What You Need to Know to Be a Graphic Designer in the State of Washington

Nearly 4,000 professional graphic designers live in the state of Washington, which features more than 6.8 million local residents and seven cities with populations over 100,000.  Corporations and community groups all around Washington State contract with local graphic artists for various visual design tasks.

Washington Schools and Training Programs for Graphic Design

An increasing number of colleges and Universities in the state of Washington offer degree programs in communication design.  Most graphic artists enrolled at Washington State design colleges major in visual arts.  Well-attended Washington graphic design schools include Cornish-College-of-the-Arts, the International-Academy-of-Design-and-Technology and University-of-Washington in Seattle, Interface Computer School and Spokane Community College in Spokane and Tacoma Community College and Bates Technical College in Tacoma.

Beyond the numerous Washington-based design colleges are various accredited online degree programs available nationwide.  Some of the most successful accredited colleges featuring online degree programs in graphic design are The Art Institutes, ITT Tech, University of Phoenix and DeVry.  Each of these four schools also features physical locations all over America.  DeVry has campuses in Bellevue, Lynnwood and Federal Way.  ITT Tech is at your interpersonal service in Everett, Seattle and Spokane Valley.  The Art Institutes has a Seattle location.  University of Phoenix has campuses and student resource centers in Bellevue, Kennewick, Lynnwood, Spokane, Tacoma and Tukwila. 

Working as a Graphic Designer in the State of Washington

A great many graphic design professionals in Washington State work for leading local advertising agencies.  Top Washington ad firms include Capitol-Hill-Times and DDB-Direct in Seattle, BHW-1 and Boom-Creative in Spokane, and Ad-Strategies and Jaenicke-Marketing in Tacoma, to name a few.  Some local artists team up with well-funded Washington motion picture companies.  Leading local movie producers include K-5-Home-Team and Northwest-Video-Service in Seattle, along with Action-Video-Productions and Broadway-West-Productions in Spokane, as well as Action-Video-Production and Motion-of-Life-Video-Production in Tacoma. 

Graphic artists in the state of Washington can also work for aircraft manufacturers, software developers, Universities, animation studios, travel agents, event coordinators, book publishers, and many other businesses.  Statewide graphic design jobs for Washington designers include character development, travel guides, company logos, medical illustrations, educational diagrams, web pages, street signs, window displays and more. 

The average annual income for a graphic designer employed in the state of Washington is currently about $50,200, with mean hourly rate of around $24.15.  About half of all graphic designers employed by American businesses earn between $30,000 and $60,000 annually.  Washington ranks tenth among states in terms of average annual income for graphic designers.  However, none of this data takes into account the unreported incomes of self employed professionals.

Skills of a Graphic Designer

The most desirable natural attributes of professional graphic designers are highly developed communication skills combined with genuine artistic talent.  Nonetheless, formal visual arts training is typically required.  Qualifications for paid employment include advanced drawing technique, computer-generated artwork, photography, web design and typography.  Most graphic design work involves layout, which is manipulating the size, style, color and placement of visual images on a page.  Typographical technique is the optimal layout of linguistic symbols like words, numbers and punctuation.  More advanced communication design skills include animation, interactive media and online social networking.