⏰ Do Now — Start Here
Look at the printed job posting on your table. Circle any word you do NOT recognize.
Start Your Resume Today
Everything you make this year is resume material -- literally. Starting today, keep (or start) a personal resume: a simple, ongoing document listing your skills, projects, and experience. You don't need a finished resume yet, just the file/page. At specific milestones this year (marked with a 💼 Resume Moment card), class will pause so you add a new line to it, in your own words, with example phrasings to help. By senior year you'll have a real, evidence-backed resume built one true accomplishment at a time -- not something invented the week before you need it.
🎯 Today's Big Question
- What skills, tools, and daily tasks define a career in digital design?
📈 By the End of Today, You Will Be Able To
- Describe a typical day in the life of a digital designer.
- Distinguish between "hard skills" and "soft skills" and give one design example of each.
- Connect at least one job title (e.g. graphic designer, UX/UI designer, production artist, art director) to the work we will do this semester.
🧰 What You'll Need
- Chart paper for a T-chart (Hard Skills / Soft Skills)
- Printed job postings or descriptions for 2-3 design roles (teacher-provided)
- Notebook/journal
📋 Your Plan for Today
- Do Now + vocabulary check-in on the job posting (5 min).
- Mini-lesson: walk through a sample "day in the life" of a digital designer, from getting a client brief to delivering final files (10 min).
- Build a class T-chart of Hard Skills vs.
- Soft Skills based on the job postings (15 min).
- Small groups: each group gets one job title and lists 3 things they think that person does every day (10 min); share out.
- Connect to our course: preview the semester -- "everything we do this term builds toward these same skills" (5 min).
🖨️ Print Your Handout
Word, picture, and definition for today's vocabulary, plus a place to write and draw. Available in English, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Chinese.
📚 Key Words
- Hard Skill
- A specific, teachable ability, like using a certain tool or software.
- Soft Skill
- An interpersonal or work-habit skill, like communication, time management, or receiving feedback well.
- Client
- The person or business a designer is creating work for.
- Production Artist
- A designer who prepares and finalizes files for print or digital publishing, following an established brand/style.
✅ What Your Finished Work Should Include
Exit ticket + group share-outs assessed with a simple checklist (participated, identified at least one hard and one soft skill).
Exit Ticket: Name one soft skill and one hard skill a digital designer needs, and explain why each matters.
📊 Before You Leave
Quick, anonymous class check-in -- takes less than a minute.
🎓 ACP Exam Prep
This lesson connects to the Photoshop Adobe Certified Professional exam: Domain 1: Working in the Design Industry
🔗 Want to Learn More?
🚀 The Extra Mile
Cross-Class Connection: Business class career-research assignments use the exact same "day in the life" research method you're using here.
Career Connection: This lesson IS the Digital Designer career page in miniature — read the full deep-dive for real entry requirements and income data.
Go further -- turn this into a portfolio piece:
- Research a second design career from the Careers hub and write a one-page comparison of the two — a real career-exploration artifact. Start here: list five comparison points — pay, hours, tools, education, stress — before you write a single sentence of the comparison itself.
- Design an "average day" infographic timeline for a working designer, ready to present at a career fair table. Start here: write the person's day out hour by hour in a plain list first, then pick only the 5-6 moments that actually deserve an icon.