Technology and media play a huge part in design nowadays. It is up to you to make sure that you are always at the cutting edge of developments in technology in the design field, because otherwise you risk being left behind.

Some of the computer applications you need to keep up-to-date with include Photoshop, Quark Xpress, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, FreeHand, 3D Studio, Acrobat, Flash and Director. Much of what you produce as a graphic designer will involve a certain level of proficiency with some or all of these programs.

Despite a growing reliance on computers, as a designer you will always have to be able to demonstrate your illustrative skills in sketch form.

Those who are serious about design know that they have to keep abreast of developments in the design world. It’s also good to gather inspiration and influences from what contemporary designers are producing.

There’s no better way of keeping up-to-date than by attending exhibitions on design. The Design Museum in London is a great place to start as it holds talks and events as well as cutting edge exhibition. Consider becoming a member if you think you’ll visit the museum regularly as this will give you free entry and priority booking for certain events.

Membership costs £25 for people under 26 so it’s great if you’re just starting out in the field.

If you want to get into graphic design as a career then you stand a better chance if you have qualifications in the visual arts. A degree or a HND in graphic design itself is ideal, but you’re likely to be considered for a position if you’ve studied illustration, fine art, visual culture, photography or creative media.

To get onto some of these courses, you may have to complete a foundation degree in art and design to give you a good artistic base on which you can build. It’s a good idea to get some work experience whilst your studying as this might set you apart from other candidates for jobs down the line.

There is a large speculation that as time goes on, computers will become much more powerful and better. Also, Internet speeds will increase dramatically and thus the speculation? Graphic Design. Yes, people think the links of Photoshop will move to the cloud.

It’s a good point to note that Adobe are not really doing anything to make a good cloud based graphic design package and this could be the time in the next 10 years for other companies to release their own cloud based package and surpass Adobe on the web.

It is possible but can it really be achieved? You tell me.

Photoshop CS5 takes Graphic design to the next level like it never has before in the history of digital grapphic design… OK, probably not but there are a few new nifty tools and options to play with – the most heard of being content fill (which is actually already in GIMP and has been in GIMP for many years).

So is it a good feature? Well, yes. But for a graphic designer, it’s no use because the content fill is for photos and a graphic designs design work is all digital so there would be no need to remove anything from an image.

You may not have realised this but Graphic Design is a very tough thing to do and if you are going to apply for a Graphic Design job, then know one thing. If you aren’t very good then you will face a very high level of pressure and will probably consider the industry to be the worst in.

You need to become very good at what you do and know the theory behind the top designs and look at other people’s work and learn from their style and processes and how they got to the final piece.

Just look at the new Pepsi Logo – Looks very simple but cost millions.

Becoming a master graphic design takes a very long time and a lot of experience. Most people who become half-good with Photoshop and only Photoshop consider themselves to be master graphic designers however this is not the case.

You need to also know Illustrator as much as you know photoshop. Along with this, years of experience is required and before you begin, you need to know how to think for that particular project and design as every design will require a different way of thinking and thus a different way of design.

So, once you know a few tricks in Photoshop, don’t consider yourself a Master.

Do Graphic Tablets Help when designing? Back in the the initial years of my designing a few years ago, I was strongly considering buying a Wacom graphics tablet such as the Wacom Intuos or their Bamboo Fun.

I really considered it and then finally got to play around with some of the more basic tablets and then realised that although this is a basic one, the more advanced ones aren’t really going to assist me so basically a waste of my gold.

So, I didn’t buy one but do note that if you are really going to go into detail and you’re going to spend ours on your work piece, then you may need to buy one.

Company branding is important.

For this very reason many companies will set aside a large chunk of their budget for Business logos, business cards, business calendars amongst others.

As a designer, it is our job in making sure the customer gets exactly what they want with some sturn direction when it comes to the design elements. If delivered correctly the company will be well on the way to establishing themselves as a decent brand to their competitors and to their customers.

Once in place, branding can then be used to branch out into advertising and marketting. If the company is big enough branding can be a huge part of a TV advertisement campaign with customers familiarising themselves with the Company logo and colours.

By providing a complete package, we, as designers can deter our clients away from cheap logo services and cowboy services that are making the need for professional services defunct.

So in summary, when designing brands for you client make sure you cover all your bases. Research their market and competitors to see what they are up to, to gain any ideas you wouldn’t of previously thought about. Make sure your brand works well in printing making it easy to print across a large spectrum of products.

Which is better when it come to graphic design; Macs or PCs? Well personally I find this a very easy answer, but not wanting to swade you in any way I’ll layout the arguments for both below and you can make up your own mind.

When analysing for Graphic design we need to look at how each of them handles graphics and colour. When it comes to colours, Apple have a long history of focusing and improving on this aspect, but now the same results that were once only available with a Mac are now possible on PC.

In terms of the graphic software available for both the Mac and the PC, there are no significant differences. The main adobe suite of tools are available for both the Mac and Windows platform.

So lastly we will need to look at how easy each of the computers are to use. Apple have always focused on user experience, and while Microsoft are improving on this they are still playing catch up to the Mac.

Apple Macs have a long history of being used for Graphic Design, but it is clear that Microsoft are making considerable efforts to improve the their PCs for this purpose. Macs are typically much more expensive that PC’s but with more and more options available from Apple, this is set to change.

I’ve given you some information and now I’ll leave to you to make your own mind up.