Improving yourself as a designer
I’m never happy with my current skill level, I never quite feel like I’ve reached a particular stage that I’m aiming for. Maybe it’s just me; maybe I’ll never quite be happy with myself. Maybe that’s a good thing… maybe not.
But one things for sure – I’m constantly improving and bettering myself as a designer and much more, which is a good feeling. To be able to look back over the past 6 months and observe what new skills I’ve learnt, bad habits I’ve dropped, speed, accuracy and imagination I’ve gained and generally concede that I have improved in more ways than one is pleasing.
So, I’d like to offer some tips and ideas that may help others help themselves more, hopefully provide some inspiration and educate. And I’d sure like to hear what you think, if you’ve got anything to add please comment.
When learning: Read, Meet, Talk, Listen, Teach
And further verbs. Although it sounds cliche and quite extreme, if you want to get ahead in your game (and this doesn’t particularly relate to web design), you have to eat, sleep and breath design. Make contacts wherever possible, let people know what you do – you never know when it might come around and help you.
Reading
Resources for web designers are hardly scarce. Get subscribing to RSS feeds, get a good selection of favourite sites with regular news and tutorials and visit them regularly. I make an effort to spend a good 30-40 minutes (more if I get to the office early) every morning checking my feeds and bookmarking new sites full of inspiration.
Then don’t forget the print world, there are still a fantastic number of great quality web design, development, graphic design, copywriting and project management books popping up all the time. Hit up Amazon and see what tickles your fancy. Then don’t let them gather dust on a shelf – have them open on your desk, read on the train, in bed, wherever… you’ll be surprised how much information you can pull out a book if you take the time to actually absorb it.
Don’t forget magazines and journals, although we’re rather deprived in the UK of any decent regular publications.
A few sites I’d recommend:
And a few books to check out:
- The Principles of Beautiful Web Design (Jason Beaird)
- Designing with Web Standards (Jeffrey Zeldman)
- Web Design Index by Content
- Bulletproof Web Design (Dan Cederholm)
- Web Standards Solutions (Dan Cederholm)
They should keep you busy for a while. And that’s before we even consider the various branches off web design itself. So get yourself an RSS reader like Bloglines and get into the routine of checking decent sites regularly and sourcing as much valuable information, resources and tools and inspiration as possible.
Meeting / making contact with people
Making contacts within the industry can only benefit you. It may lead to job opportunities and work but also creates new avenues through which to learn from others.
You can meet new people through all sorts of mediums, such as:
- Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter (follow me!) and Digg
- Contacting other designers through their contact pages on their sites
- Attending web conferences and meet-ups. In Manchester 2 popular regular meet-ups at the moment are GeekUp and Northern Digitals.
- Bringing other people in on jobs can teach you a lot – sometimes it’s better than struggling to work out how to do something when you can pay someone to teach you or help out.
I talk – you listen
I know, it sounds ridiculously obvious but get talking. To mates, to people you know in the industry, to colleagues or fellow students. Ask questions, try to help each other out and share intersting new finds with others. Share the wealth!
Teach
Doesn’t agree with the idea of ‘improving yourself‘? On the contrary, teaching is one of the best forms of learning. Whether you’re teaching a friend how to use Wordpress, writing an informative blog article (as I am now), lecturing a class or giving advice in a forum; the processes you have to go through to gather the information in the first place, then absorbing the feedback and further questions that develop, creates a perfect environment to learn so much more, almost subconsciously.
Blogging
Blogging helps to improve yourself not just as a designer but in so many various ways. Redswish has forced me to learn new things to create interesting articles, my writing style has improved and my understanding of the ‘blogosphere’ and social web has improved.
What to blog about
It depends on what you wish to achieve from your blog, whether it be commercial or personal gain. If you want to make money from your blog, prepare to work hard writing regularly and building your site to pull in traffic. But if you just want to ‘express yourself’, promote yourself or just want to write and pass on knowledge to others – then do it as when you feel like it. Don’t feel pressured to blog.
