Big Change in Career: Graphic Design to UI/UX Design 2025 Guide
Pixbrand Team
Published: 27/02/2025
Career changes are not a surprise anymore. In fact, the current employment scenario has left a lot of people looking to change their domains irrespective of their previous experience in work. In one of the major scenarios, there has been a change in preference for graphic designers, where they are making a move to UI/UX design from their graphic skills in 2025.
Graphic design to UX design is a switch that has been happening pretty swiftly among professionals, and there are multiple reasons for that. However, there’s still a misconception among people that graphics and UI/UX design are somewhat similar.
This isn’t the truth.
In this post, we will explore what UI/UX design exactly is, a brief overview on salary differences, and some more aspects to help you understand everything about this switch.
What Exactly is UI/UX Design?
UX design refers to the process in which the core objective is ensuring improvement in product usability to ensure that they are accessible and inclusive of everything to craft delightful digital experiences.
As far as what UX, or user experience means, it’s how a user reacts or feels when they engage with your product for the first time. It is a combination of various attributes that bring your product together, how satisfying are the results for users, and how well the product allows them to respond to different requirements.
When it comes to professionals, UI/UX designers take note of the complete user journey, identify bottlenecks and pain points, and also unearth ways to resolve those issues to offer a promising user experience across the board.
Salaries UX Design vs. Graphic Design
Now that there’s a good enough overview of what UI/UX design is, salary is a very important element to understand how worthwhile the switch will be for you, if you make it. As more and more companies realize the value of UX design, the value of this role increases all the more.
Let’s take an instance of the USA, where the average salary for a UX designer is US $91,225 as compared to a graphic designer where the average comes to around US $51,643. And a similar trend is also visible in other countries as well, like China, United Kingdom, Australia, and Germany as well.
Skills Required as a UI/UX Designer
As a role, the one of a UI/UX designer requires a lot of attributes simultaneously. There has to be a collaborative, strategic, and technical skill package that you need to encompass for becoming a UX/UI designer par excellence.
While a lot of hard skills and experience using various design tools is obvious, there are a few other important things that will make you an attractive prospect for organizations to hire you.
Let’s have a look.
Business Aptitude
A bit of business aptitude goes a long way, as the understanding helps you relate better to what the client needs and stakeholder requirements are. This will help you take design-related decisions as to how they will align with the finances, brand, and overall core objective.
Proper Communication
The work profile of a UX designer is such that for any project, there has to be some form of communication with almost all the involved stakeholders, teams, and users themselves. That’s why it’s important to ensure that there is proper communication with a varied audience base, you are able to ask the right questions, and that you are able to deliver the right information at the right time.
Good Research Abilities
As a UX designer, you’re likely to have direct interactions with the users to conduct proper research. This is another important skill to have in, from the UX designer’s perspective. That’s because a good UX designer should be able to leverage all the gathered data and insights and convert it into something impactful.
Transferable Skills from Graphic Design to UI/UX Design
Once you have a look at the kind of skills needed as a UX designer, it becomes easy to figure out what would be your existing skills overlapping with that of the UX designer. To help you with that, here’s a look at some skills that will transfer quite nicely towards the realm of UI/UX design.
1. Awareness About Aesthetics and Design Conventions
This is a skill that will give you a proper head start and let you adapt to the UX design domain much more quickly. That’s because as a designer, you already have a good enough understanding of how aesthetics work and design conventions make their presence felt in the overall design.
2.Standard Industry Processes and Tools
While it’s obvious that every graphic designer goes through a different kind of experience in their professional career, there’s always a high probability that a fundamental understanding of industry-specific processes and tools is there. Something such as prototyping, for instance, is sure to serve the purpose.
3.Out of the Box Thought Process
Creativity is at the core of everything a designer does, irrespective of the UX design vs. graphic design debate. Thinking creatively and solving problems in the most unique manner is what counts, and what will make all the difference in serving customers. It’s the thinking that drives product development and innovation in the best way.
Final Words
At any phase of our professional careers, switching it is a big move, and when it comes to graphic design and UI/UX design, it’s the same. However, what should be taken into consideration is the fact that the switch itself is a logical extension to graphic design.
We hope that you were able to get some input with this post, so that you could have made an educated decision on whether to go ahead with this switch, or stick to graphic design for the meantime.
