With summer almost in full swing, it’s pretty normal to take time to relax and enjoy the inviting climate. During this time, it’s also pretty common to reflect on your life, and more specifically, your career. Today, we’re going to take time to reflect and discuss 6 ways you could possibly improve your designing skills.
As some might say, it is a necessary good to take time to rest and recharge. But learning as designers must be continuous to keep us active and our skills are fresh.
Learning is a necessary essential for your professional career as a designer to stay in shape. It will revitalize your interests and expand your skills. Sometimes, the space dedicated to work voids us of that curiosity to learn new things, whether it’s due to tiredness or lack of time.
Fortunately, we came up with this quick list, and you can use it to make work compatible with continuous learning. Here are some ways you can make your skills even sharper:
Practice, practice and practice some more
When practicing, it’s important to remember that that’s all it is: practice. It does not matter how many times you have to repeat it. It does not matter that you have to start from the beginning. Every minute you spend practicing is an experience that you are accumulating. And as we all know, the experience is priceless as a designer.
The objective is to learn progressively and not get overwhelmed with issues at the beginning. It can be quite overwhelming to practice design on your own. If you can, look for a mentor; someone with a good eye for design, that will feed you with your vision.
Learn the basic principles of design
Although it may seem obvious, there are many people that often leave design theory aside when they start a project. What may seem trivial at first may sooner or later become a problem, that can lead us to have to rethink a whole project from scratch.
Read, watch and listen to other designers
Picasso once said: Great artists copy, geniuses steal. You may not have to take the words of others literally, but if we have to take influence from someone, better that it’s from great artists and designers.
You do have to be careful in this style of practice. Even without realizing, you may accidentally copy your mentor’s style completely. Ideally, over time, you’ll adapt their teachings into a meaningful and powerful style of your own. And if you have several references, in the end, the mixture of all of these styles will help you develop your own.
There is no great director, painter, or actor that does not draw inspiration from another. In a way, these people are designers, just like us. In the same way, they gather inspiration, we must also gather inspiration. It’s not only helpful in our personal careers but the development of design as a whole.
Create an account in Dribble and Behance
In case you don’t already know, Dribble and Behance are probably the biggest websites to teach your projects and share them with the rest of the community.
Being on these websites is not only good for you because you can share your projects, but because you can have feedback from other designers, as well as inspire you with all the jobs and profiles you can find.
Many times, if we work alone, we doný really notice the mistakes we make. Or we simply begin to repeat, without even realizing, certain patterns in our designs. Having all of them look the same.
The constructive comments of other designers can give us ideas on how to cover certain designs, in addition to rethinking how to approach the projects.
Teach your knowledge and skills to other people
This is a very important step you can take. Many designers have a website dedicated as a portfolio to show their designs and projects. Maybe you think you’re not someone who can teach other people because I’m still learning. However, sharing your knowledge is an excellent way to learn as well.
Writing design articles helps you organize your thoughts and review the knowledge you have already acquired. In addition, it usually requires some preliminary research, which may even lead to knowing the topic you are dealing with in greater depth.
Creating a blog is definitely a good idea. And it is highly recommended to do if you feel sufficiently prepared to take the step.
Experience
We live in a world where everyone is looking for a comfortable place to stay. But, if we want to evolve, or even reinvent ourselves, we can not stay in the same place.
We must not be afraid to make mistakes. From all experience, even if it is a failure, we can always get some reflection or knowledge that helps us take a step forward. Surely these experiments will be mostly a disaster. But sooner or later, you will get your reward.
As you can see, these tips can be applied in your daily work, or in your free time. And if you are a designer, every new experience can lead to new projects and higher learning potential.
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