Essential Tips for Students Choosing Graphic Design as a Career
By Shiven Pratap Singh — Creative Head & Founder, Unmatched Graphics
Hello students,
If you're planning to choose Graphic Design as a full-time profession, this one’s for you. I’m sharing these tips as someone who started as a confused student, worked hard, built skills from scratch, and now runs a design agency. Graphic design is a fascinating field, it attracts a lot of people. But attraction doesn’t mean love, and this industry can throw you out if you don’t genuinely enjoy the work.
I’m sharing these tips because I don’t want you to choose a field that isn’t made for you and if it is made for you, then these tips will help you grow much faster.
1. Watch Tutorials on YouTube (Self Learning Is Your Real Teacher)
Let me be brutally honest: no one is going to serve you a golden plate and make you the “best graphic designer in the universe.” Your university or teacher may teach you for one hour, but that’s not enough. This field needs hours of practice, daily discipline, and self-learning.
Stop wasting time binge-watching anime or random content. Search for good graphic design channels. Pick any tutorial - posters, logos, banners, packaging, doesn’t matter.
Your daily routine should be:
- Watch one tutorial
- Practice it simultaneously
- Repeat daily
- Copy steps until the logic becomes natural
- Then create designs on your own
If you do this for even 30 days, you’ll be ahead of most design students.
2. Forget the Money (At Least in the Beginning)
Most students think graphic design = big money. And yes, it does have money but NOT in the beginning. This field pays for your skills, not your degree. If your skills are weak, no one cares.
Don’t enter this field thinking, “I’ll become rich instantly.” It won’t happen. Do free projects, practice, gain experience, and learn how clients think. Money eventually comes when your skills improve.
3. Build a Portfolio — Your Portfolio Is Your Real CV
Ask yourself honestly: are you roaming around campus with your friends all day? Stop. Those years are golden. I built 90% of my portfolio while still in university, and that portfolio helped me get clients right after college.
Join design clubs. Work on college fests. Take up small projects. Ask teachers for opportunities. A strong portfolio:
- Builds your confidence
- Improves your skills
- Gets you real clients
- Makes you stand out
Use your university time wisely, it’s priceless.
4. Get Addicted to the Work, Passion Is Your Only Fuel
Hard work is non-negotiable in graphic design. People say, “Work only 8–9 hours.” Good advice for some fields, not for designers.
If you want to build your own agency or work as a freelancer, be ready: clients will ask for changes late at night, revisions will pile up, and sometimes your sleep will suffer. Yes, it gets frustrating, but that’s how you grow.
If you haven’t done serious hard work before, be prepared, this field needs passion.
5. Be Patient — Clients Will Test Your Soul
Patience is not optional here, it’s a survival skill.
Because clients will:
Because at the end of the day, when you send that final file and the client says “Perfect, thank you,” you’ll feel a weird sense of happiness. Like… “Yeah, I did it.” Patience builds maturity. Maturity builds confidence. Confidence builds a designer.
