How to Become a Better Graphic Designer?

If designs weren’t important – a lot of market-giant brands could have been unknown! The bitten Apple is the bespoke example of it. Whenever you engage with any sort of media, you are indirectly engaging with designs. Hence, designs are important, and so are designers. No wonder, it is definitely worth knowing How to become a better graphic designer, so that a creative genius like yourself can churn out intriguing designs one after the other.

Most newbies begin with designs that are simply terrible. If you too are a beginner, do not be embarrassed or ashamed of your work.

Instead, treat it as a stepping stone to something bigger. Try to learn how you can better your art and become an ace designer in the near future.

Let us now delve a bit deeper into how to become a better graphic designer…

How to Become a Better Graphic Designer?

Let’s have a closer look into the multiple ways through which you can become a better graphic designer:

Evaluate Your Work:

Nothing is better than self-evaluation. After every few weeks, take out some time from your hectic schedule to sit and go through the projects or designs you have completed and delivered.

Even though you might be proud of your work, still go ahead and try to evaluate it unbiasedly. Better still, ask someone related to your field to review it. Try to get customer reviews and pay heed to what your customer says about a particular project, take it from there, and try to improve it further.

Such evaluations will help you get fresh insight into your work.

If you follow this regime, you will be on a never-ending path to being a better graphic designer.

Be Ready to Accept Feedbacks:

I understand that listening to feedback isn’t always easy. I know how it feels like when you have put in your 100% in a specific project and all you get to hear is try again!

You go through multiple initial hiccups, which is totally fine.

But trust me, this is the first step of becoming a graphic designer beyond comparison. Even though unfavorable feedback might seem like a harsh pill to swallow, it’s actually worth it. Feedback helps you in improving your designs, the way you think and adapt designs, the critical thinking process, and a lot more.

You can take full use of several design feedback tools available online to keep the communication organized and land a mutual agreement with your client.

Also, feedback gives you an insight into how others think about your design. You get an indirect answer of does the design delivers the idea correctly? Is the design in tune with the concept at hand? Is the design competent enough? And a lot of other complexities get detangled.

You can also take feedback from the graphic designers’ community.

However, this is a path that you need to tread cautiously since designs get stolen very quickly and easily. Thus, if you are looking for an opinion from another professional designer, seek one only from someone you trust.

Explore Other Graphic Designs and Designers

Looking at other designers’ work who are successful and big names in their field. In order to become a better graphic designer – you must make it a point to follow some of the top designers. Not just this, it’s great to see the work of upcoming designers too since they put in a lot of hard work to get successful.

By following I do not mean to get a glimpse of their work – instead, study it and explore it.

Look at their videos and try to make out how they decided on certain aspects. Why did they specifically choose that one particular shade, or what the motivation behind the typography was, how they decided the layout, what was the critical thinking behind the negative space, and a lot of other things you’ll get to learn once you start following them.

Explore their designs in detail and devote enough time to understand the work that has been put into making them a reality.

Also, by exploring the talented and ever-green designers and their designs – you actually come across some real time-saving techniques, which help you in taking a faster route towards the design you wish to make. So, that is an added plus point here!

Have Your Me-Time

To be a better graphic designer, have some time devoted to just yourself. Not the one, you generally take by watching Netflix and sipping coffee. Instead, apply and learn new techniques via tutorials and apply them to a personal project.

Take a blank canvas, and play with the latest technique you might have learned, or implement the latest feature that you came across while watching videos. Brew out the entire design on the blank canvas.

Your graphic design me-time helps you in developing designs without any time and color limitations. You are a free soul who is allowed to bring out its creativity to its full potential.

Instead of being always busy grabbing clients, work on your skills regularly. Take baby steps – do not rush! Becoming a graphic designer is not an overnight process.

Clients aren’t going anywhere, but if they do not like your work – they aren’t coming back to you.

Practice, Practice, & Practice

Being a well-known graphic designer isn’t a piece of cake. It demands a lot of passion, energy, dedication, and hard work. You need to practice to an extent that no stone is left unturned.

And when the need be, do not hesitate to take a step forward.

If you wish to have corporate-level experience, it’s imperative that you approach big companies without an iota of hesitation. I know it’s not easy you don’t have to let hesitation come in your way to being successful. So, try to give up all your inhibitions and make it a point to approach companies, NGOs, big or small, with confidence and tell them that you wish to redesign their logo or website.

This will be a highly enriching experience for you apart from being a lot of fun too.

Take the decision solely about how their website or logo can be better designed and what areas can be improved in order to come up with a design that looks great and leaves an impression in the mind of the viewers.

Sometimes it can be challenging to convince a company, to trust a newbie but a lot of people do give chances to freshers. So don’t hesitate, go ahead and give it shot.

