10 Insights For Getting Better At Design: A guide for absolute beginners
1| You don’t have to want to be a designer, to want to learn design
Maybe you just want to figure out where to put your new sofa and what colour the walls and curtains should be. Maybe you want your presentations at work to be more visually exciting. Maybe you’re choosing a color scheme for your sister’s wedding or you have a piece of clothing in your head that you just can’t seem to find in any store. Learning just enough to raise your competency just to that specific level to get the task done, or to be able to communicate your needs to a designer is totally fine. Learning design isn’t only for Designers. Good design is useful in all sorts of projects and fields and for all sorts of people.
Vox has this great video about how better design could have helped prevent the 2018 Oscars Best Picture winner mix up where the award which Moonlight had won. was announced for La La Land, among other examples.
2| You probably already have some skills that will be useful in learning design
Maybe you’re a writer or you’re great at Math. Maybe like me you used to make tiny outfits for your dolls. Maybe you know how to do hair (especially for Black girls, because you can’t convince me that someone who knows how to part straight and cornrow perfectly isn’t just one course away from design excellence). Is it makeup? Or sports? Are you a caregiver, like a nurse or a parent? All of these have skills like critical thinking, empathy, grit or technical know how like measurement, embedded in them that will be useful on your design journey.
I’m a writer and the first thing I learned about design was that it was just another way to communicate, to evoke mood, to make a statement, to connect. It’s a relationship. A conversation. Once I got that, I was less daunted by rules because writing has rules too and I learned them. If I can get better at that, I can get better at design.
3| Don’t be afraid to suck
You’re gonna suck. I sucked. Bad. I still suck lol. But the process of learning worth all the suckiness you have to endure. I love opening a blank page and messing with colour codes and looking for unique typefaces, and although I love doing all of this, and I do it almost everyday, I still suck. But little by little I’m learning, and I can now recognize the old mistakes I used to make like not leaving enough blank space or leaving too much blank space. That doesn’t mean I don’t still suck. Who knows, I might suck forever, but it doesn’t matter. I’m gonna keep trying to get better.
4| Check out design principles, concepts, theories and tools but don’t obsess about them
Don’t get trapped by analysis paralysis. It took me a month to start this website because I wanted it to be great out the gate. I was trying to absorb all the knowledge I could from reading the books and guides, following all the designers, checking out all the perfectly designed websites. It was great! I was on my pinterest board “fledgling designer” like “YAS colour theory, YASS wireframes, YASSS process book, okay minimalism, I see you Photoshop, what’s that functionality?!” I was like a kid in a candy store. Good times…
But when I finally started putting my own website together I realized my ambition far outstripped my ability and that made me really frustrated. I knew what I wanted to do, but I didn’t have a clue how to it or sometimes I knew something wasn’t working but I didn’t know what. I’ve since learned that that’s actually a good place to be. It means I’m learning how good design looks and functions and recognizing my own weaknesses, that’s the sweet spot because if you sit with the frustration and keep learning, you’ll figure it out eventually.
When you’re a beginner, it really helps to be humble and to realize that if you think it’s perfect, it’s probably because you don’t know enough to know what’s wrong. And that’s okay. These things have really steep learning curves and people study and practice for years to be able to do them. Plus… like I said, sucking isn’t optional. That doesn’t mean you give up or shy away from learning the foundations of good design, it means you don’t aim for perfection. Aim to feel excited, to have fun and to be proud of the work you do. Stay hungry, stay foolish right?
5| Follow and interact with designers — graphic, illustrators, web, product, interior, fashion — doesn’t matter.
You know how the easiest way to learn a language is to just up and move to a country where you’ll be surrounded by speakers of that language? Learning design is similar. You need to be consciously interacting with design daily and following designers is a great way to do that. Many of them blog and share insights, tools, hacks, even courses that can actually be useful. Some of them casually talk about their process, their frustrations, their ideas. I mean, I’m not gonna lie, designers are intimidating. They seem to know so much about so many things and trying to get into the field without a background in Art or IT can feel like jumping into a mega-ninja warrior course in the middle or reading.
The funny thing about this is if you watch movies and music videos, read books, use social media, you already are following designers. This is gonna sound silly but I didn’t realize until after I graduated that I had spent a lot of time in my undergrad Journalism degree interacting with designers. I took (and smashed) classes on visual communication, electronic publishing and multimedia journalism. Plus I had this one fantastic lecturer who exposed me to design research, suggested listening to design podcast 99% Invisible and introduced me to the work of actual designers like Zaha Hadid, and actual design firms like IDEO. All of that was priceless information that pointed me in the right direction.
