The Datum Report

Occupation 2142 · Professional occupations

Graphic and multimedia designers

Half of full-time graphic and multimedia designers in the UK earn more than £32,510 a year, and half earn less.

Graphic and multimedia designers use illustrative, sound, visual and multimedia techniques to convey a message for information, entertainment, advertising, promotion or publicity purposes, and create special visual effects, 3D models and animations for computer games, film, interactive and other media.

How people enter it

Entrants have usually completed a foundation course, a BTEC/SQA award, a degree and/or postgraduate qualification. NVQs/SVQs in Design (in various disciplines) are available at levels 2 and 3. Portfolio work is also important for entry.

What the work involves

• liaises with client to clarify aims of project brief, discusses media, software and technology to be used, establishes timetable for project and defines budgetary constraints
• undertakes research into project, considers previous related projects and compares costs of using different processes
• prepares sketches, scale drawings, models, colour schemes and other mock-ups to show clients and discusses any required alterations
• prepares specification and instructions for realisation of the project
• liaises with other parts of the production team to ensure graphic design fits with other elements, processes and timescales
• produces or oversees creation of the final product

Also called

3D artist · Animator (computing/IT) · Compositor (special effects) · Creative design assistant · Graphic artist · Graphic designer · Visual effects supervisor

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for graphic and multimedia designers, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 11 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Web design professionals