Quick answer: Graphic design degrees usually cover typography, layout, brand systems and production, at associate or bachelor’s level. Graphic designers earn a median $62,960 with employment projected to change by 2.1 percent through 2034 (BLS OEWS, May 2025; BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34). It is a wide-spread occupation, and where you land inside that spread is the thing worth planning for.
The software itself is the smallest part of any of this. Employers commonly screen on a portfolio first and a credential second, so ask any program how many finished, critiqued pieces a student leaves with.
This site already carries a graphic design career guide covering the work itself: what designers do, how the day runs, and how to get started without a degree. This page is the rung above it.
The distinction matters because the two questions are genuinely different. Someone asking how to do graphic design wants the craft. Someone asking about a graphic design degree has usually already decided the craft is interesting and now wants to know whether the credential moves them from freelance and production work into salaried, senior or in-house roles - and what it costs them in time to find out.
The honest answer is that the degree buys three things a self-taught route rarely supplies on its own: sustained critique from people who are better than you, a structured portfolio rather than an accumulated one, and the production and client-facing coursework that separates a designer who can make a nice image from one who can ship a job. None of that is guaranteed by enrollment, and outcomes vary.
Before you request information anywhere, ask what the portfolio requirement is at graduation and how critique is run in a distance format. With that filter set, compare online graphic design programs enrolling now:
Every school listed is verified in federal IPEDS data both to award this degree and to offer programs that can be completed entirely by distance education at this level. Whether this exact degree is delivered fully online varies by school, so confirm the format before you apply.
This page lists 10 schools, closest group first, then ordered by BOC Score with the highest at the top. 10 of them carry a score.
Scores come from IPEDS (2024) and the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard. Earnings are for all graduates of a school, not one program, so treat them as a signal about the institution rather than about this subject. Sponsored listings are paid placements and are labelled as such; they are separate from this ranking and never change it. Read the full methodology.
Source: ACCSC IPEDS College Scorecard
Source: ACCSC IPEDS College Scorecard
Source: ACCSC IPEDS College Scorecard
Source: ACCSC IPEDS College Scorecard
Source: ACCSC IPEDS College Scorecard
Source: ACCSC IPEDS College Scorecard
Source: ACCSC IPEDS College Scorecard
Source: ACCSC IPEDS College Scorecard
Source: ACCSC IPEDS College Scorecard
Source: ACCSC IPEDS College Scorecard
Each of these institutions holds accreditation from a recognized institutional accreditor. Verify a school’s current standing directly before you commit to it.
People already doing the work informally. Sign shop staff, print operators, small-business owners doing their own marketing, and anyone who has been quietly designing things for other people without calling it design. The degree formalizes what is already there.
Tradespeople with a visual eye. Design rewards the same habits good trade work rewards - working to spec, measuring precisely, and refusing to hand over something that is nearly right. The unfamiliar part is usually critique culture rather than craft.
People who want the in-house route rather than freelance. Freelance design is open to anyone with a portfolio. Salaried in-house and agency roles screen harder, and the credential is more often part of that screen.
Credit transfer is decided by the receiving institution and genuinely varies, so request a written transfer evaluation before you enroll.
Both levels sit under this CIP, and the choice is a real one rather than a formality.
The associate degree is the shorter route. It concentrates on production skill, software fluency and a first portfolio, and it is the common entry point for production artist, junior designer and prepress roles. For someone already earning in a trade and testing whether design is the right move, it is the lower-commitment experiment.
The bachelor’s degree adds art direction, brand strategy, design history and typically a capstone portfolio built over a longer arc. Senior in-house and agency postings ask for it more often, and it is the level that keeps a later move into art direction or design management open.
Cost between the two differs mainly in time, and time is the expensive part for a working adult. Associate vs bachelor’s degree works through that tradeoff in general terms.
Most occupations on this site have a wage range. Graphic design has a chasm. The 10th percentile is $39,520 and the 90th is $104,910, which is a gap of more than two and a half times inside one job title.
That is not noise. It reflects three different jobs sharing one SOC code. At the bottom is production work: resizing, reformatting, executing someone else’s layout, often on contract. In the middle is generalist design at a company or agency. At the top is brand and art direction, where the designer is deciding what gets made rather than making it.
The practical implication for a student is that the median is a weak planning number here. What determines position in that spread is portfolio strength, whether the work shown is strategic or executional, and whether the designer has moved from taking direction to giving it. Coursework that builds brand systems, client presentation and art direction is aimed at the upper half. Coursework that is mostly software training is aimed at the lower half. Ask which one a program is.