Blogging isn’t for everyone. It takes a lot of time, energy, focus and dedication. Sometimes it doesn’t pay off, but it’s always worth giving a shot.
Taking criticism
This doesn’t just refer to blogging but all forms of criticism. However if you go out on a limb and broadcast your views and writing to the world – you can rest assured that some people are compelled to spite you, whether it be justified or not. Prepare for a few off-colour comments.
Criticism isn’t always constructive, but try to imagine why the comments have been made and consider how you can improve on this and try to avoid it happening again. Do not react harshly – angry retorts can drive visitors away and do nothing for your profile. Words can easily be misinterpreted on the web so be careful.
Useful input from commenters
The main benefit of comment areas on blogs is the opportunity for readers to contribute and provide their own expertise and insight. Take full advantage of this, promote it and try to generate conversation with your commenters. Doing so will help to increase the chance of more input in future.
Pushing yourself when working
All the above are examples of ways to learn new tricks and skills, expand the imagination and develop a better understanding of the industry. However, improvement can be established constantly while working in your existing environment. A few tips:
- Working for an agency. Working in an environment with other professionals is a perfect environment for absorbing new tricks and ideas, as well as sharing. Since I started working at Flame Digital 4 months ago I’ve progressed in leaps and bounds and can honestly say I’m loving it!
- It’s never too late to go back to school. More and more web design and development related courses are popping up – you’re never too old to mooch along and check out the benefits.
- Find ways to measure progress. Set targets, aim to reach them in 1 month/6 months. This will help to push you to develop, and acts as a measure to observe how much you’ve improved.
- Money is a motivator. Let’s not lie, we can design for the love of design but if you do it for a living – money is essential. Loosely speaking, the better a designer you are – the more money you’re likely to earn. It’s not always as simple as that but money is certainly a powerful motivator – perhaps the thought of that salary raise will entice you to push that little bit harder.
Explore other avenues of creativity. Design doesn’t have to remain in Photoshop on your monitor. Grab a camera and go for a walk to capture some photography, or grab a sketch pad and relax in the garden and swap the mouse for a pencil! Try to seek creativity and inspiration in different forms.
Focusing on design
I’ll hand you over to a nice article on a new website, Web Design Ledger, written by Adelle Charles, that covers ‘10 easy steps to become a better web designer‘.
The article outlines ideas and techniques that should be considered constantly and should be second nature to designers:
- Build a toolbox. Create a tidy catalogue/toolbox or resources, scripts, background and stock images, bookmarked sites, tutorial files, plugins, .psds etc. You never know when they might come in handy.
- Think on paper. Always default back to paper before you start squiggling away with the mouse.
- Keep up to date with trends. The web is like the catwalks of Milan and Paris – new fashions are revealing themselves all the time. Keep on top of what’s cool, or even get a step ahead and set the trend!
- Know your audience.
- Ask other’s opinions.
Self-improvement
‘Improving yourself as a designer’ requires a lot more than reading books, toiling through tutorials and blogging around. There are so many contributing factors that make a good designer, and these vary from person to person.
Perhaps it’s a case of building confidence, or even suppressing an ego. You can never have too much inspiration and in such a fast paced industry – there’s never any way you can know everything.
Whether you’re a student doing a part-time course, an experienced industry veteran, an up-and-coming design superstar or a jack-of-all-trades; I hope there’s something in this article that may have proved useful to you.
Never settle for second best, and never assume you’ve covered all the bases – there’s always room for improvement.
- Share:
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Ian said:
Nathan, you need a girlfriend!
take mine? please…..
Nice article! The question is, what qualities makes a “excellent designer”…Consistency? versatility? To sell the most products? To inspire people?
How do you measure?
Niki Brown said:
I second the bullet proof web design book! Great post!
