Visual Designer Salaries: What to Expect

You’ve got a flair for graphics and image design and have always wanted to put your talents to use in your career. Visual design is one of the hottest tech jobs around, and plenty of companies are looking for designers to help create graphics, websites, UIs, and much more. But what sort of visual designer salaries can you expect to make? You need to know the facts before you can make an informed decision, after all.

We consulted with the good folks at Glassdoor and put together this guide to help you determine what you’d make as a visual designer. And we look at whether it’s worth you making a career switch. You’ll find out what the top companies pay designers and the sorts of roles you’ll be expected to fill. That’ll let you choose the area of design that most appeals to your creative soul and your pocketbook. Knowledge is power, so let’s get you powered up!

Visual Designer Early Career Salaries

Almost every career you can think of has the same sort of career and salary track: folks without much experience or skills get lower wages than the more seasoned employees. It shouldn’t shock you to learn that visual design is no different. Your starting salaries as a new designer are almost certainly bound to be lower than your later pay as you gain experience and responsibilities. Even rookie designers make nice pay, though.

You can plan on making around $60K as a raw recruit designer. That ain’t hay, but you’ll soon do much better as you get some skills and experience under your belt. Visual designers with two to five years’ experience can expect to see a sizeable pay jump to around $69K. A pay bump of almost ten grand in two years is outstanding, and you’ll bring home even better salaries when you move into mid- and late-career gigs.

Visual Designer Mid- and Late-Career Salaries

When you move into the middle and later portions of your visual design career, you’ll start bringing in some serious money. Salary is a big reason why visual design is a hot tech job right now, and you’ll get to start reaping that reward when you get established. Designers with experience command excellent pay and get some sweet benefits to go along with them. As a bonus, you also get more responsibilities and get to work on more challenging and interesting projects.

You can expect to pull down about $80K or more when you have five to ten years of visual design experience on your resumé, and that salary can go way up if you specialize or work in a region with a high cost of living. 

The big bucks come once you become a senior designer, though. As a senior visual designer, you’ll make upwards of $100K. Many senior designers do even better and make as much as $140K or higher.

So, there you go. Visual design is a unique mix of technology and artistic talent, and the folks who can do the job are in high demand. Now you have a better idea of visual designer salaries for every stage of your career the information you need to decide your future. You won’t believe you waited so long to make a career move.