Last updated on September 29th, 2021
While the modern designer has access to hundreds of online design tutorials to enhance his design skills, it does not mean that there are no other alternatives left for honing the craft from elsewhere. In fact, designer’s over dependence on online courses and tutorials to learn is slowly hampering the more natural ways by which designers can be educated.
Many important resources are scattered in the world that exists outside of our computer screens and designers need to explore them to improve their design skills. We must not forget that the designs we create on computer are after all meant for the outside world and practical real life experiences also teach us a lot.
Here Are 4 Ways To Improve Your Design Skills
01. Make It A Point To Observe Things Around
A designer should have a compulsive habit of observing and absorbing everything from a designer’s eye. For instance, if you are a logo designer, product/packaging designer, you must observe the logos/ product designs / packaging of everything from the store to the items being sold there.
So, wherever you go, ensure that you watch the things around attentively for their designs sometimes for inspiration, other times for design references. Observing real products and communicating with people will help increase a designer’s intellectual understanding.
02. Pay Attention To Your Design Field
When visiting a place and observing varied products for their designs, there is no need to go into details of every type of design. Instead, your should focus on the designs that you are most interested in. The insights you gain through observation will be useful when you work on a design project. While you take notice of a particular design, you should learn from the element proportion and placement, texture etc aspects. So, do not be over whelmed by the plethora of designs and instead focus on design field and learn from your observation.
03. Find Out Designs That Work Well For Business
You should be looking for the businesses that are most attracting customers and then analyze their overall design, from fonts to color selections or themes to graphics. Chances are that the logo displayed in front of their store, restaurant, shop etc have design that are appreciated for their aesthetics. Whenever, you come across such attractive or popular designs, analyze it for its design elements, concepts and techniques and learn from them as part of your work experience.
04. Think How You Would Have Done The Design
Watching and observing the designs in the real world is also not enough. Although most of the designs are from experienced professionals and you learn from them but one must always put themselves in the shoes of the designer and think of how they would create the same design.
What if you were given the responsibility to design the package you are seeing at a shopping mall? Would you have designed it differently? If it is so, what different skills you possess to do the job. Form a habit of thinking this way so that you have all the practical qualities of the successful designer.
In conclusion, there are resources outside of your computer to teach you and improve your design skills as a designer. You need to take note of the fact that almost everything around you is the result of creativity, skill, and experience. Observe these works and learn from them.