5 Skills A Creative Designer Needs To Get Hired In Malaysia

Discover essential skills for creative designers to get hired in Malaysia, such as creativity, design software, and communication skills that are in demand.

By Kimberly Chang on 2023-11-27 at 7:12 AM

Updated on 2024-08-29 at 2:45 AM

How to Land A Job As A Creative Designer in Malaysia

In Malaysia's competitive job market, becoming a successful creative designer requires more than just an eye for design. Employers look for a blend of technical expertise, creativity, and interpersonal skills that set candidates apart. Whether you're an aspiring designer or an experienced professional looking to advance your career, understanding the skills needed for creative design jobs is crucial.

What Are The Essential Skills Required For Creative Designers?

Becoming a Creative Designer would require you to have a combination of skills of a graphic designer and a multimedia artist.

Here are the 5 most essential skills you should have to jumpstart your career as a Creative Designer:

1. Creativity

When you’re constantly thinking of doing something new, there’s a big chance you’ll get creative block. This applies to multiple levels of designing. Creativity is one of the key skills for creative designers to land a job because employers value the ability to produce fresh and innovative ideas consistently.

First and foremost, it is the ability to take something that already exists and improve on it. Next, it is the power to make something out of nothing, visualise it, and bring it to life. It isn’t easy for everyone to come up with something new every day, so having a visual eye is crucial. This skill for creative designers is highly in demand in Malaysia's job market.

There is no guarantee that you won’t be working on a few projects at a time, so having a structured creative thinking process might help you. It looks something like this:

Preparation → Incubation → Insight → Evaluation → Elaboration

For those looking to understand how to get hired as a creative designer, mastering the art of creativity and maintaining a structured approach to thinking can make a significant difference in standing out in the competitive industry. These are among the important skills for creative designers in Malaysia that can lead to a successful career.

2. Creative Software

Having the knowledge and skills for creative software is the backbone to every designer. In this digital age, it would be hard to market yourself as a designer without it. Mastery of design software is one of the critical creative designer job requirements and a must-have skill needed for creative design jobs.

But because there are so many tools available, no designer can possibly be familiar with them all. Don’t let that stop you from learning as much as you want though because being skilled with a wide range of designing software will enable you to continuously meet and surpass your clients’ expectations. This versatility is one of the creative designer skills in demand and can significantly improve your employability.

It’s important to know what projects you’re interested in picking up to help give you a guide on what to start. These are some of the most popular software that people use:

• Adobe Photoshop – For photo manipulation.
• Adobe Illustrator – For illustrations and designing vector graphics.
• Adobe After Effects – For motion graphics and visual effects.
• Adobe InDesign – To create various digital and printed materials.
• Sketch – To create websites, applications, and interfaces.

3. Typography

Typography is the art of making words visually appealing and is one of the essential skills for creative designers. Clients would usually use designers to make advertisements and build their brand. So, a good typeface, font, and message, will definitely increase the likelihood of your client being recognised.

Typeface pairing is another skill that, if disregarded, has the potential to damage an entire design. Knowing about font families, line height, and tracking is a crucial skill for every creative designer. These abilities are mainly utilised when working in InDesign, but they are applicable to other design software.

4. Design Principles

Design principles are essential in the creation of any good design and are one of the important skills for creative designers in Malaysia. Knowing these principles would make it easier for a designer to know how to grab your audience’s attention. From the way the design looks, to how your audience reads the message that the product is conveying, these principles are sure to come in handy.

Let’s briefly go over what each one signifies and how it influences design:

Alignment

• Center, right, or left-aligned text is the most common, but you can also align text to other objects in your graphic.
• It helps create a sharp, ordered appearance for ultimately better designs by ensuring your various elements have a pleasing connection with each other.

Repetition

• Repeating colors, fonts, words, or shapes can help tie your design and overall look together.
• This helps people recognise your brand or other important information as well.

Contrast

• Guides the customer’s attention to the important parts of your design.
• Contrast happens when two design elements are in opposition to each other, like black and white, thick and thin, and modern and traditional.

Hierarchy

• When you have multiple visual elements in a design, you want to make sure you’re giving extra visual weight to your most important message.
• For example, in larger or bolder fonts, place your most important message physically higher than other pieces of information.

Balance

• The distribution of the graphic design elements, such as shapes, text boxes and images, of a design evenly throughout a certain layout.
• It helps the viewer’s eye travel through the content in a way that aids comprehension.

5. Communication and Presentation Skills

Creative Designers are constantly communicating back and forth with clients and their team. You would have to understand what a client wants from their perspective and be able to present your ideas to get them on your side.

Think having a great design is enough? How you present your work could also greatly influence their decision making. Having great presentation skills on top of a great pitch deck represents how well you understand your own designs. Here are some great examples for you to check out.

The best designers are prized for their attention to detail, not only for their creative eyes.

Of course there are other skills that will be great for you to pick up along the way, but these 5 are the main skills that could help get you started.

There you have it! If you think you have what it takes to be a Creative Designer, look no further because Hiredly’s got your back.

By Kimberly Chang on 2023-11-27 at 7:12 AM