6| See and think like a designer
Following designers will help you with this. I loved how when I started learning about design I found myself thinking about how the objects and systems I was interacting with were designed. I finally understood why things like bad doors, that one white and silver aesthetic and everybody in my community using their lots to build houses in the same two rectangles configuration lol, frustrated me. I also realized I was passively learning that great design isn’t just pleasing to the eye, it’s efficient — form and function right?
Seeing design, good and bad in the world around me helped me to take a more critical look at my own work and inspires me to elevate my game. When I see the amazing things designers are capable of creating I’m inspired to keep going.
7| Figure out what you like but don’t get too tied to it
Remember my pinterest board? It has three functions for me. One, I pin technically informative pins, literal design lessons and Photoshop/Illustrator step by step guides. I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned from these types of pins. Two, I get to see design trends unfold in real time. You’ll be going along, living your life, pinning away and then all of a sudden everything on your feed is burnt orange, moss green, light peach. Everybody’s using bubble-looking serif type and all the illustrations have exaggerated proportions etc. It’s fascinating. It’s also helped me in my own web designing because I pin layouts that I like and then mix and match and recreate elements in my own designs. Slowly but surely I’m developing my own style and tastes. Like, I figured out real quick that I’m not a minimalist. I appreciate minimalism, I understand how to use it, but …it’s not for me.
8| Practice!
Give yourself projects — flyers, birthday cards, calendars, IG stories, infographics etc. If you play the Sims try to get better at building and decorating houses. Redecorate your bedroom. Draw more. Doodle more. Try to figure out your personal style. Doing is absolutely essential. Learn the tools. I use Canva because it’s so so easy but I’m at that place where I’m back to messing with more powerful tools because there’s stuff I want to do that I can’t with Canva.
Take on small projects for other people too. Do you know a small business that could use some simple ads? Maybe a friend needs a logo? Even if you’re not confident enough in the quality of your designs to charge, practical projects will help you to get comfortable with how iterative design really is. Plus, you get to practice some design thinking and design research. You don’t have to be an expert, just understanding both will help you to be more efficient and effective. One cool pay-off of learning these is that they’re highly transferable. I use both in making content plans for Talk Up Radio to get better at making content that resonates with our audiences.
9| Forget what you think you’re good at
One good thing about my life is that there’s always somebody there, seeing the wings on my back before I know they’re there and challenging me to jump before I think I’m ready. I never think I’m ready and then I try, and it may not be perfect but it’s usually good. Emprezz and Stanley, challenged me back in 2015 to edit the Talk Up Yout website and their personal websites (designs have changed since then), and while I was pretty confident about the copy, I wasn’t so excited to try web design. Turns out I wasn’t horrible at it and I actually found it kind of pleasant. Since then I’ve designed maybe four websites including my pride and joy the one you’re using right now. :)
I won’t lie, Squarespace confused the bejeesus out of me the first time I tried. But then over the course of a month I decided to give myself some time to learn and to get better at it, to read some guides and then I jumped in and started messing around. After a few weeks I was looking up code for things I wanted to change, buying custom typefaces, building logos etc. Things I thought were beyond my talents, and I realized, it’s not about talent, it’s about practice.
10| You can actually be a Designer
If after all of the above you still want to do more, maybe you should think about investing more time in reading about and even possibly studying design. Go back to school, UWI Mona, UTECH and EMCVPA all have Design degrees. .Take a course if you’re not ready for that big of a commitment, ICreate has a couple in their catalogue. Or, get really serious about teaching yourself. There’s loads of free courses, YouTube channels and other resources. Like I said, I know it’s daunting but it’s totally doable. It might also, actually be worth it. Design is a really diverse field in terms of job options, many of which are reasonably well-paid and in demand. You can do graphic design, web design, product design, systems design, you can become a creative director, an illustrator, a UX designer or design researcher, interior designer etc. Do your research, get clear on the financial and time commitments and how you’re going to either get hired or build a business and do it.
Are you on design journey? How’s it going? Share with me in the comments! Or, are you a designer? Do you have tips for absolute beginners? Please also share!