10 Simple but Important Tips for Designers
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10 Simple but Important Tips for Designers

What would they think? Will it be accepted?

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10 Simple but Important Tips for Designers

Creative industries have gained immense economic importance in recent times. Nowadays, in a competitive creative industry to get recognized and be offered a good job is not guaranteed.
To create a niche of your own, a designer has to have his own style of work that speaks for him and makes him different from others.
Be it a design student at a university or college or a graduate new-comer looking for opportunities or even a professional of the field of design, there are some things that the designers can inculcate to turn that opportunity into gold.

These tips for designers can certainly help a designer to be more efficient at his job.

1. Involvement

A designer needs to try and get involved with various organizations or even take part in events and competitions. These helps build contacts by interactions or even by your work in competitions, which can then help you bag opportunities to put your skills to test.

These sources can get you in touch with the professionals of the same field and also update you on the upcoming progress in your field of design.

Competitions, on the other hand, give you a brief idea of real-life design experience and a chance for you to display your skills to the people from the industry.


2. Portfolio


When approaching for work, a designer's biggest asset is his work history. His work speaks for him. Whether it's a physical design portfolio or a digital one, it is important to wisely decide what all goes into it.

You should edit it carefully and also pay attention to the order in which you place your work.

You surely want the people viewing your work to remember it distinctly, as they go through works of a lot of people. Keeping the good projects at the beginning can interest them to see more, and a good one at the end can make them remember your work.
The format of your work should be simple enough for the viewer as they won't be investing a lot of time into it. It should grasp their attention in whatever little time they invest in it.

Don't think too much about will they like it? What would they think? Will it be accepted?

Just put your best foot forward and surely your work will bear fruit for you.

3. Value your work

When you work for someone, you should know that whatever you do matters and is a valuable service for their business. You should learn to value your work and hold it in high regard.

4. Design to Solve

A client's mind is a cluster of ideas. To give those ideas a proper path and a suitable outcome which has a positive impact is a designer's role.

When a client is approaching you for design, he has a certain expectation from you. It is a designer's job to understand the demand or expectation to come up with a solution to fulfill it.

Like in branding, all the elements like the packaging, the color and font on the label and the logos, combine to deliver the idea brand represents.

Hence, the designer should know what is catering to in order to be able to give an appropriate solution.

You should always think of how your design can be of help to them.

5. Design Process

A systematic work structure is essential for any system to function efficiently. For designers, having a step by step procedure to go about a project turns out to be really helpful.

You should preferably outline the steps to tackle every project and make sure you stick to it.

For instance, understand the design brief, research the problem, work out various possible solutions, select a preferred solution and further work on it to present to the client; these are the steps one can go about to reach the ideal design solution.
You can choose your own route.

6. Stay Focused

There are times when you are cluttered with a number of projects at the same time. What it results in? A complete mess. A mess of ideas, less time, different deadlines and super rush to get things done.

It happens. What you can do in such cases is be calm, focus on the current project you are working on, schedule your projects and work towards doing justice to each one of them.

Give each project enough thought and time that it demands.

7. Sketching

Want to explain an idea to someone? Just sketch it out.

As a tool or a skill, sketching has an important role to play in the initial design building stages. Whatever the scope and scale of the project, sketching can save a lot of time by helping you get a direction for the project from the client, leaving more time to refine the preferred solution.

Sketching starts with doodles that have the basic concepts and ideas for the project. Then it can move on to further more refined and detailed sketching.

Sketching is a quick way to help you come up with concepts and explain them to the clients. It gives them a rough idea about your vision and once it is approved you get a direction to work on in a more detailed manner. This potentially saves an enormous amount of time that can be utilized when working on the most suitable solution.


8. Know your Work

Sell yourself and your work. Yeah, you read it right. You literally have to sell your ideas and design to the client, stating every logical explanation you have for all the decisions you have made throughout your process.

You have to be certain and confident about the design you are delivering to the client. If you have strong reasoning to support your design, there are going to be fewer unwanted feed-backs and changes coming your way.

You have to prove at every step that you can and will be of value to their business,

9. Inspiration

Designers are in search of inspiration always. From nature, from books, magazines, websites, blogs or even works of fellow designers. Inspiration can be a great help when seeking ideas to go forward with a certain project.

The real challenge lies in using that inspiration to create something unique, which is your own. When looking for inspiration, pay attention to details. Look for the impact the design makes and the reason for it to work.

Graphic designing tips for beginners talks of various aspects a graphic designer has to learn and understand. These all are the factors one must notice in the works of fellow graphic designers, when taking inspiration from their works, to see what works for them.

As you start examining these minute details, you learn more about the things you can actually incorporate in your practice.

10. Criticism

How do you react to criticism? Can it really make you than break you?

Being criticized can be tough to handle, even though it can play a vital role in improving something you are doing or it also helps you grow.

"Don't let compliments get to your head and don't let criticism get to your heart."

Being a designer, you are going to be exposed to negative reactions. You should try to take them in a positive way with the capability to bounce back.

Well, these were some simple yet useful tips for the designers. We hope they help you with your upcoming design ventures and throughout your design journey.

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