Everyone who started their design journey on their own can testify that it is tasking, especially when there is no one to guide you — you won’t know when you are doing the wrong things or if you are making stale designs or if you are choosing the colors correctly and a whole lot more. It can be a cumbersome task and you’d make a lot of mistakes and also have many personal experiences to learn from. Here are some key tips to start your Design journey right;
1. Understand the basics
There is a difference between UI and UX. You need to understand both individually because they depend on each other to make an excellent design. In understanding the differences, you also need to have basic knowledge of them. For instance; understanding features, layouts, hierarchy, grids, typography and fonts would help you create good UI designs sooner than you expect.
Refactoring UI by Adam Wathan and Steve Schoger is a great start for understanding the basics in UI and Don’t make me think by Steve Krug for understanding the basics in UX design.
2. Learn how to use design tools.
To become a tailor, you need to know how to thread the sewing machine and sew — this also relates to designers. You need to be versatile with design tools like Sketch, Figma, Invision Studios, Adobe XD, etc. You don’t need to learn all at once — master one and the rest would be easy to follow through.
3. Reproduce and modify existing designs.
As a beginner, it would take some time to know how things work perfectly–in fact, all through your design journey you would have to keep learning, re-learning and unlearning. Look for mobile and web-based designs and try to reproduce or/and modify them on the design tools, that is; change colours, images, fonts and see the effect it gives on the design. This would help you understand the interfaces better and faster.
When I started, I checked Dribbble for designs and tried to recreate them — It took ages to complete most of them because I wanted to get a perfect shadow, the perfect frame, the same vector images even if it meant recreating it, the same icons, etc. Although some of the things I did were unnecessary work, I still learnt a lot during that process. I realized I didn’t have to learn Illustrator to create vectors, I didn’t have to create color palettes from scratch, Alignment was 100% necessary and this gave more practical meaning to all I had read in books.
Pinterest, Behance, Dribbble and even Google search are great platforms to find inspiration.
4. Read books and articles
You can’t know all at once. Read books and articles on design principles, other peoples experiences, design solutions etc. Follow related hashtags on social media, participate in trivia games, watch related videos, try out new things, ask questions and do all the steps again and again — repetition is the first law of learning. Expose yourself to as much information as possible; understand why a particular feature is placed where it is and why a particular color is used for a design. Every information is valid and important, even if it’s the wrong information — it helps you know and understand what not to do, and keeping these as habits would help you grow in your design journey
5. Get a mentor.
The need for mentorship cannot be over-emphasized. This section has been explained in a previous article- Mentorship — An Underestimated Necessity for Designers.
Keep practicing — design every day; be proud of your small beginning and don’t forget to ask for feedback on your progress. You can only learn from your errors when you are aware of them.
