way of improving your graphic design skills.
Best 15 Ways to Improve Your Graphic Design Skills as a Beginner
A good graphic designer is always improving his/her skill. This article focuses on how you can improve your graphic design skills even if you are a beginner or amateur designer.
For all beginners in graphic designing who love creative work, irrespective of their niche or specialty in graphic designing, we have compiled the best ways to improve their graphic designing skills to make them become top rated designers that they want to be.
Best 15 Ways to Improve Your Graphic Design Skills as a Beginner
- Learn the basics of graphic design
- Follow graphic design blogs
- Avail yourself to receiving feedbacks and be enthusiastic
- Try out experimental design ideas
- Be an active participant in design communities
- Gather design inspiration
- Reproduce one of your best graphic designs
- Specialize on a particular field
- Internship
- Take tutorials to develop your skills
- Making use of design in your own life
- Offer free services
- Have a mentor
- Thoroughly learn a 3D or 2D package
- Practice more.
- Learn the basics of graphic design
As a beginner, you have to be familiar with typography, composition, theory, and craft.
In order to advance to a higher level in your career, you need to have a strong background understanding of graphic designing and an eye for design composition, as well as proficiency in handling graphic design software and applications.
Having a background understanding of these will help you as you go deeper into graphic designing.
- Follow graphic design blogs
Follow professional graphic designers on the social media such as Instagram and Facebook because there are more visual content being posted there.
Watch the creative designs and videos users have posted to get inspiration that can help you improve your skills.
This keeps you updated about trending graphic designing techniques, innovations, and developments.
- Avail yourself to receiving feedbacks and be enthusiastic
Even though you think that you have made the best work you have ever done, don’t ever think it’s too good to be criticized.
When you show your work to other designers, they can and will tell you what’s wrong with the work if any and you will be able to make the necessary changes.
Learn from your previous works and improve your skill and apply it to your next design.
- Try out experimental design ideas
It’s an approach graphic designers can learn from when it comes to experimenting with new media and different graphic techniques.
So, rather than always using the same fonts, colors, layouts, or software for every design approach, you can mix things up a bit and try something new.
Try 3D rather than 2D. Pick up some new design software, sometimes it might turn out bad and sometimes good but most importantly you get to learn new things and see what aspect of your graphic design skills that needs improvement.
- Be an active participant in design communities
Make it a point to participate in design communities and competition and you will build a reputation for yourself.
You’ll meet other designers you can connect with, or maybe even work with. Start participating by entering into online designing contest and other online platforms that support beginners in graphic design.
- Gather design inspiration
Get creative design inspiration stuffs and learn the stories behind them. Finding inspiration is a task you should adopt.
Find successful designs and study them, figure out why they did so well, as well as the stories behind their evolution, history, and transitions.
- Reproduce one of your best graphic designs
The new graphic design artworks you gathered can be reproduced or even reworked in new ways, which can help you understand various techniques and to figure out the principles and technical skills which can be used in creating the original one.
You can also search for creative and highly influential art movements from the past and learn from them.
- Specialize on a particular field
Select a particular field of graphic design and focus on it, remember that “jack of all trades” is a master of none.
Whether web design, mobile, or logo design, choose the area where you are good in and specialize early in your design career, it helps you spend more time developing relevant techniques.
- Internship
Do an Internship for a top company in graphic design, it may be online or physical, anyone that suits your schedule.
- Take tutorials to develop your skills
There are many different online graphic design classes that you can use to enhance your skill. You can follow a tutorial that will help you develop your skills.
Identify an area you would like to develop yourself on and follow an online guide or class. It is very possible to find an online guide which will give you just what you need.
- Making use of design in your own life
By working on a personal project you can have the opportunity to develop your skills. Personal projects allow you to develop your designs without any time limits.
You will be able to experiment, make your own decisions, and take the project in any direction you choose.
You will be able to explore new knowledge along the way. Personal projects can be small or large and your level of involvement will be up to you.
You can spend as much or as little time on the project as you choose, and you can improve your income with the products that you create.
- Offer free services
Although you always want to get some form of payment back for your work, assisting a local charity or non-profit organization will help you to develop your design skills.
You can find some organizations to volunteer for, to update their logos, fonts, and typography. You’ll learn new skills and feel humane at the same time.
- Have a mentor
Studying the work of talented designers may help you develop your own skills. Explore the choices they took in creating their projects and the design techniques adopted by them for their designs.
How they use layout, background space, harmony, hierarchy, contrast, color, and typography. Consider their choices and find inspiration for your own graphic designs.
- Thoroughly learn a 3D or 2D package
Start doing this early, choose any 3D or 2D graphic software and master it. Do not be afraid to explore and try out everything while learning.
Cinema 4D is a good graphic software choice when it comes to 3D modeling, lighting, and texturing.
- Practice more
As a beginner, always practice as often as you can, “practice makes perfect” but in this case “practice makes pixel perfect”.
The more you practice and try out new designs, the more you acquire knowledge and make new discovery.
Conclusion
Designs are continually developing in different formats, so also are the tools and techniques used in the industry.
Persistent learning and experimentation helps you with learning new skills. This will keep your graphic design skills new, fresh, and trending as you continue to learn and evolve as a graphic designer.