How to (actually) get a job in Graphic Design in 2026

Junior Graphic Designers and Uni Graduates - we need to talk!
After being in the Graphic Design industry for the last almost 9 years, I’ve seen a lot of Graphic designers come and go.

When I open LinkedIn, I see Graphic Designers talking about the same thing: It’s incredibly hard to find a job in today’s market. Sending 100s of applications and being ghosted isn’t fun, so I wanted to share some of my knowledge as someone who went from no experience in the industry, to wrking in agencies, in-house, and now owning my own creative agency.

A lot of the advice online says the same thing; make a portfolio, try to stand out, have a good CV, network, etc, and whilst those are all helpful, I feel like it doesn’t address a lot of the core problems I see when talking to Junior Designers and Graduates looking for their first job in the industry.

I want to cover 4 main topics that I think will be actually useful to people today, as someone who started this journey myself and created a career I’m proud of, with no real-world experience or University degree.

Education Isn’t Always Power

I have looked at a lot of CVs and portfolios of Junior Graphic Designers and Graduates over the years, and one thing always stands out - they aren’t designing work that’s applicable in the real world.

I’m a huge believer that a degree absolutely does not make someone hireable, if anything the way you’ve been taught could be reducing your chances of getting a job in the design industry.

When you’re in University, every piece of work is accompanied by a nice, long multi-page brief about the topic, where to research, what the end goal should be, etc. Alongside that, a lot of the work people produce are very “art-theory based”. They focus on personal artstyles and ideas, or replicating the artstyles of existing designers to help students understand techniques. You’ll spend days, weeks or months fleshing out everything you create (if you don’t procrastinate and have to do everything in a week!), before presenting it to your tutor.

In reality, in your first job, your boss will likely tell you:

“We need a poster to put on social media today about (whatever topic is relevant to your job), can you make one really quickly and send it to me?”

You: “What copy is going to go on it? What images do you want to use? Do you have any inspiration? When do you need it by?”

“Don’t worry about all of that, just make it look nice and add our logo on it, I’ll send you some text from ChatGPT later…”

I’ve mentored and managed a lot of Junior Graphic Designers that are absolutely stumped when phased with a task like this, but being eqquiped to deal with a job like this is something that hiring managers and Creative Directors like me are looking for - versitility.

Your portfolio might feature some great personal art, or an interesting design from a brief, or something cool that you created in your free time, but I need to know that if I give you a client poster to make in the morning, you can refine it and have it ready by the afternoon or the next day. Graphic Designers and creatives in general in the corporate world are problem-solvers first, and artists second.

Can you quickly study a company’s brand guidelines and create visuals that accurately match them? Can you work on projects without getting too attached to your designs if one isn’t approved? Are you versatile across Adobe Creative Cloud, or do you only know Photoshop? Do you yourself know how to create industry-standard brand guidelines and identities? Do you have the actual hard and soft skills that a real designer in the corporate/agency world is going to need to be useful, and is this accurately shown in your portfolio?

Lastly, a huge one - do you know how to pitch and explain your work to people who don’t understand Graphic Design, because that’s about 50% of your job.

These are ALL things that Creative Directors and hiring managers are actually looking for when studying you portfolios. I can further your practical skills and help develop your professional abilities, but we need to know that we can hire and integrate you into a creative team as quickly as possible - that’s what your portfolio is there to demonstrate at the early stages of your career.

Don’t Be a Specialist - Variety Is Good!

I see a lot of Junior Designers and Graduates heavily specialising in a skill that they know they’re advanced in compared to the rest of their creative abilities, like illustration, or logo creation, or general art direction. Whilst it’s great to further the skills that you’re adept in, in order to be as hireable as possible, always try to be willing to develop your skills overall. The most hireable creatives are the “Jack Of All Trades” - the creatives where I can put them in Logo Design, Social Media Creative, Branding, Editorial, Print Design and more, and whilst they may not yet be a master of each, they can bring something useful to the project with a good understanding of each.

If you’re great at making logos, look into upgrading the presentation of your designs and spend some time learning how to make basic logo animations in Adobe Aftereffects. If you’re good at Branding, maybe spend some time understanding how to present your ideas better and experiment with mockups and pitch documents that showcase presentation and editorial skills. If you’re great at illustration, maybe experiment with video editing by documenting your work process. If you’re good at editorial, learn how to create infographics and feature them in your designs to make your work more attractive to figure-heavy industries.

These are all things that will highlight on your portfolio that you’re more than capable at just one thing, which is a very attractive quality to have in the hiring market. It shows that you’re willing to learn new skills of your own accord, but also that you’re able to be taught a lot easier than other creatives.

Keep your CV Work Relevant

When looking through CVs, I see a lot of Graphic Designers following trends to try to appeal to employers. Things like ranking your skills in programs by %, or throwing in as many keywords as possible that don’t relate to their portfolio work.

I always say that you should think carefully about how you want to portray your skillset in your CV. Yes, make sure you convey exactly how varied your skills are, but make sure that you do that in a clear and concise way.

Make it clear where your skills are used and how it’s relevant - if you work in editorial, make it clear that you design infographics in Illustrator, or have experience using Canva for Social Media Templates, or use InDesign to create brand guidelines. The skills and work you convey need to be relevant to the actual corporate world of work. It’s one thing to say that you make posters, it’s another thing to say that you can create Social Media Templates for Corporate Social Media accounts, or that instead of saying you studied “branding”, that you have relevant experience designing creative according to corporate brand guidelines.

Things like this show that you have relevant experience that can directly translate to the corporate working world, and should your CV be shortlisted and shown to people in the company, this will 100% help you stand out from the crowd. Lots of graduates are “good at branding”, not all of them can skim through 100+ page brand guidelines and then create correct, accurate designs based off of them within a few days.

Understand the importance of the “small things”

A lot of new designers find it hard to understand why their work immediately looks like “student work”, so I’m going to try to explain this as best as I can.

When working with new designers, they often overlook the very small details that make a design look professional, modern and clean. Things like whitespace to avoid a cramped looking design, correct typography that fits the theme and end-goal of the design, colours that don’t make text visibility difficult, using margins correctly so that text fits the design and is properly aligned, consistency within the designs whether this be with colours, alignment or art style, photos that are high-quality and not blurry, professional-looking and well-explained presentations of work - all of these are incredibly important to the overall outcome of your designs, and neglecting them will make your work lack the professional touch that employers might be looking for.

It’s important to be able to separate your personal creative style from the work you’re creating (if you’re looking for a corporate job), and ask if this is something that a company would actually be able to use in their marketing, or social media. It’s important to study what makes a design look professional, and then compare your designs and see what isn’t working. Without this, you’ll lack the ability to attract companies that are looking for a designer that can not just maintain, but improve their current creative output.

Instead of only focusing on creating work in your personal artstyle, if you see an advert or post from a company that you like, don’t be afraid to step outside your comfort zone and learn how to replicate what they’ve done, whether that’s an animation, branding, typography or more. There are many Youtube tutorials available, and that overall knowledge will definitely improve the quality of your work.

Hopefully some of these tips have given you something to think about - the job market is difficult, and creative jobs are only getting looked down upon more and more due to the creation of AI gen imagery, but the jobs ARE out there, they just take real dedication to attain.

At Do It Better Studio, we help to inspire and empower everyone, whether they’re a client or designer through captivating branding, website design and print design. Our experience in all things from Web Development, to Logo Design, Print Design (Brochures, Pitch Decks, Magazines, Signage), Brand Guidelines and Brand Development help us to be a resource for all people looking to empower themselves through branding.

Feel free to reach out to our team with any questions through the contact form below - thanks for reading!