How To Become An Advertising Designer (With Jobs And Salary)

A job in the advertisement industry requires immense creative talent. If you possess unique creative skills and want to work with ads, then a career in advertising designing can be the right option for you. Understanding the job profile and the career trajectory of an advertising designer can help you determine if it is the right career choice for you. In this article, we discuss how to become an advertising designer, break down their career path, their unique skill set, different types of jobs an advertising designer can get and their salary.

Who is an advertising designer?

An advertising designer makes design and artwork advertisements. Companies and brands commission advertisements for their products and services to advertising designers to create the design elements for their websites, brochures and digital, visual and print ads. Advertising designers have a creative inclination and constantly strive to generate quirky, original pieces of artwork. It is a fantastic career option for those who want to work as a graphic designer in the future for different communication channels.

Related: Graphic Design Skills (With Examples And Tips)

How to become an advertising designer

If you are wondering how to become an advertising designer, you can follow these steps to build a career in the field successfully:

1. Get a professional degree

Advertising designers often have a bachelor's degree in design, graphic design, marketing, advertising design or fine arts. These courses equip you with the professional knowledge to begin your career as an advertisement designer. A professional degree helps demonstrate your knowledge base so that you may prove to be an asset to an employer. You could also pursue a short course or a certification in relevant subjects instead of doing a traditional three-year course.

2. Gain professional experience

After completing your educational qualifications, you can aim to get hands-on experience designing advertisement content for companies. You can start with an internship or a training program that helps you learn the process of advertising. This is a great learning opportunity and enables you to enhance your creativity while working on exciting projects.

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3. Network with peers

With reasonable work experience and the right degree, you can land a great job in advertising companies and agencies if you have an excellent professional network in the industry. Your professional contacts can help you advance in your career by recommending you for jobs and introducing you to newer people in your industry. This can lead to opportunities and potential job prospects for you over the years.

4. Learn essential designing tools

Design software and tools are at the centre of a successful career in advertising design. The more software applications you know in your field of work, the more employable you could be. This is why it could help if you learned these software and tools for efficient work.

5. Enhance your portfolio

Advertising designing is a creative job, so you can gather your best designs, artwork and curate content from the projects you have worked on in a portfolio. A design portfolio or a deck can help you send your graphics design samples to clients in a coherent manner. The portfolio showcases your ability to work with text, colours, shapes, designs, 3D graphics and motion art and exhibits your skills systematically to a potential employer.

What does an advertising designer do?

If you aspire to become an advertisement designer, you can expect to create captivating visual concepts for various mediums. The scope of work varies if you work as a freelancer with an ad agency or full-time with a specific brand. Following are the key responsibilities of an ad designer:

• Work closely with a client. Advertising designers work closely with their clients and understand what they want from an advertising graphic designer. This includes planning ad campaigns, new advertising projects and creating strategies for advertisements.

• Communicate brand identity. One of the critical roles of an advertising designer is to appropriately capture a brand's identity and communicate it to the masses. They work under the careful guidance of art and creative directors and create advertising designs that stand out for a brand.

• Design ads for the target audience. Advertising designers drive the advertising campaign's focus, work with other graphic artists and sketch visual design samples for the clients as pa.

• Create design templates. When creating design templates and layouts, advertising designers can use either computer software or design by hand to create a rough illustration. An illustrator then uses the brief and the graphic design sample to create a web or a digital strategy.

• Adhere to the client brief. The most crucial thing that an advertising designer ensures is to meet all client deadlines and submit the creative work elements well before time. Many advertising designers also collaborate with the clients to strategise ad campaigns and create ad calendars for them.

Skills essential to become an advertising designer

The job of an advertising designer is highly creative and requires a sharp eye for detail. Here are the essential skills you may possess to become an advertising designer successfully:

Creativity

Each ad content is unique, so possessing creative skills to make exceptional, one-of-a-kind designs can significantly impact your work. Consider details like the target market and current trends for out-of-the-box ideas and hit the client brief simultaneously. From conceptualising the idea and conveying it to the client to putting on paper and executing it, creative skills are essential for an advertising designer.

A good understanding of design

Ad designers require having a keen eye for detail and may want to pay attention to the minutest of elements in each design they make. For this, it is crucial to understand the latest designs trending in the market and use them to create an ad campaign that communicates the essence of a brand or a product to the people. Thus, make sure to analyse the smallest details and spot designs that inspire you in the most mundane things in life.

Jobs for an advertising designer

Getting a job in the advertising designer industry is the next important thing after completing your education. There is a wide range of fields and job profiles you can choose from. Following is a list of some of these options:

1. Art director

National average salary: ₹614,286 per year

Primary duties: Art directors work on both advertising design and film design as part of their work. This is a senior-level position that requires managing a creative project, including illustrators, designers and other artists. Ideally, you would require having more than 10 years of work experience in art direction or videography to become a skilled art director and get high-paying jobs in the field.

2. Web designer

National average salary: ₹2,18,784 per year

Primary duties: Web designers create a layout for the web page and design graphics for a website. Their job is vital as the look and feel of any website is of significant importance. Their job includes considering the fonts and colour schemes you can use on the website and how seamlessly everything blends together on a web page. Web designers often create multiple website templates for their clients to choose from.

Related: What Is A Web Designer? (With Duties, Salary And Skills)

3. Creative director

National average salary: ₹7,22,988 per year

Primary duties: A creative director plans the entire project's layout with a team of designers. In addition to this, a creative director also supervises copywriters when working on an ad campaign. This is a senior-level role that requires managing teams and working with clients on a daily basis.

4. UI/UX designer

National average salary: ₹2,85,476 per year

Primary duties: UI/UX designers are responsible for designing the look of a website, a software application or pages on brochures and pamphlets. Their primary responsibility is to ensure that the user interface on a website is easy to understand and navigate through and that it looks pleasing to the user's eyes. The job also requires minute attention to detail to a web page and focusing on optimising a user's experience on a website.

5. Multimedia designer

National average salary: ₹2,66,052 per year

Primary duties: Multimedia developers work with 3-D graphic designs to make sounds and moving visuals more appealing. These designers help present images and visuals in a more interactive format for several media outlets like TV, newspapers, magazines and websites. Multimedia designers require excellent visual communication and programming skills to execute their tasks.

Salary figures reflect data listed on Indeed Salaries at time of writing. Salaries may vary depending on the hiring organisation and a candidate's experience, academic background and location.