Difficult Pre-Press Graphics Designer Interview Preparation Guide

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Creating my own brand. I built my website, portfolio website, graphics, and following from the ground up, teaching myself as I went. It's always a work in progress and takes a lot of time to maintain but it's so worth it!

Standard skills are a must, from Adobe to Sketch, but look for the extra during an interview.

Processing, illustration, animation, video, art skills, and the like, that bring extra potential to specific clients and projects.

This is a good opportunity to see whether a designer is abreast of current design trends and a good fit for your specific business needs. They should be able to articulate what makes a brand stand out, graphically speaking, whether that brand is directly related to your business or if it shares similar attributes.

From digital to print to 360 solutions, from social causes to luxury projects, pinpoint candidates’ interests and preferences, and build up the talk to personal goals, project goals and things they want to do and create but haven’t had a chance to do.

Finding out more about the designer’s background, based on his or her general introduction can provide us with relevant information about the design school the candidate attended, past/current work positions, design experience, problems and projects that s/he found along the way and how this translates to his/her current design career and future aspirations.

Electronic set up of the comp, laying out the pages, and including placeholders, and of course, seeing that comp come out of the printer a sparkling design.

This is an interview minefield that can be tricky to cross, especially if your career goals don’t necessarily include staying with a company for an extended period of time. You want to be honest, but you don’t want to come off as someone who is simply using this job as a stepping stone to something bigger. Employers realize that their employees aren’t always going to stay with the company for the entirety of their career, but they also want to work with people who are committed.

When a graphic designer has a page of their portfolio website dedicated to testimonials or keeps an offline copy of positive reviews they've received from past clients, it tells you their customers are happy with their results and willing to publicly vouch for them. If they don’t offer to share, just ask.

However, if they’re unable to produce a few positive testimonials, that’s might be an indication they are unable to sustain good client relationships or produce quality results. Tread lightly.

From awards, to happy clients, consumers, engaged public, social movement, and tangible results in skyrocketing numbers and profits, we want to hear it all.

How did it start, what happened, and why did you succeed?

Now, at first, you might think that this question is the same as the “most successful” one – but it’s actually a bit different. Why? Because with this question, the employer is asking for your opinion as an individual – they’re asking for you to judge a piece of work based on your own feelings, rather than things like stats and success rates. Why? Because this gives them an insight into who you are as an individual and helps them to assess how well you’d fit in with their current workforce.

It depends on the complexity of the project. A simple logo design takes about 1 week. An entire brand and website design can take up to a couple of months.

Different companies have different provisions available for the graphic designers which they hire where some companies prefer it when their employees make use of their hardware, other companies would rather have designers working on their own machinery, which they are probably more comfortably using. This is a very important question to ask during the interview as if you are not willing to provide the necessary equipment and hardware and the graphic designer does not really have all that is required to do the job in a proper manner then there is no point going ahead from the interview to the next level. By asking a question like this you know exactly where you stand with the candidate.

Let your creative juices flow, we want to hear the craziest and wildest ideas of what might next drive the design industry. Extra points for storytelling!

For example, VR (virtual reality) is opening a big space in the consumer world: from gaming to virtual museums and any kind of virtual experiences. In regard to visual design and interaction, VR is one of the new mediums for design inclusion from the graphic and interactive perspective.

This question gives you an opportunity to observe a designer’s thought process first-hand and see how well they understand your company or product.

The design process is essential to how design candidates develop and create their work. Insight and the way they work can distinguish their quality. As the design process becomes more thorough, the results become more elaborate and detailed.

Also, the design process is often limited by budget and time, and a useful insight would be how s/he and the design teams that s/he has worked with in the past handled various situations and briefs.

If you were confronted by a tough challenge, we want to hear about it. Why was it the biggest challenge in your career? What happened, what did you do to overcome it, what tools and processes were employed?

Most design work goes unseen and behind the curtains in the design process. We want to hear your design hero story. Alternatively, describe your dream challenge and how you would design a process to help you deal with it.

Employers are looking for designers who can not only deliver results, but do so in a timely manner. Failing to meet your deadlines can cost your employer money or make them lose face to their customers, clients and business associates. If you are good about keeping up on your deadlines, you’ll be good to go when it comes time to answer this question.

