for graphic designers: Workplace skills

Workplace skills involve abilities that you can use across many different jobs. These skills may have an effect on how you work, both alone and with other people. Examples of key workplace skills used in graphic design include:

Adaptability

An ability to adapt can help you achieve success in a graphic design career. In addition to adapting to the field itself—which changes as technology changes—you may have to adapt to design changes made by clients and bounce back easily if projects get canceled. 

Communication 

For success on the job, you must communicate with clients as a graphic designer, which means listening to their needs and offering effective solutions. You may also use communication skills when working with other employees or presenting design proposals to company heads or clients.

Collaboration

The ability to collaborate and work well with others plays a key role in graphic design. As a graphic designer, you typically work with clients or their representatives, and you may also work with members of various departments, including art, sales, marketing, and product development. 

Conceptual thinking

The ability to think in a conceptual way involves creating graphic designs that combine visual appeal and purpose. Depending on the project, your design might need to tell a story, solve a problem, provide entertainment, or persuade a potential buyer.

Creative thinking

In graphic design, you may benefit from the ability to think creatively. This involves viewing ideas or problems from varied perspectives and coming up with innovative solutions. Since part of the challenge of graphic design involves dreaming up unique ideas, creative thinking helps make you a more marketable employee or independent contractor.

Time management

Good time management skills can help you meet deadlines in graphic design, especially when managing more than one project at a time. Fortunately, you can learn to be a better time manager with tips such as the five Ps of time management. These include:

• Planning ahead for better clarity and focus

• Prioritizing work by completing urgent tasks first

• Taking a proactive approach to every project

• Using productivity tools like task management and time-tracking apps 

• Allowing for personal time to maintain work-life balance

What are 7 types of graphic design?

Graphic design can involve a wide variety of different projects. Seven ways that graphic artists put skills into practice include:

1. Advertising and marketing: Creating digital designs like web banners or social media ads and/or print designs like promotional products, brochures, or billboards

1. Animation design: Designing animation to entertain, inform, or capture attention 

1. Branding and identity design: Highlighting visual identity and branding with design elements like color schemes, typography, symbols, and images 

1. Illustration: Creating original artwork for various mediums like magazine covers, graphic novels, product packaging, flyers, and posters 

1. Mobile app design: Working primarily in UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) design

1. Product packaging: Creating package design by choosing package form, material, size, images, color, and fonts

1. Website design: Focusing on site layout, branding, identity, and UI design

How to become a graphic designer

While becoming a graphic designer may involve different paths, a few steps might help steer you in the right direction. Consider getting a degree, building a design portfolio, and taking courses or earning graphic design certifications.

Get a bachelor’s degree.

Consider getting a bachelor’s degree in graphic design. The curriculum for this degree covers topics like design principles, graphic design history, printmaking, typography, commercial graphics, digital design, and website design.

Build a graphic design portfolio.

Many bachelor’s degree programs in graphic design have courses to help students build a portfolio of work. Building a portfolio involves:

• Choosing a digital platform for display

• Including a short biography explaining your skills and strengths

• Providing approximately 10 strong examples of your work in varied formats

Take courses or earn certifications.

A variety of courses and certifications can boost your graphic design skills and may help you stand out to potential employers. Consider the Professional Design Certification from the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) or take design courses through tech giants like Adobe or Google or from various colleges and universities. 

Building your graphic design skills on Coursera

A well-developed skill set may help you become a graphic designer and have continued success on the job. 

To begin building your design skills or augment the ones you have, consider earning the Google UX Design Professional Certificate on Coursera. Designed for beginners, this highly reviewed, seven-course series takes about six months to complete with a commitment of just 10 hours per week.