HOW CAN I START A BUSINESS IN GRAPHIC DESIGN, WHILE I KNOW LITTLE ABOUT IT?

With only the knowledge of color selection and mixing and such, what, EXACTLY would be the product or service you are “selling?”

No point in “starting a business” unless you have some business to do. Essential programs? Think about it: Photoshop, Ilustrator, InDesign or QuarkXPress, Flash, Dreamweaver, Word, Streamline, Director, Dimensions, Acrobat Pro, and many others. Plus accounting and tax software, like QuickBooks, Excel and few more.

Better you “master” the other skills of a graphic designer BEFORE you to through the expense and hard work of starting a business. Even once one HAS a set of skills, NO ONE should ever start a business unless one knows HOW to run a business.

A freelance graphic designer is much more than someone who can make pretty pictures. In fact, the PRIMARY function of a freelancer is MARKETING. One can’t just sit at a desk and expect clients to come to him with offers. The freelancer has to go out and FIND the clients. In the beginning of a freelancer’s career, the ratio of time spent marketing to time actually doing artwork is something like three to one. (three hours doing sales efforts to one hour at the drawing table) Even now, after many years of developing a client base and learning accounting practices AND having an accountant AND tax person, I STILL spend a quarter of my work week on NON ARTISTIC functions.

Plus, somewhere in there, the designer has to put in effort at accounting, research, billing, dunning, tax prep and other associated BUSINESS business.

Rather than you worrying about how LONG it will take to learn how do do graphic design, I suggest you just BEGIN the learning process. And, while you are at it, pick up some knowledge about how to run a business. Otherwise, you, like thousands of others each year, are doomed to fail.

Good luck.