We understand you have decided to study graphic design, so welcome to a fresh start. Here we will discuss 8 tips that will help you to study graphic design.
But first of all, we can ask you questions. How much do you think about the decision you have made?
There are moments in life when you have to make decisions. Sometimes we make the right decisions, sometimes not so much. There are people who one day get up (or go to bed, you don’t know when they survive you) and realize that they have heard the voice of Massimo Vignelli, Saul Bass, or Milton Glaser, and decide that they want to dedicate themselves to graphic design.
If you are one of those people who, arriving at a crucial moment, decide that they are going to spend their life in this noble world of color, typography, shapes, and structures, today we bring you a series of practical tips that can help you make an idea of what you’re up against, help you get started and see if this is really what you want to do.
Study, study, study and study again
The first and most important thing is that if you want to dedicate yourself to graphic design you have to train. It’s not enough to handle 5 Photoshop buttons and 3 Illustrator buttons. The ideal is to find a good school in which to train because, although the self-taught method is very valid if you drink from the right sources, many of those who learned alone would surely have paid for someone to tell them in their day “this is done like this”, «This is not worth». It is much faster, more efficient, and safer to surround yourself with good professionals who teach and demand you.
We said, the basic graphic design courses online are fine for the first, because not jump into the pool without water. First of all, you should know about it.
For more ideas, I will suggest seeing how to edit photos as a professional.
Educate your taste
In the previous point, we already talked about drinking from the right sources. This is important. You can listen to Don Omar or Bob Dylan, both are just as legal in this country, but if you ask a professional musician they will advise you to listen more to the second than the first. Don’t you think Designing is something like composing music, so your references better be good?
Steal like an artist
If you are going to start studying graphic design, this point is the title of a book by Austin Kleon that you should order right now at the nearest bookstore. It does not exceed 10 euros and it will give you a global idea of what it is like to work in this world. It’s kind of a motivational and self-help book for designers (yes, they are needed sometimes). But he comes to say something very important: everything is invented, so what you have to do is go to the most primitive sources of inspiration so as not to fall into doing the same thing that everyone does. Take a little from here, take a little from there … And in that process of “theft” gradually acquire your own style.
Covers needs and pampers the details
Throughout your career, you will come to a conclusion: the success of good graphic design is based, in a high percentage, on performing precision work. Be strict with distances, spaces, sizes, measurements … Making a correct design without errors is not art, it is rather a science. Of course, there always has to be a place for experimentation. But you have to remember that the design responds to some needs and that your client will want to see their needs covered by a lot of artist souls that you have.
Don’t fall in love with your ideas
When you work and have a moment of divine inspiration, you have to be careful. It can be dangerous. What you think is wonderful is not so wonderful. Or it is, but it is not the best for the work you are doing. You have to be open to constructive criticism (and destructive criticism too, because there are a lot of loose heaters) and to changes in your work. Your idea is not always the best and you have to know when to say “I’m not around here.” Sometimes it doesn’t happen …
If the problem is that the ideas do not arrive, train your gray matter. From exercises to be more creative to the most basic brainstorming techniques, they can help you loosen that muscle that you had a little atrophied.
Be a sponge
Studying graphic design and especially being a graphic designer is a long-distance career, as almost all of them. It is not worth studying a year and living on income. You have to train day after day because trends change. What today is a brand structure with which you are sure to succeed, tomorrow is more outdated than saying “you don’t find out, Contreras.”
Between the fact that fashions change in a matter of months, that depending on the geographical point of the world that you work with, the color palettes in vogue have nothing to do with each other, and that the programs are updated every two days … Well, that, even if you don’t live in a pineapple under the sea, you have to be a real sponge
Ability to react, routine, and perseverance
All jobs that need a certain dose of inspiration have a maxim: routine and perseverance. First, because creativity is a muscle that must be trained day by day, and only by working slowly but surely, every day, will you know which key you have to play to make it work. Not for nothing, if not because it is curious that everyone who orders a graphic design job is very urgent, it is always like the day before yesterday. For that reason and because time is money, and you have to optimize yours. You know success is 10% talent and 90% hard and tireless work.
Don’t come here to get rich
Designing is a career that requires a vocation. Of a lot of vocations. The beginnings are hard, you have to get tired of working and build a good portfolio, and then get tired of working even more.
After that, when you find a job, it’s quite likely that serving hamburgers will make a little more money, and it will require less mental effort. So you decide if it compensates you, if you really feel fulfilled with your work, and if this is what fills you in your life.
Luck!
If you want to follow all these tips, you are ready to start studying graphic design.
And if you don’t see the future, it’s not about your reading and you pay attention to what the teachers say.
But … What are we going to tell you? Studying design is a very good decision, you are very lucky that you are studying graphic design. The most interesting thing is that you will never get tired of learning and working on it.