Join A Designing School

If you want to know, how to become a better graphic designer, let me tell you that joining a designing institute could be a great step forward.

You might argue that “designers are born, not made”!

But born-designers also needs a platform, and guideline to prove themselves. Being a part of such schools or institutes provides graphic designers with a designer community, where you meet seniors to take inspiration from. Not just this, you also get an opportunity to learn new and exciting things from your peers. Upcoming designers have a lot of interesting ideas and you can sure learn a lot from them too.

One of the most interesting things is that you get to learn from the mistakes of others and get a clear idea of what things to avoid while designing.

You also get the opportunity to get a closer insight into case studies involving revolutionary work as a designer. For instance, advertising students study various campaigns that hit the bull’s eye as far as catching viewers’ attention is concerned.

I believe that a good institute provides a complete and proper environment to budding designers so as to bring out the best in them.

Switch Styles

When I started graphic designing in high school, I applied a glossy finish to every logo I created. This eventually became my style. Despite being so creative with the design – my clients complained “please bring something new”.

Then I realized the mistake.

I fought against myself and decided not to add a glossy finish. That’s when my client got happy with the work I delivered.

I agree keeping a signature style is something cool and everyone loves doing so.

But with my experience and knowledge, I suggest every graphic designer switch from their signature design on and off. In other words, you should be open to working according to the liking of your clients. You should not be rigid when it comes to meeting their demands.

Being a graphic designer, you need to work according to what your target audience demands, adapt their mentality, and then work accordingly. You, at times, have to ignore what you personally prefer and create something that you don’t even like or approve of but you need to accept it if your client likes it.

Also, if you wish to be a better graphic designer; switching styles should be your habit for sure.

Taking Inspirations

Graphic designers often confuse imitation with copy/pasting it. Taking inspiration and ideas from well-versed designers and their designs isn’t a bad idea. Instead, it opens up the window of options for you. Taking inspiration, and then recreating the design gives an instant improvement in your work. You should check out the works of various freelance graphic designers and observe the new and creative stuff they are doing.

But, wait! Taking inspiration is another thing while copying it is a complete disaster. If you think your client isn’t going to catch you – rethink!

You can use design elements like layouts or typeface combinations, and create something using your own perspective and ideas. This will be a blend of something unique and cool, together.

Give Your Best

I have come across graphic designers who are afraid to give out their 100% and they save it for a client who is paying big bounties. Well, this shouldn’t be the case.

Every client should be important to you and you should try to give your best shot to every project of yours rather than save things for a big client.

For the next project, you will automatically find something which will be better than before. Set the bars higher every time you complete a project.

You should be determined to make your next project better than the previous one.

If you stick to one concept for a long period, you will eventually limit your growth. You won’t be able to catch the exponentially evolving designing scene.

Learn New Tools

Adobe Illustrator is the commonly used software for logo designing and other objectives.

But how about you expand your toolkit and try to work with the best graphic design tools and equipment so that your works imply outshine the work of other designers. ?

The simplest answer is by adding more software to it.

Learn and master Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, SketchUp, and others. Even though many designers debate that one should master one software only, what you need to keep in mind is that limiting yourself to just one software is going to put hinder your growth. I would also like to add that you must try to use the best possible tools for all your creative work, including the best mice for graphic design that come with high DPI, great accuracy, good ergonomics, etc. so that you can be at your creative best.

In this field, you are likely to come across different clients with diverse needs. If you do not master multiple software, you will end up losing multiple clients. To keep your approach diversified and broad it is imperative that you learn to use multiple software.

However, this isn’t a momentary process – I agree!

Give yourself some time and keep learning. Learn one software at a time. Once done, go on to the second software. Begin with scratch. This is how mastering multiple software works.

Don’t Be Afraid of Trashing

If you design something and feels like this isn’t going to work, or doesn’t have the necessary charm in it, don’t be afraid to trash it.

Start all over again. Never stop rehearsing. Practice makes a man perfect, and this is exactly what you have to follow to be a better graphic designer. Keep putting in your effort until it is perfect.

Re-Design

Do you know how I became a better graphic designer?

I recreated my previous logos and designs, which I had designed when I was in high school. When I redesign, I do it with a fresh perspective and insight. I feel so proud of myself that I have come so far!

You will realize that how much better you are doing now. It’s a kind of motivation.

Conclusion

You grow by learning and accepting your flaws. Being a graphic designer demands patience. You have to be strong enough to face the critics – but take them as feedback and don’t be afraid to start all over again.

I hope my experience is going to help you out. Adopt the above-shared habits and you will eventually see a change in your work, client feedback, and the perspective you hold about designs.

Treat your audience with mesmerizing designs, which they have never seen before!