Table of Contents

Become A Designer

I got my job as a designer without getting to design school. I had hacked together my very own design education in 6 months while working a full-time job. I didn’t think I used to be ready but started applying for jobs anyway – and got employment at an excellent startup, Exec.

To be clear, I’m nowhere near nearly as good as those design prodigies that begin of a 4-year education at an elite school like RISD. But I’m definitely ok to try my job well. I’m the sole designer at Exec, so I do a reasonably wide selection of things – visual and interaction design, print, web, and mobile app design.

Maybe you would like to vary in careers and become a designer full-time.
Or you want to find out some basics for your startup or side project.

This is a guide to show yourself design.

Update: I first published this blog post over a year ago. Since then I’ve gotten many emails posing for more guidance and easier to follow steps, and that I finally found one: Designlab. This course wasn’t around once I was learning, but man does I wish it had been – it might have made the entire process tons less daunting. What I actually like about it’s that it gives you project assignments, then connects you to a design mentor who gives you feedback (they have specialized ones who work on Facebook).

Step 1. Learn to ascertain

The biggest mistake is jumping into Photoshop too fast. Learning Photoshop doesn’t cause you to a designer, a bit like buying paintbrushes doesn’t cause you to an artist. Start with inspiration.

First, find out how to draw.

You don’t need to sit during a room with a bunch of other artists trying to draw an unadorned woman.
You don’t even need to get that good at drawing. Just learn some basics so you’ll be comfortable sketching with a pen.
You only need to do one thing to find out the way to draw: get the book you’ll attract 30 days and practice for half an hour a day for a month. I’ve checked out tons of drawing books and this is often one among the simplest.

Learn graphic design theory

Start with the book Picture This. It’s a storybook of Little Red Riding hood but will teach you the foundations of graphic design at an equivalent time.
Learn about color, typography, and designing with a grid. If you’ll find an area class to show the fundamentals of graphic design, take it.
Go through a couple of those tutorials a day.

Learn some basics in user experience

There are tons of books about user experience. Start with these two quick reads which will get you within the right mindset:
The Design of Everyday Things
Don’t Make Me Think!

Learn how to write down

Here may be a sure sign of a nasty designer: their mockups are crammed with placeholder text like Lorem Ipsum. An honest designer may be a good communicator. An honest designer thinks through the whole experience, choosing every word carefully. Write for humans. Don’t write within the academic tone you wont to make yourself sound smart in-class papers.
Read Made to stay, one among my favorite books of all time. It’ll teach you ways to suck in your readers.
Voice and Tone may be a website filled with gems of excellent writing examples.

Step 2. Find out how to use Photoshop and Illustrator

Hooray! Now you’ve got a reasonably solid foundation – both visual and UX. You’re able to learn Photoshop. Actually, I like to recommend starting with Illustrator first then moving on to Photoshop after. Illustrator is what designers use to form logos and icons.

Learn Illustrator

There are plenty of books, online tutorials, and in-person classes to find out Illustrator. Choose the design that works best for you. Here are the books I found especially helpful to find out the fundamentals of Illustrator:
Adobe Illustrator Classroom during a Book – It’s boring, but if you get through a minimum of half it, you’ll know your way around Illustrator pretty much.
Vector military training – This book teaches you ways to form things in Illustrator that really look good.
Now for the fun stuff! Follow these online tutorials and be impressed by what you’ll make. Here are two of my favorites – a logo and a scenic landscape.

Learn Photoshop

There are 1,000,000 and one tutorials out there. Tons of them are crap. Fortunately, there are sites with really top quality tutorials. PSDTuts by TutsPlus is one among them.
Here’s an honest Photoshop tutorial to form an iPhone app.
Here’s another good Photoshop tutorial to make an internet site mockup.
Carve out an hour or two a day to travel through some tutorials, and you’ll be impressed by how quickly you progress.

Step 3. Learn some specialties

Do you want to style mobile apps? Websites? Infographics? Explore all of them, and pick and choose those you enjoy to urge better at them.

Learn Logo Design

Learn how to form a logo that doesn’t suck: Logo Design Love
You’ll want to require it a step further than a logo though. Learn to make a uniform brand – from the web site to the business cards. Inspect this book, Designing Brand Identity.

Learn Mobile App Design

Start with this tutorial to urge your feet wet on visual design for mobile apps.
Read this short but very comprehensive and well-thought-out book on iPhone design: Tap worthy. It’ll teach you ways to form an app that not only looks good but is straightforward to use.
Geek out on the apps on your phone. Critique them. What works and what doesn’t?

Learn Web Design

Read Don’t Make Me Think to find out the way to make an internet site that folks find easy to use and navigate.
Read the Principles of lovely Web Design if you would like help making an internet site look good.
Make an inventory of the websites you think that are beautifully designed. Note what they need in common.

Now for the hairy question of whether you would like to understand HTML/CSS as a designer: It depends on the work. Knowing it’ll definitely offer you a foothold within the job market. Albeit you don’t want to be an internet developer, it helps to understand some basics. That way you recognize what’s possible and what isn’t.

There are numerous great resources to find out HTML and CSS:

My favorite free one is Web Design Tuts.
My favorite paid one (pretty affordable at $25/month) is Treehouse. If you’re ranging from the start and need someone to elucidate things clearly and comprehensively, splurge for Treehouse tutorials.

Step 4. Build your portfolio

You don’t get to attend a flowery design school to urge employment as a designer. But you are doing need a solid portfolio.

How does one build a portfolio if you’re just starting out for the primary time? The great news is you don’t got to work on real projects with real clients to create a portfolio. Structure your own side projects. Here are a couple of ideas:

Design silly ideas for t-shirts.
Find poorly designed websites and redesign them.
Got a thought for an iPhone app? Mock it up.
Join a team at Startup Weekend and be a designer on a weekend project.
Enter a design contest to practice designing to a quick.
Do the graphic design exercises within the Creative Workshop book.
Find an area nonprofit and offer to style for free of charge.

Resist the temptation to incorporate everything you’ve ever designed in your portfolio. This is often an area for your strongest work only.

Steal, steal, and steal initially. Don’t worry about being original – which will come later, once you’re easier together with your craft. Once you learn an instrument, you find out how to play other people’s songs before composing your own. The same goes for design. Steal like an artist.

Go to Dribbble for inspiration on a number of the simplest designers. Inspect patterns for iOS inspiration, and pattern tap for website inspiration.

Step 5: Get employment as a designer

When I first started learning design, I visited an employment search workshop for designers. I walked into an area filled with designers who had far more experience than I did – 5, 10, 15 years’ experience. All of them were trying to find jobs. That was intimidating. There I used to be, trying to show myself design, knowing I used to be competing with these experienced designers.