As opposed to a graphic designer, which is a role for creatives at the beginning of their career, a senior designer has more to do with management tasks than design. Taking marketing solutions and business goals into consideration, a senior designer manages the work of designers producing graphics that satisfy the demands of the market.
This, of course, does not mean that senior designers do not have ample experience and expertise in graphic design. At this point in their career, they focus on supervising creative solutions, both in print and digital. They delegate tasks to facilitate collaboration, in order to maintain high-quality standards of creative work.
Senior designers have an extensive portfolio of completed projects and hands-on experience in using image editing software. Apart from excelling in their craft, they are also great communicators who are able to give productive feedback, understand design needs, and negotiate with clients. Senior designers make around $78,400, with the higher half of the median reaching up to $87,600.
How to Become a Senior Designer
What is a Senior Designer
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a Senior Designer. For example, did you know that they make an average of $45.41 an hour? That's $94,447 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 3% and produce 8,800 job opportunities across the U.S.
What Does a Senior Designer Do
There are certain skills that many Senior Designers have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed Communication skills, Time-management skills and Analytical skills.
How To Become a Senior Designer
If you're interested in becoming a Senior Designer, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 66.8% of Senior Designers have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 6.5% of Senior Designers have master's degrees. Even though most Senior Designers have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a Senior Designer. When we researched the most common majors for a Senior Designer, we found that they most commonly earn Bachelor's Degree degrees or Associate Degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on Senior Designer resumes include Master's Degree degrees or Diploma degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a Senior Designer. In fact, many Senior Designer jobs require experience in a role such as Designer. Meanwhile, many Senior Designers also have previous career experience in roles such as Graphic Designer or Art Director.
What is the right job for my career path?
Tell us your goals and we'll match you with the right jobs to get there.
And if you’re looking for a job, here are the five top employers hiring now:
Senior Designer Career Paths
In addition to switching up your job search, it might prove helpful to look at a career path for your specific job. Now, what's a career path you ask? Well, it's practically a map that shows how you might advance from one job title to another. Our career paths are especially detailed with salary changes. So, for example, if you started out with the role of Art Director you might progress to a role such as Creative Director eventually. Later on in your career, you could end up with the title Director Of Communications And Marketing.
Senior Designer Jobs You Might Like
What is the right job for my career path?
Tell us your goals and we'll match you with the rights job to get there.
Average Salary for a Senior Designer
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12 Senior Designer Resume Examples
Build a professional senior designer resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 12+ resume templates to create your senior designer resume.
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Ralph Richardson Senior Designer |
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Richard Alexander Senior Designer Experience Senior Designer2020 - Present Floor & Decor•Atlanta, GA
Freelance Designer2010 - 2020 Aquent•Atlanta, GA
Graphic Designer2009 - 2010 Network Communications•North Atlanta, GA
Junior Graphic Designer2007 - 2009 And Design•North Atlanta, GA
Skills Engineering DrawingsUser ResearchWeb BannersDesign ResearchCompany WebsitePostersDesign ChangesMarketing CollateralDesign SolutionsCSS Education Bachelor's Degree Mechanical Engineering2004 - 2007 Georgia Institute of Technology•North Atlanta, GA |
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Learn How To Write a Senior Designer Resume
At Zippia, we went through countless Senior Designer resumes and compiled some information about how to optimize them. Here are some suggestions based on what we found, divided by the individual sections of the resume itself.
View Senior Designer Resume Examples And TemplatesAnd if you’re looking for a job, here are the five top employers hiring now:
Choose From 10+ Customizable Senior Designer Resume templates
Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Senior Designer templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Senior Designer resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.
Senior Designer Demographics
Senior Designer Gender Distribution
After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
- Among Senior Designers, 29.0% of them are women, while 71.0% are men.
- The most common race/ethnicity among Senior Designers is White, which makes up 76.1% of all Senior Designers.
- The most common foreign language among Senior Designers is Spanish at 35.1%.
Find the best Senior Designer job for you
Senior Designer Jobs You Might Like
- High Paying Senior Designer Jobs - $138K and Up
- Work From Home Senior Designer Jobs
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- Actively Hiring
- No Degree Senior Designer Jobs
Top Colleges for Senior Designers
1. University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA • Private
2. Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA • Private
3. University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA • Private
4. Northeastern University
Boston, MA • Private
5. New York University
New York, NY • Private
6. Boston University
Boston, MA • Private
7. Harvard University
Cambridge, MA • Private
8. Duke University
Durham, NC • Private
9. George Washington University, The
Washington, DC • Private
10. Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA • Private
Find the best Senior Designer job for you
Senior Designer Jobs You Might Like
- High Paying Senior Designer Jobs - $138K and Up
- Work From Home Senior Designer Jobs
- Entry Level Senior Designer Jobs
- Part Time Senior Designer Jobs
- Actively Hiring
- No Degree Senior Designer Jobs
Online Courses For Senior Designer That You May Like
The Ultimate Graphic Design Course Which Covers Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Design Theory, Branding and Logo Design...
Follows the FULL Graphic Design Process for A Company: Logo, Ad, Social Media, T-Shirt, Package, Website Design & More!...
Icon Set Design, E-book cover, Digitizing Sketches, Social Media Design, Wordpress Web Design, Adobe Xd, GIFS and more!...
Top Skills For a Senior Designer
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 8.0% of Senior Designers listed User Interface on their resume, but soft skills such as Communication skills and Time-management skills are important as well.
Best States For a Senior Designer
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a Senior Designer. The best states for people in this position are Washington, California, Nevada, and Hawaii. Senior Designers make the most in Washington with an average salary of $129,175. Whereas in California and Nevada, they would average $122,423 and $115,330, respectively. While Senior Designers would only make an average of $107,314 in Hawaii, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. Washington
$129,175
Avg. Salary
2. California
$122,423
Avg. Salary
3. Oregon
$105,086
Avg. Salary
How Do Senior Designer Rate Their Jobs?
Top Senior Designer Employers
We've made finding a great employer to work for easy by doing the hard work for you. We looked into employers that employ Senior Designers and discovered their number of Senior Designer opportunities and average salary. Through our research, we concluded that General Motors was the best, especially with an average salary of $99,458. Microsoft follows up with an average salary of $163,858, and then comes Bechtel with an average of $99,711. In addition, we know most people would rather work from home. So instead of having to change careers, we identified the best employers for remote work as a Senior Designer. The employers include Salesforce, USAA, and Cigna
Senior Designer Videos
Becoming a Senior Designer FAQs
How do you get promoted to senior designer?
To get promoted to a senior designer position takes putting yourself out there, building your work portfolio, and going the extra mile. As many designers will tell you, there is no linear path towards becoming a senior designer.
How many years of experience do you need to become a senior designer?
It takes 5 to 8 years of experience to become a senior designer. Most senior designers work their way up into that role after several years of work experience.
To begin your career as a senior designer, you'll have to start from the bottom in a junior design position. The common responsibilities of a junior designer are to create layouts, redraw logos, correct typography, and create overall mock-ups of designs.
What do you need to be a senior designer?
You need the right educational background, extensive work portfolio, and several years of work experience to become a senior designer.
Most senior designers have a bachelor's degree and design or related fields. From there, prospective senior designers will need to put in at least five to eight years working as a designer. Usually, this is the time it takes to advance from a junior designer position into a mid-level designer and finally to a senior designer position.
What is the difference between a graphic designer and a senior graphic designer?
The difference between a graphic designer and a senior graphic designer comes down to experience and the rules and responsibilities of the position. These differences can be reflected in their craft, communication, planning, and problem-solving abilities.