5 ways to learn and develop your design skills

Below are a few of the methods I use to keep my self learning and improving as a graphic designer as well as a few ideas on how to test new techniques, styles, and ideas.

1. Practice with a few tutorials everyday. There are many amazing tutorials online that are absolutely free, many will even provide a psd file so you can see exactly what was done and how it was made. Make sure to apply the techniques you learn in your own work and don’t let that knowledge slip away and be forgotten.
2. Read design books. Take notes, highlight, and keep tabs of parts you think are important try to take in as much as possible. The great thing about books is you can always go back and look something up, they are great sources for inspiration, and you will always find something new and useful that you skipped or didn’t see before.
3. Create and maintain your own website or blog. A website involves a lot of research and can help you improve your web, graphic, and logo design skills as well as SEO and many others. As you improve you should update your website constantly and re-design the site with a more professional look if necessary.
4. Create your own wallpapers, backgrounds, and interfaces. With self expression being as big as it is, almost everything today is customizable from social networking profiles to phones, media players, and many other gadgets. Design something for each of those whenever you have some free time, making sure to try out different styles and ideas for each one. This is a very good way to keep your skills up-to-date and to implement new techniques into your designs.
5. Don’t stick to one style or method. Experiment with different things, in Photoshop there are so many different ways to create different effects and it always seems there is a better method to get a result than the one you are currently using , if you stick to the same routine then you might be missing out on a possibility to make your work better (there are many ways to convert an image to black and white, certain techniques will give you better results).

If you have some good ideas or something to add please share it by leaving a comment below!