Top Graphic Design Projects to Sharpen Your Skills and Build Your Graphic Design Portfolio

The graphic design industry continues to harness the creativity and innovative ideas of graphic designers. As a result, it is crucial to be equipped with the right skills to place you in high demand. Embarking on graphic design projects is an excellent way to develop top-tier skills and build a robust graphic design portfolio.

We’ve compiled various graphic design projects for designers with different experience levels that can help sharpen relevant skills. In addition, we’ve included some of the skills, techniques, and tips to revamp your portfolio and land high-paying jobs. No matter what kind of graphic design job or design team you want to work for, there are plenty of projects available to instill you with essential graphic design principles.

5 Skills That Graphic Design Projects Can Help You Practice

If you look around you, you will see the obvious signs of a graphic designer on virtually everything. From books to packaging wraps to software interfaces, it is evident that they subtly play an essential role in our lives. The design principles and the skills utilized define their identity and are integral to our appreciation of the world of graphic design. 

• Creativity: A creative mind is central to the development of great designs. While creativity can be subjective, it is the foundation of every design concept, no matter how haphazard that concept is in the beginning. 
• Communication: This describes the wholesome ability to listen to a client’s needs, process feedback, and effectively communicate creative ideas. It also refers to the ability to convey a message with visual materials. 
• Typography: In context, this refers to the ability to represent written text in the form of art. Every designer must know how to tell a story using various text elements like font size, style, color scheme, and layout. 
• Software Skills: Learning Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop is essential. These tools are a basic requirement for many job postings.
• Coding: While many think coding doesn’t have a place in the design industry, having basic experience with HTML can be very useful for designers. Knowing how a website works can help you contribute to the idea generation process and give you an edge in the marketplace.  

Best Graphic Design Project Ideas for Beginners

As a beginner, the first projects you complete should develop your creativity, typography, communication, and software skills. You want to make sure to build foundational graphic design skills and techniques before taking on big jobs from clients.

Photo Editing

• Skills Practiced: Software Skills, Creativity

This project exposes you to basic tools like Adobe Photoshop. Being able to manipulate an image will teach you everything from image cleanups to color schemes to enhancements. Also, you get to infuse some creativity with little projects like photo collages and storytelling.

Logo

• Skills Practiced: Creativity, Software Skills, Typography, and Communication

Logos are a representation of what a brand or organization stands for. They speak volumes about what companies do and subtly express their values. Professionals often follow the Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS) approach while designing logos, focusing on minimalism and the business’ core values. This fundamental principle is suggestive of the power of simplicity in graphic design.  

Business Cards

• Skills Practiced: Creativity, Software Skills, Typography, Communication

This design challenge will allow you to practice the skills mentioned above. Every business relies on business cards as a means of introduction. They are also an expression of the company’s branding. Therefore, it is vital to capture the company’s essence through excellent typography and some ingenuity.

YouTube Thumbnails

• Skills Practiced: Creativity, Software Skills, Communication

YouTube thumbnails aim is to encourage viewers to click on a video by telling a great story in just one small image. You must have an exciting thumbnail to enhance your content marketing campaign, which requires creativity and communication skills. Given how lucrative YouTube is today, being able to create the perfect thumbnail is an incredibly valuable skill.

Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook Graphics

• Skills Practiced: Creativity, Software Skills, Communication

Social media is an integral part of our lives. While we browse through our feeds, we come across various posts that communicate different messages to us, but not all do so effectively. A good graphic is aesthetically pleasing and successfully conveys our messages and values. To create such designs, you can rely on existing templates that meet recommended standards.  

Best Intermediate Graphic Design Project Ideas

At this level, the projects are a lot more technical. They will sharpen your graphic design skills further but require a bigger time commitment. The following is a list of projects you can take on to practice your creativity as well as your software and typography skills.

Invitation Cards

• Skills Practiced: Creativity, Software Skills, Typography

This project requires a lot of creativity. After all, an invitation card is a representation of the host’s class and taste. Creating an outstanding invitation design will test your typography and software skills. The challenge you are up to is to effectively, and aesthetically, communicate the details of the event.

Posters and Fliers  

• Skills Practiced: Creativity, Software Skills, Typography, Communication

Digital posters and flyers have to be visually appealing while satisfactorily communicating a message to the public. Creating posters and fliers for public relations and marketing campaigns will expose you to scaling and proper design layouts in digital platforms.

Infographics 

• Skills Practiced: Creativity, Software Skills, Communication

Infographics employ pictures, data visualizations, typography, and statistical graphics to tell a straightforward story or present information. Working on an infographic will give you experience with important tools like Canva and Venngage and allow you to exercise your creativity as you think of ways to represent information in a way that is visually attractive, impactful, and effective.

Book Covers

• Skills Practiced: Creativity, Software Skills, Communication

The cover of a book plays a key role in sales. While it is advised not to judge a book by its cover, the truth is that a book with a sloppy design won’t sell very well. It is always best to aim for a cover design that is stylish and captures the essence of the book.

