Work in your specialism

The visual art industry is very large and gives us many employment opportunities. There are many jobs related to Graphic Design out there, it is an industry that will always exist, new things will always need to be designed and data will always need to be visualised. Graphic design can lead down exciting career paths such as Illustration, Printmaking and Photography all areas within the art world which require skills similar to those of a graphic designer. There are also other careers anybody interested in graphic design could be suited too such as interior design and production design.   Being a visual art there are no qualifications necessarily needed it’s about your talent and style and how well you can work as a graphic designer. But it helps to have a HND/degree in any visual art or subject related to graphic design, and a Btec or foundation degree prior to that. But most importantly it is key to possess the qualities and character of a graphic designer, a passionate enthusiasm, patience, the ability to work in a team and among other things excellent communication skills. Working as a graphic designer means working as a team and working with others on the same project to create a complete collaboration of ideas and possibilities. Being a graphic designer means planning your time well, managing projects and pushing your own ideas to the very limits, exploring every possible design route and being able to see why certain choices work well and why others look terrible.

David McCandless : influences and analysis of work

David McCandless is a data journalist and information designer who works in the 21^st Century. One of my favourite images from him as a designer is ‘The billion pound-o-Gram’’ It reveals the scale of the budget deficit in the centre of the British economy. I find the way in which McCandlesss presents this data and makes even a subject considered ‘dry’ to be interesting. The presentation of this usually hard to comprehend data is really nice to look at and easy to interpret. David uses scale to represent the size of the debts and compares them to other world issues, he uses shocking facts to intrigue the audience and promote his own political agenda. The aim of his work is to make the audience think.

 Being a modern day designer and current artist, David is influenced by his own want to inform and raise awareness about many issues. He aims to help others understand the world, reveal hidden connections and distill the worlds data into interesting visualizations. There is so much mystery and misconception in the modern day and that is what ‘information is beautiful’ is about clearing up, they aim to create beautiful and interesting infographics that the audience will want to read. He is influenced by his own craving for information and to understand and passes his new found knowledge and understanding onto others.