: What are some of the highly skilled, niche areas in the graphic design industry? I am a programmer (hobbyist), and without that specific purpose or need, I ended knowing things in areas which

@Si6392903

Screen printing color separator / graphic artist.

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@Margaret771

The recruiters in Sydney sometimes find it hard to find good packaging designers - with high level press/ink knowledge. Often niche requirements (to get selected) you will have to need alot of experience to stand out.

Being really good in a specific area, such as Fashion or FMCG or corporate branding - recruiters and job advertisers can be very specific for their demands.

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@Cugini998

Unlike, engineering design fields there is much less need for "maintenance" graphic design. It is also quite rare that legacy data can not be converted to a newer format. Therefore there are less legacy stuff that could not be done by any competent user.

These niche fields suddenly do start to pop up when you enter more technical fields like 3d graphics, which is not generally considered graphics design. Or when it is its different from general 3d graphics production. 3D graphics has niche fields that pay well, but they are allmost impossible to get to since the skills required are hard to build.

Mostly you find these things build up where tech workers interface with graphics like building automated layout systems etc. Even cobol skill is not hard to find, just not seen as a nice job. Ive done business cobol and quie frankly no amount of pay would make me do it anymore. Besides knowing cobol is not the problem but rather knowing their spagetti code and ability to deal with a scared management team.

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@RJPawlick971

I think you're asking about niche sub-fields with in the world of graphic design?

Off the top of my head:


Typeface designer (it's an incredibly small industry, albeit one that doesn't make many people rich)
Calligraphers (historically for documents, wedding invites; today they tend to be hired for custom hand lettering for a wide range of uses)
hand painted signage
Letterpress printers/Linotype operators
Graphic Design scholar/historian/author


The primary difference between these types of jobs and say COBOL programmers is that while niche skills, there's more than enough people that do it to meet demand (since for a lot of people, making art is more appealing than learning antiquated programming languages). So these aren't typically high paying positions.

So these definitely meet the 'high level of specialization/difficulty/niche' aspects--but not really the 'high paying/guaranteed to find a job' aspects.

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