Magazines and Brochures

• Skills Practiced: Creativity, Software Skills, Typography

Designing the look and feel of a magazine or brochure is a complex project. It involves a range of elements, including advertising, visual representation, photography, art, and graphic design. Working on a magazine design will expose you to the design principles and standards used in print media. 

Advanced Graphic Design Project Ideas

At this level, graphic designers begin to carve a niche and specialize in a particular area. The skills required and practiced here cut across all the technical skills mentioned earlier. In addition, many advanced designers begin to venture into the world of coding, which tends to boost their designer credentials. 

Branding

• Skills Practiced: Creativity, Software Skills, Typography, Communication

Graphic designers are central to good branding. They define the visual identity of a company, shaping the public perception of it with elements like logos, color schemes, fonts, and slogans. Working on a company’s brand identity is a fun project that will allow you to use your technical skills to change how an organization is perceived by the media.

Mockup Designs

• Skills Practiced: Creativity, Software Skills, Communication

Mockups give you a taste of a concept or design before it is created, helping clients visualize what the final product will look like. Creating mockups involves a fair dose of creativity as well as dexterity with software like Balsamiq, Adobe XD, or InVision.

User Interface (UI) Design

• Skills Practiced: Creativity, Software Skills, Typography, Communication, Coding

The complex field of UI design will test all the technical skills discussed thus far. You will even have to dabble in coding as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript skills are required to work on the customer-facing side of an application of a website. You will get a lot of fulfillment out of this project: creating an application or website interface is critical to the consumer experience with a digital product.

Product Design

• Skills Practiced: Creativity, Software Skills, Typography

Product design can be considered an extension of branding. However, rather than focusing on the logo or values of a company, the emphasis is on a particular product, its looks, sustainability, and packaging design. To go about this project, choose an existing product that’s interesting from a design standpoint. Reverse engineer this product and then redesign it following every step of the design process.

Motion Graphics

• Skills Practiced: Creativity, Software Skills, Typography

Motion graphics is animation in which text plays a major role. They are common in ads and movie titles. To work on motion graphics, advanced designers combine their basic graphic design skills with animation and filmmaking techniques. 

Creating good-looking motion graphics requires exceptional creativity, innovation, and storytelling. Typography, communication, and software skills are also vital to developing interesting motion graphics.

Graphic Design Starter Project Templates 

A graphic template is an excellent tool for beginners and even advanced designers that can save a lot of time. Templates allow you to edit predefined graphics and adjust them to your taste. Working with templates could also help to cure a creative block. The following are recommended templates for basic starter projects.  

• Logos: These templates provided by Canva offer complete flexibility with the editing of layers, color schemes, typography, and shape to design the logo that best connects with your brand.
• Social Media Images: Social media posts have to be attractive and engaging. If you cannot come up with posters and fliers that perfectly convey your message, freepik templates can be a helpful tool. 
• Mockups: If you are having difficulty designing a mockup that accurately reflects the design concepts involved, these templates by Template.net should come in handy.
• Business Cards: Designing a business card that represents your brand and business becomes a lot easier when you can simply customize a template. Check out these business card templates by PsPrint. 
• Brochures: A brochure can be tricky to design considering the number of elements and skills involved. However, with these brochure templates by Envato Elements, you’ll have no trouble creating elegant brochures. 

Next Steps: Start Organizing Your Graphic Design Portfolio

The beauty of constantly embarking on design projects is that you’ll sharpen your skill while growing your portfolio. After a few months, you should have a solid portfolio that reflects your skills and experience and that attracts potential clients. Below, we give you a few tips on how to organize your graphic design portfolio. 

Keep It Simple

Simplicity is key when it comes to portfolios. Always go for a cleaner and straightforward portfolio look, remove distracting elements and unnecessary components. This ensures that your projects are accessible and that potential employers or clients can appreciate your creative designs. 

Keep It Updated

Never stop working on your portfolio, no matter how comfortable you get in your current position. Employers and clients won’t pay attention to your portfolio if all its projects are old. You need to be constantly working on new and exciting projects and adding them to your portfolio so that it is relevant and reflects your current skills.

Keep Your Target Audience in Mind

Strive to build your portfolio with items that resonate with your target audience and leave out anything that they wouldn’t find interesting. For example, if you are applying for jobs at a web development agency, your portfolio should be composed mostly of website designs.  

Include a Brief Profile

Your portfolio should contain a brief personal description in which you introduce yourself and describe your skills and aptitudes. Include information about your level of education, work experience, and notable previous collaborations.

Be Honest

Never lie about your skills or previous experience or exaggerate the facts. If you get a project after having lied about your capabilities, you’ll find yourself in an uncomfortable situation when you are asked to do something that you are simply not ready to handle. 

Graphic Design Projects FAQ