Graphic Design - Mariam Gogiashvili on Her Profession and Experience
The relationship between a company and a consumer often begins with visual communication. A lot depends on it: making a first impression, correctly delivering the message to the target audience, arousing interest. The visual aspect significantly determines a brand’s identity as well. Consequently, graphic design is becoming an increasingly in-demand field.
Want to learn more about this field? Then this blog is for you. Meet Mariam Gogiashvili, a graphic design lecturer who will tell you about the professional journey of a graphic designer.
Mariam’s father was an architect by profession, so she spent most of her childhood in his workshop. There were many models, colored pencils, papers of different textures, and prints. She was allowed to use them and was constantly drawing. When she grew up, she was gifted her first computer, learned various programs, and started taking orders from the 10th grade. She then continued her studies at the Faculty of Architecture at the Tbilisi Academy of Arts.
While working on architectural projects, she realized that the graphic part was more interesting to her. She worked intensively on projects in Georgia, then registered on Upwork and became Top-rated. After a certain period, she stopped working on this platform and continued her career as an In-House designer at Adjara Group. Simultaneously, she worked on various interesting brands. During this period, she acquired the most important people from the fields of design and marketing. A few months ago, Mariam returned to freelance projects. At this stage, her priority is to dedicate time to personal projects and experiments.
One of the notable projects is related to Adjara Group:
"While working at Adjara Group, one morning at Cafe Stamba, I found a lot of colorful pastries. I wanted to make this communication. The next day I bought an iPad and came to work on Monday with a completed drawing. These illustrations are still printed on Stamba's pastry box."
Mariam’s relationship with Cord Brunch & Bar is special, which started with branding. Then she got involved in content and event poster illustration/design. She fell in love with this brand so much that today she does all the content herself.
"In this case, the attitude of the clients plays a big role, they trust me and like what I do. Today, new clients most often send me Cord's posters and Stamba's dessert illustrations as references."
Profession - Graphic Designer
As Mariam notes, it has become mandatory for brands to develop a visual identity. Otherwise, it’s difficult to distinguish them from each other. The visual side is one of the strongest forms of communication and often speaks on behalf of the brand. Consequently, correct communication brings success, while incorrect communication can overshadow the brand and become a big problem. That’s why the demand for designers is growing and this profession is changing in importance from year to year.
"Today, a graphic designer can mean many different things. This person might work in a specific direction. When you're looking for a graphic designer, you need to know well what you need from them. This is important for a good relationship to form and for the work to be done painlessly on both sides."
Reading, sketching, observing – this is the list of professional and personal habits that Mariam considers important for a graphic designer to develop. Continuous daily work on them is necessary. According to her, this systematization largely determines the formation of her interests. Working on oneself is especially important for beginners to better understand this profession.
At the initial stage, a graphic designer should want to work even in the simplest position. During real work, personal and professional relationship habits are formed, which are crucial in this profession. Mariam also emphasizes the financial aspect. It’s possible to achieve financial independence through graphic design, which is why many people try to master this profession. However, in her opinion, doing this job daily with this motivation and without genuine interest is very difficult.
To get inspiration and find references, Mariam turns to archives on the internet and looks at the original sources of works. Mariam is interested in everything that has happened so far. Sometimes she gets acquainted with new artists and their works. Currently, her outstanding designers are Anna Mills, Alexis Jamet, Can Yang, and Braulio Amado.
If you’re interested in archives, Mariam recommends the Flickr platform, where you’ll discover interesting architectural and design magazine archives. You can check out new projects here – itsnicethat.com. And this is one of Mariam’s recent discoveries: https://www.peculiarmanicule.com/
Challenges and Career Prospects
Mariam considers the most difficult challenge to be communicating with the client and making the right offer. Also, important factors are setting deadlines, time management, and low self-esteem. However, it’s always possible to cope with them. In Mariam’s opinion, if you receive good feedback, you can make a good design even with little knowledge. Therefore, during the course, she plans to constantly share with students the practices she has accumulated through her own experience, books, and articles.
The career path of a graphic designer is diverse and can develop in several directions. Specifically:
- Freelance designer, who is responsible for creating designs as well as communicating with clients;
- In-House designer in a company, where you will mostly find a team with whom you will work as a team;
- Designer in a creative agency, where you will find a creative team. Among them, many designers, art directors, copywriters, etc.
As for directions, today you can be only a product designer or only a packaging designer. Also, you can go from design to illustration, Art-Direction, UI/UX design, Motion design, etc.
Graphic Design: About the Course
As I’ve already told you, Mariam will lead the graphic design course at commschool. The program includes both theoretical parts as well as practical work and review of works. Mariam is ready to share her experience with students and prepare them for real projects.
"When you're a beginner, you have a lot of questions. A mentor can give you direction, which accelerates the process of achieving good results. Getting advice from experienced professionals means easily obtaining information about industry standards and best practices."
Mariam’s teaching approach will be student-oriented and based on their individual needs. Various activities await students in the course: they will do experiments, learn to sketch/write ideas on paper with a pencil, and solve creative problems. They will start learning with their unfiltered ideas. Feedback is important to Mariam. Therefore, they will mainly evaluate and critique students’ works together. After feedback, they will take care of correcting and perfecting them. Throughout the program, along with acquiring technical skills, emphasis will be placed on establishing a strong conceptual foundation.
"The course might be interesting for people who work in the creative industry but lack this practice. Also for people working in completely different fields who are interested in testing their abilities in this field."
Recommendations:
Finally, I’ll share with you the platforms that, according to Mariam’s advice, will help you in your professional growth:
creativelivesinprogress.com – everything about people working in the creative industry
itsnicethat.com – latest projects in the design field
fontsinuse.com – here you’ll see that even fonts we’ve rejected can have an ideal life
YouTube channels:
- Nicer Tuesdays – recordings of It’s Nice That’s events, where active designers and artists share their latest experiences
Jesse Nyberg – a freelance designer who provides us with a lot of information. Specifically, he discusses trends, talks about problems and ways to solve them, the financial part… all the details that might interest a designer.
So, if you’re ready for new challenges and want to join the world of design, be sure to take this opportunity. Join us at commschool and master the profession of graphic designer with a leading professional in the field!
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