I've been a graphic designer/art director/creative director for some 17 years. The qualities I look for in hiring a graphic designer are not necessarily creativity or ability to think outside the box, because usually the creative director and art director take care of the "creative" stuff. When I give a project to a graphic designer, I expect them to be able to turn my vision into a document or layout. In that sense, you need to have strong knowledge of the programs (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop...probably in that order), excellent typography skills (being able to pick the right fonts, typesize, etc.), excellent layout abilities and the ability to work fast. For me, there's nothing more frustrating than a slow designer. If you have to think about it that long, you're overthinking it. The design/layout process should flow naturally and quickly. This ability comes with experience, of course, but to some degree you either have an eye for it or you don't. Would I recommend going back to school? Not necesarily. I'm self taught and successful. I would suggest starting with InDesign and learning that program the best you can. Find examples of graphic design you like (brochures, magazines, ads, catalogs, and even financial documents like annual reports) and recreate them exactly. This will give you the technical learning. Don't worry about being creative or reinventing the wheel. Hone your skills and fine tune them. Practice getting faster and faster. Next move on to Illustrator. Focus on recreating logos, simple artwork and making graphs. Believe it not, there are alot of graphic designers at financial companies, and financial companies love graphs. Again, focus on speed and accuracy and then get creative. Lastly, get to know Photoshop. As a starting graphic designer, chances are you'll use Photoshop the least. Usually, there will be a Photoshop specialist on staff or any photo editing will be done before it comes to you. Once you get a solid grip on the software, you'll need to build a portfolio. Think about what type of graphic design you'd want to do, and build a portfolio geared towards that. Depending on the job market near you, you may not have much of a choice. In that case, you'll want a broad variety. Again, don't discard simple financial documents or even company newsletters. These are perfect jobs for beginning designers. If you do them well you can land a job at just about any company and don't have to only apply at advertising/marketing firms. It opens up more possibilities early on in your career until you can build a bigger portfolio. Eventually, you'll develop your own style and may decide to start your own business. Over the next few years, expand your abilities. Learn photography, web design, video editing, copywriting, and even print production. One of the best things I did when I was first learning graphic design was to talk to the prepress guys at the print vendors we used. Learn what works and doesn't work when designing a job that ultimately prints. I found that far too many graphic designers design for the computer screen and forget that what's on screen has to translate correctly onto paper. If a prepress department has to mess with your files to get them to print correctly, then you're doing something wrong. Find out what they're doing to fix your files and fix it before they get the files. Learn how that part of the process works. It'll help you be a more rounded designer. (Is this getting too long-winded yet?)
Any questions? I'll try to follow this thread and answer best I can.