If sticking to your deadlines is something that you have a hard time with, then you need to at least show the interviewer that you respect deadlines and that you do whatever it takes to get your job done. Give examples of times when you weren’t able to complete a task on deadline, and explain why you fell behind and how you rectified the situation. Did you ask for an extension ahead of time? Did you bring in another designer to help you with the work?

Keep in mind, there’s no reason to punish yourself if you’ve missed the odd deadline here or there in the past. Potential employers want to know how you’re going to handle their deadlines, so you can always turn a negative experience into something positive.

When interviewers ask this question, they’re trying to find out if you’re able to use their in-house software, or how quickly you’d be able to learn if you’re unfamiliar with it. Obviously, your best-case scenario is to know ahead of time what kind of software they use. If you already know how to use their preferred software, this will be a pretty straightforward answer.

If you don’t know their software or you have no idea what they use, this can be a tricky question to answer. Tell them what you do know, and try to include any program you think they might use. If you use something that’s similar to another program, that can also be a big help and the interviewer might not always be able to make that connection, so be sure to do it for them. For example, if you use one of the many Photoshop alternatives out there, you probably understand the basics of Photoshop too.

This question can seem a bit personal – but again, it’s just another question to try and determine what makes you tick as a designer. Again, with this one it all comes to down to personal opinion and – as with any other interview question – it’s important to be honest because if you lie here, it could come back to haunt you later down the line. In general, the design process can be split into three chunks – the initial consultation, the creative process and the final negotiations/finished results. If you can’t pick one particular stage, you could pick out different aspects of each and explain why you enjoy them.

Help them achieve their goal. I would suggest things that would make their campaign successful, be it reserve advertising. Ultimately it's the client's decision what direction they want to go. My job is to help them reach their destination successfully. Make sure they're confident in their brand and willing to take the risk.

With this question, the interviewer is obviously keen to find out where your passion lies and what your motivations are for working in the industry. When trying to prepare your answer to this question, think about what it is that makes you want to continue to work in the graphic design industry. Is it the creativity aspect? The chance to create pieces which will be seen by thousands of people every day? Or the fact you get to create lots of different pieces of work every year? With this type of answer, it’s easy to tell who’s being false and who’s being honest so whatever answer you give, try and stay true to yourself and avoid copying anyone else.

With this question, the employer is basically asking you why they should hire you over any other candidate and they’re also testing how well you know yourself as a professional graphic designer. Again, with this question it’s important to be honest and to think about what qualities and experience you might possess as a graphic designer that other candidates might not – this could be your previous client base, the range and depth of your experience – or even some of the techniques you’ve picked up in your career. Whatever reasons you give, be sure to have some examples to hand so you can back them up.

Employers want to work with designers who are already good at what they do, but they also want designers who will continue to improve with time instead of stagnating. You didn’t get to where you are by doing nothing, so talk about your experiences getting here.

You didn't get to where you are by doing nothing, so talk about your experiences getting here.

You’ll want to provide your educational background, but also talk about some of the classes you took and why that made you a better graphic designer. Have you learned new software over the past few years? Have you tried your hand at designing a different type of media than you’re used to? Do you spend time reading design books, blogs and forums? These are all great things to mention.

Time is money, and the more time you take on a project, the more money it will cost your employers in the long run. However, this can be a problematic question to answer, because you also need to look out for your own interests. Many designers make the mistake of underselling how long it actually takes them to finish a project, which can create a whole heap of problems down the road.

After all, if you say it takes you one hour to do a project that actually takes three, your employer is going to hold you to that statement and you’ll find yourself overwhelmed with deadlines you just can’t meet. It’s almost better in this instance to overestimate how much time you take, just to give yourself a buffer in case you’re hit with a particularly difficult assignment. However, that can also be a dangerous game to play, because it may make you look less attractive than other candidates who can work faster than you.

...if you say it takes you one hour to do a project that actually takes three, your employer is going to hold you to that statement and you'll find yourself overwhelmed with deadlines you just can't meet.

What’s important here is to give the interviewer a sense of how you manage your time. If it takes you longer than others to get a job done, then you need to be able to show why that extra time makes for a better final product. Break down your workflow into blocks of time so they know exactly how you work and what you use your time for.

When discussing this theme, the energy and imagination behind the answers will give you an idea of the designer’s character and spirit.

Based on the answers, an interviewer can expand the interview based on the designer’s concept and style preferences, influences, historical references and everything that drives his/her’s professional career.