Since illustration jobs aren’t always the most prevalent things to find, Graphic Design is a viable alternative. Many of the skills you learn about composition & the rules of gestalt (my five dollar word) as an illustrator transfer into the world of graphics. And you can use your new skills of type design to make your illustrations more versatile. Yeah, you don’t get to draw crazy space aliens, but Graphic Design can help pay the bills. I don’t know about you, but I’m more afraid of bills than I am aliens.

Unfortunately, Graphic design requires you to learn the in’s and outs of a few expensive programs. The Adobe Suite and QuarkXpress are the more widely used programs. If you are a student or [cough] “know a student” [cough] you can pick up these programs at Journeyed.com for a sizeable discount. These programs are fairly easy to learn the basics of, but take time to become really comfortable with. If you didn’t learn how to use this software on the mean streets of art school, then you will need to devote some time to learning it. There are many good books with tutorial CDs out there that will help you learn these programs. There are also tutorials on the web. If your not self disciplined, then, you can take a class to learn them. Also, many temp agencies like Aquent will test and train you before adding you to their workforce.

This post was written on IllustrationInfo.com Content copyright 2007 Cory Thoman.