Morgan Grimshaw said:
Nice article. Great round up of all the aspects of designing. Sometimes you get tunnel vision, but reading this gives you a reminder of the scope of your work.
Keep it up.
AJ Troxell said:
It definently increases the size of the design world after reading this. Sometimes you feel like you are the only one, then you realize that you are a part of a large community, or mostly, very caring, very nice poeple that you can learn a great deal from. Great article.
Will said:
We must be in one of the best (the best?) industries to learn and advance our skills, but the industry also advances much faster than we ever could ha. Great article!
Jeremy Latham said:
Transcending CSS is another good one…by Andy Clarke
Web Design Adelaide said:
Great tips. thank you. The talking bit is something that is hard when working by yourself. Can be a bit locked away from the world at times.
Jumping Dog Design said:
When you learn something new you have to allow yourself to fail. Even though you may be the master of many skills, you have to start again. This can be hard on the ego, and in some cases it is vanity that stops people from improving.
Thanks for the post.
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Leafy Designz said:
Lovelly read thanks….
Web Designers and Developers def need to sleep and breath design design and development
nathan said:
@Ian – no mate I can’t take your girlfriend, sorry. Good question, what does make a good designer? I guess it’s an amalgamation of many qualities – perspective, versitility, consistency, speed, uniqueness, passion, attention-to-detail…
@Will – the industry sure does move fast, that’s why it’s so important to stive to keep up / get ahead. Be careful if you go teaching full-time or go long-term travelling, it can be all to easy to loose touch.
@Jeremy Latham – I’ve not read Transcending CSS but I’ve heard nothing but good things about it.
** Cheers guys, sorry the site went down this morning, too much traffic and I ran out of bandwidth on the last day of the month! **
illu said:
Thanks for sharing this great article!
Santhos Webdesign said:
Wow man, great post! It’s like I hear myself talking. I’m also not happy with my skills but on the other hand I know I’m learning very much! I also check for about 30 sites in my rss reader every day. All interesting stuff goes into the bookmarks… Unfortunately I almost never read them later…
I guess it’s very hard to be a fully skilled webdeveloper mastering (x)html, php, mysql, javascript, css, standards, etc… I also want to be a good graphics designer too. The whole package. But from that point of view there’s always more to learn!
Great article with nice tips!
Bryce said:
I wholeheartedly agree on the teaching point. I always tell my students I get so much more out of teaching the class then they do from attending. They’ll probably read this and want their money back…
Cristhian said:
great article, very useful! thanks!
Andy Clarke said:
“I’ve not read Transcending CSS but I’ve heard nothing but good things about it.” Oooh that’s lovely, thanks very much.
Are you coming to my design workshop in London on 1st December Nathan? It would be great to see you there!
Paul Stevens said:
Great Blog, Looking forward to your next one!
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nathan said:
@Santhos – yeah sometimes you have to be careful about having too many sites because they’ll never get seen. I have about 80-90 sites in my Bloglines that I check once/twice a week but I have about 8 sites in my bookmarks toolbar that I check religiously every day.
@Bryce – I’d like to teach but I’ve still got so much to learn, I don’t think I’m ready to yet, plus I’d be worried about loosing touch with the mainstream.
@Andy Clarke – I’d love to come and see you but I’m afraid I’ll be on holiday. I wanted to see you at An Event Apart but I just can’t afford to fly over to the US at the moment.
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Melek said:
Love the suggestion on ‘teaching’. I’m scheduled to give a speech on Social Media Marketing this month, and I would never have learned as much as I have without having this speech to do. The research has been time consuming, but I’m LOVING learning about a new means of marketing and being able to teach others about it. Maybe I should schedule myself for quarterly speaking engagements so I am required to learn specific topics
Abrishca Digital Media said:
Great post Nathan! It sounds like you have been doing this for a lot longer than I think you have. I believe that this is an industry where the ability for continual learning is an integral skill required.
