I think the value in design in general is being appreciated and coming into picture and being accepted gradually by Malaysians. you can see how people tend to sponsor and organize more for design-related programmes, i.e competitions, art events etc.

it's not an easy task, you either go big or go home, a lot of good designer friends i know fly over to the south neighbouring country lol. i myself is a GD graduate and my career first started as Graphic Designer. I think this term is being loosely used nowadays since they granular the terms accordingly to their specific roles. They call it Visual Designer nowadays because I think the term GD is quite specific to printing and marketing-related materials. I am now in UI/UX role in a bank doing tiny freelance works on the side like socmed poster, website etc. It keeps the food on the table