Graphic designers earn a median $62,960 across 197,830 jobs, with employment projected to change by 2.1 percent through 2034 (BLS OEWS, May 2025; BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34).
| Metric | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Median annual wage | $62,960 ($30.27 per hour) | BLS OEWS, May 2025 |
| Mean annual wage | $70,560 | BLS OEWS, May 2025 |
| Wage range | $39,520 (10th pct) - $104,910 (90th pct) | BLS OEWS, May 2025 |
| Employment | 197,830 graphic designers | BLS OEWS, May 2025 |
| Projected change (2024-34) | 2.1%, about 20,000 openings per year | BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34 |
| Typical credential | Associate or bachelor’s, portfolio weighted heavily | Program catalogs |
| Institutions awarding | 568 | IPEDS Completions, 2024 |
| SOC code covered | 27-1024 graphic designers | BLS OEWS, May 2025 |
| Role | Median | 25th percentile | 75th percentile | Employment | Projected change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Graphic designers | $62,960 | $49,040 | $81,830 | 197,830 | 2.1% |
All wage and employment figures BLS OEWS, May 2025; growth figures BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34.
Geography moves this occupation more than most, because the highest-paying design work concentrates where the client budgets are.
| State | Median annual wage | Employment |
|---|---|---|
| District of Columbia | $87,920 | 1,150 |
| Rhode Island | $78,220 | 750 |
| New York | $77,340 | 14,530 |
| Massachusetts | $76,710 | 4,450 |
| California | $75,130 | 27,390 |
Wage and employment figures BLS OEWS, May 2025.
Two of the five highest-paying states are also two of the largest employers, which is unusual and worth noting: New York and California carry both the volume and the wage. That is a point in favor of remote work for anyone studying online, since a designer working remotely for a client in a high-wage market is not bound by the local median where they live. Ask any program whether its portfolio and networking work is oriented toward remote practice.
The national median annual wage is $62,960, or $30.27 an hour (BLS OEWS, May 2025). The bottom 10 percent earn $39,520 or less and the top 10 percent earn $104,910 or more, across employment of 197,830. The spread is wide because the same job title covers production work and senior brand work.
Employment is projected to change by 2.1 percent from 2024 to 2034, with about 20,000 openings per year (BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34). That is slow growth, and most of the annual openings come from people leaving the occupation rather than from new positions.
Not always. Graphic design is one of the few visual fields where a portfolio can carry an application on its own. A degree is designed to build that portfolio under critique and to add the typography, production and client-facing coursework that self-teaching usually skips. Individual outcomes may vary.
568 institutions awarded CIP 50.0409 at associate or bachelor's level in 2024 (IPEDS Completions, 2024). That is a large and well-supplied category, so the school list below is worth filtering hard rather than taking whole.
Both are offered under this CIP. The associate is the shorter route into production and junior design work. The bachelor's carries more typography, art direction and strategy coursework and is what most in-house and agency job postings ask for at the senior end. Credit transfer is decided by the receiving institution and genuinely varies, so request a written transfer evaluation before you enroll.
Yes. The software is the same everywhere and critique works over video. What to ask about is how the program runs its critiques and whether print production is taught with any hands-on component, because that is the part a fully remote format most often thins out.
It can be. Trade work already trains the habits design rewards: measuring twice, working to spec, and caring whether the finished thing is square. The unfamiliar part is usually the critique culture, not the craft. Individual outcomes may vary.
State pay, licensing and metro-level data for this degree. Wage and employment figures on every state page come from BLS OEWS, May 2025.
Alabama * Alaska * Arizona * Arkansas * California * Colorado * Connecticut * Delaware * District of Columbia * Florida * Georgia * Hawaii * Idaho * Illinois * Indiana * Iowa * Kansas * Kentucky * Louisiana * Maine * Maryland * Massachusetts * Michigan * Minnesota * Mississippi * Missouri * Montana * Nebraska * Nevada * New Hampshire * New Jersey * New Mexico * New York * North Carolina * North Dakota * Ohio * Oklahoma * Oregon * Pennsylvania * Rhode Island * South Carolina * South Dakota * Tennessee * Texas * Utah * Vermont * Virginia * Washington * West Virginia * Wisconsin * Wyoming
About this guide: Researched and written by the TradeCareerPath Editorial Team. Our editorial team researches and sources every trade school and career guide using federal labor and education data, including BLS OEWS and Employment Projections, DOL apprenticeship records, IPEDS, College Scorecard, and state licensing boards. We follow the editorial standards documented at /editorial-policy/.
