It's a new profession with winning ways

Graphic design is relatively new profession about which many of us know very little. Graphic designers mainly work in print, although the development of technology has meant that new areas of design are coming on stream.

Increasingly, graphic design is developing specialisms and there is a wide range of work available. You could work, for example, for large companies developing corporate identities and designing logos. Packaging design and point of purchase design, too, are significant areas.

Others work in the design of leaflets, manuals or annual reports. "In the bigger design companies, people are now specialising," says Andrew Bradley of design consultants Bradley McGurk Parnership. "Clients are looking for different competences."

The development of multimedia and the Internet has also resulted in more work for graphic designers.

"It's a new industry," says John O'Connor, head of DIT's school of art, design and printing, "but a strong one. Many Irish companies, which were set up in the early Eighties, are now winning major international prizes, acclaim and clients."