I myself am just starting out and sometimes it feels like there is too much to learn before even considering keeping abreast of recent trends and directions. But I do realise that I have many years left and hopefully the learning curve becomes less steep as I progress!
Thanks again for the article – it was very reassuring for me (even if it was not intended that way).
Craig
Isabelle Newton said:
Great article. I’d heard of smashing magazine and a few of the other suggestions but thanks for the others. Very useful.
Panasit said:
Nice article. I think the mistake designers make when trying to be better is, they take on a lot of projects within a short period of time, thinking that more projects = more experience.
nathan said:
@Melek – that sounds good. You should definitely make the most of any opportunity to speak to people, if you enjoy it. I’ve never had the chance yet (and would probably be very nervous) but would probably work really hard to ensure I gave my all, and in turn would learn so much new stuff.
@Abrishca (Craig) – thank you, I’m glad I come across that way. I’m not sure if the learning curve grows less steep – it seems as soon as I think I’m confident with something a new door is opened with so many new uses and skills to adopt that I feel I’ll never really get on top of web design. But, stick at it, it’s a continually fun and progressive process.
@Panasit – I’ve been guilty of taking on too many projects at once when freelancing and working till midnight to get them all done. It can be hard to judge clients though – some move slowly whereas some want their work done as soon as possible, plus not everyone wants to pay on time so maintaining cash flow can be really tricky.
It’s all experience though – sometimes it’s a case of learning to project manage lots of jobs at once, but it’s important not to loose the quality of work.
philfreelanceweb said:
great article, the most important on how to success being a web designer is of course you have to love it, because without it no matter how long you been there you won’t feel the fullfillment and i’m happy that you find it to yourself.
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Patrick said:
I thought never feeling satisfied with my progress was just me or my Catholic upbringing. Kidding, of course. Yes, Andy Clarke’s book is inspiring- it’s surprising to me how few web designers in the USA have read it, so I’m on a mission to push the book. Funny videos on the DVD, too.
I’ll second (third?) the sentiment: you have to love what you do. And be willing to explore and constantly work on improving both one’s aesthetic sense and one’s process. Finally, I think a great designer in any medium is willing to take risks and push limits.
Patrick
Silentgirl said:
Enjoyed reading this great article. This reminds me to build a toolbox! Thanks for sharing!
Sanghmitra said:
You are a good writer/blogger as well. You have quite some style of your own.
Mark - Web Design said:
Building a toolbox is a great idea and there is probably an entire blogs worth of ideas for that. I find that by keeping material that can help inspire, direct or teach on-hand I am able to get through more work in a shorter time. It also improves the quality of the finished product.
Great blog!
Las Vegas craps games said:
excellent list and useful advice, thank you!! in fact, we all know these things but it’s good to see them written down from time to time as to keep them in mind. particularly the keep-learning-thing, i always try to improve my knowledge and use new things with every project i take on – and i do so with great enthusiasm!
Quality Web Design said:
Very useful article, i have bookmarked this one and i have searched the mentioned sites. In that i have liked smashing magazine very much, its really helpful. Thank you very much.
Birmingham Web Design said:
I love this post.
Consider this also:
“Tell me” and I will forget,
“Show me” and I will understand
“Involve me” and I will remember.
Philippine Freelance Web Designer said:
It’ is really great to read the article, and the site has a lot more to share. To be a successful as a web designer, you should love what you do and never stop to learn new things. Read and read and apply it with your web design works.
Nice one keep it up!
stop excessive sweating said:
I’m pretty new design field, I deal mainly with web design computer always get better in the highest level. I’m sure the article would help me. Thank you very much!
Stop Sweating said:
The toolbox is really a great idea. Teaching is one of the best ways I have learn as a web designer. Some of the problems and questions that the students have make me learn a much faster rate than I ever would as a lone designer.
Self Hypnosis said:
Great article Nathan. Teaching is probably one of the best way to improve oneself as I have personally discover coaching some of my friends.