How To Become A Digital Media Designer: What It Is and Career Path

What is a digital media designer and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted expert

Steve Boddy

A digital media designer uses certain computer programs to design and develop visual materials for advertisements, campaigns, film, television, and print. You'll create materials such as images, effects, or animation. As a digital media designer, your duties include understanding and identifying project needs and requirements, creating drafts for client approval, and keeping records of all transactions. Additionally, you'll design unique identities and visual communications such as icon design, logo design, and branding.

For this job, you need a bachelor's degree in computer graphics, art, or a related field with prior work experience. Candidates must be conversant with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. You must be proficient in some programming languages. You can find employment in video games, mobile technology, animation, application development, television, and web industries. You need skills like communication and analytical skills. Digital media designers are paid about $53,215 annually, equivalent to $25.58 per hour. Their salary varies between $40,000 and $70,000.

What general advice would you give to a digital media designer?

Steve Boddy

Content Director, WorldatWork

Graduates should expect fewer full-time employment opportunities. In some cases these opportunities will be accompanied by enhanced well-being benefits but lower salaries. There may be more contract and seasonal opportunities in the short term, which typically will not offer highly valued benefits like health insurance, retirement, and paid time off.

Full-time employment opportunities and competitive hiring wages are expected in high growth industries like technology, health care, logistics and distribution, and other essential jobs. These are most often accompanied with full benefits, which most recently has included increased offerings in well-being, remote work opportunities, and flexible schedules. However, most other organizations will offer fewer full time employment opportunities and potentially lower wages in job offers (due to supply of jobs and abundance of grads). Other reasons for downward pressure on salaries may include the graduates willingness to accept lower rates in favor of the option to work from home or desired geography. Lastly, more college grads are taking seasonal/contract roles, and may miss out on critical benefit offerings that are reserved for employees only (which often account for ~25 - 35% of their total rewards package).

So why does it matter? In all likelihood, new graduates may not start on the career path they envisioned for themselves, and will likely see slower wage growth over time. According to the WorldatWork 2020-2021 Salary Budget Survey released in August of this year, "The national total salary budget increase average fell this year - dropping to 2.9% - notably sudden, and somewhat expected, due to economic uncertainty. This decline represents a pronounced departure from the anticipated increase to 3.3% projected for 2020 a year ago." This is a tough time to be entering the workforce. The key is to be flexible in their job search. Graduates may have to sacrifice some benefits like healthcare and retirement in order to get "their foot in the door." The current reality is new college graduates are facing the worst job market in over a decade with more competition and lower salaries.

ScoreDigital Media DesignerUS Average

Salary

4.4

Avg. Salary $56,476

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

4.2

Growth rate 3%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

4.5

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.37%

Asian 10.42%

Black or African American 3.42%

Hispanic or Latino 10.63%

Unknown 4.99%

White 70.17%

Gender

female 33.80%

male 66.20%

Age - 37

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 37

Stress level

4.2

Stress level is moderate

7.1 - high

Complexity level

8.5

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

3.9

Work life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a digital media designer

Explore digital media designer education requirements

Most common digital media designer degrees

Bachelor's

70.5 %

Associate

20.3 %

Master's

7.9 %

Start to develop specific digital media designer skills

Skills	Percentages
Digital Marketing	11.95%
Graphic Design	8.73%
Adobe Creative Suite	7.83%
Client Websites	5.75%
HTML	5.75%

Complete relevant digital media designer training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 1-3 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New digital media designers learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a digital media designer based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real digital media designer resumes.

Research digital media designer duties and responsibilities

Design logos, graphics, software user interfaces, LMS templates, and manage the multi media asset library.
Manage data migrations and SharePoint integration for corporate Intranet with external consultants.
Develop the website using HTML and CSS.
Develop email marketing campaigns implementing HTML and CSS, adhering to email program parameters, i.e.

Prepare your digital media designer resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your digital media designer resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a digital media designer resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable digital media designer resume templates

Build a professional digital media designer resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your digital media designer resume.