Upgrade your design skills in 2018

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The dawn of a new year is a good time to evaluate how your career is going and how you can bring it to the next level. So what should you learn, and how? There's no easy answer. The skillsets of senior designers vary enormously, and almost everyone has knowledge gaps in some areas.

In this article, we'll explore photography, animation, business skills, coding, and prototyping and UX. Whether you're a freelancer aiming to secure better commissions or a jobbing designer looking for a promotion, mastering any of these will help take your design career to the next level. 

We'd recommend you start by weighing up the pros and cons of the different study areas that appeal to you. Ask yourself: Do I already have some experience or knowledge in this area? How much will training cost? Can I get the boss to pay, and let me train in work time? And – perhaps most importantly: How much does it excite me? 

Once you've answered all these questions, your choice of what to study should be crystal clear. Read on to make 2018 the year you take charge of your design destiny.

Photography

Photography is an invaluable skill for all creatives

Most designers can take decent pictures, and with a high-quality camera on every modern smartphone, you might think that's enough. But working to improve your photography skills can really help boost your career, says graphic designer Jacob Cass of Just Creative.

"As a designer, it helps you become more aware of composition, colour, light and allows you to start thinking in a different visual medium," he points out. "It also allows you to reduce your dependency on stock photos and earn more cash by charging for your services."

For Mark Dearman, design director at True, the latter was the clincher. "I was finding relying on stock photography very limiting," he explains. "Often clients wouldn't have the budget to commission their own photo shoots or bespoke illustration, so I was limited to stock. I decided to improve my photography skills to allow me to create my own assets."

01. Trial and error

Learning new skills could make you feel superhuman (Illustration: Flavio Montiel)

How did he go about it? "I own a lot of books by photographers and I've read plenty of articles, but it was trial and error mainly. I'd take some photos, then analyse them and work out what I needed to do to improve."

"I've learnt a lot from my mistakes. There really is no substitute for taking lots of photos. I always liked the famous quote by Henri Cartier-Bresson: 'Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.'"

02. Ask questions

Another thing you can do, says graphic designer and photographer Matthew Holland, is ask questions. "I'm on Twitter and Instagram a lot," he explains.

"I share a lot of other people's work, ask them how they've achieved this or that, as well as reading blogs or magazines and looking at YouTube. I recently came across Digital Rev TV, who are very funny and put a great twist on learning photography."

03. Study the fundamentals

In general, it's a case of practice makes perfect. "Start shooting and never stop," Cass advises. "Study the fundamentals from books and online. Understand how light works and how you can make it work for you."

Once you've done that, it's time to learn how to edit your photos. There are plenty of apps available for that – take a look at our list of the best photo editor apps to figure out which is the best one for you.

04. Read up

Learn what's what on your DSLR

There are plenty of resources about to help you improve your photography skills, whether you're a hobbyist looking to up your game or a total beginner. If you're looking for the right tools, take a look at our guide to the best cameras for creatives. Then check out these resources:

• Photography cheat sheet helps unlock DSLRs' potential
• The best photography websites
• 10 ways to improve your photography
• How to shoot print work for your portfolio
• Build your first in-house photo studio

Next page: Learn animation

Chris Gannon makes animations like this for the web

Motion graphics and animation are becoming more and more integral to design and branding, and learning those skills yourself has obvious benefits.

"In simple terms it makes you more visible," explains award-winning illustrator Simon Spilsbury. "Nowadays, with moving imagery all over social media, it's even more important to have the ability to make your work move."

Rob Hampson, designer at digital agency We Make Awesome Sh, had a specific reason for wanting to learn the fundamentals of animation. "I've always found explaining to clients and developers my animation ideas for UI elements quite difficult," he explains. "I thought I would learn the basics of After Effects so I could very quickly explain my ideas visually."

Illustration by Flavio Montiel

It's a similar story for designer and illustrator Jessica Draws. "I'd been creating static infographics, illustrations and graphics for a while," she explains.

"But I noticed an interest from clients in interactive and animated videos, which I had no skills or experience in. I knew it was important to stay on top of these skills, otherwise clients were going to look elsewhere."

01. Take a course

She and her husband invested in a week-long course in After Effects. "It was extremely effective, but what really pushed our skills was actually doing the work," she says.

"We took on a couple of personal motion graphics projects to practise with and offered a regular client, who we were creating static infographics for, a free animated version."

02. Learn by doing

"I really think the best way to learn is by doing," she says. "Don't be put off by the financial commitment. Really, you don't need to invest anything more than your time. Put some time aside each week to learn the software but set yourself a brief first as it's much easier to learn new software if you have a goal to get to."

03. Watch tutorials

"There are so many great tutorials and videos online," Hampson adds. "Typically I would just video search for what I wanted to achieve in Google – something like 'create a pulse animation in After Effects'.

"I prefer to watch video tutorials because I can see exactly what the author is clicking on and the micro-steps it takes them to achieve a task. This video was very useful, for example."

04. Read up

Illustration by Flavio Montiel

• 40 amazing After Effects tutorials
• How to move over from Photoshop to After Effects
• A beginner's guide to designing interface animations
• How to prepare Illustrator graphics for After Effects
• Export After Effects animations to HTML5
• Get started with animation in After Effects
• Understand the 12 principles of animation

Next page: 

Illustration: Flavio Montiel

It's not just creative skills that can help boost your career; getting a handle on the business side of things can be just as important. When he joined Moving Brands as a design intern, Jed Carter never thought he'd be very involved with copywriting, but it's a skill he's developed through the creation and curation of presentation decks and the agency's weekly newsletter.

"It's certainly the most surprising skill I've picked up," he says. "I now understand and appreciate the fine art of crafting a sentence that has the potential to persuade someone to buy your idea."

01. Business writing

John Simmons of branding and UX consultancy 3sixty was inspired to attend a business writing course from Dark Angels. "From lengthy proposals to a simple headline, we have to read and write at work," he says. "Making it compelling communicates our thinking and makes work more productive and fun."

He describes the course as life-changing: "It provided a safe place to discover hidden abilities. Each of us left confident we would transfer these skills to work."

02. Analytical skills

Analytical skills can also make you more useful to your employer. Yuriy Oparenko, a designer for Sennep, recently added a Google Analytics Individual Qualification to his skillset.

"I've always been interested in not only making things look beautiful, but how to make them work," he explains. "Being able to understand Google Analytics allows me to learn how people behave online and make more informed design decisions."

03. Qualifications

Oparenko studied through Google Analytics Academy. "I wouldn't say it's too challenging, but it requires some preparation and prior experience with Analytics," he says. "The exam is 90 minutes long and you can't pause it, so you need to dedicate a decent amount of time to it."

04. Read up

Illustration: Flavio Montiel

• 7 pricing models – and which you should choose
• How to work smarter not harder
• 20 top tools for freelancers
• Learn the art of negotiation
• How to market yourself as a freelance designer: 7 top tips
• How fan art can get you paid

Illustration: Flavio Montiel

You're a graphic designer, so you don't need to worry about web design, right? Wrong. It's an increasingly important skill for designers – and it can be the thing that sets you apart when you're competing with other designers for a job. 

"You can find jobs as a graphic designer if you don't know how to code, but I still think it's a crucial skill for designers – maybe even more than ever before," says freelance graphic and web designer Mirko Humbert.

Don't panic, you don't need to be a fully fledged programmer, "but you do have to be 'code-literate' to do anything related to building websites or apps," says Humbert. "This is what will help you land a job, or new projects if you are a freelancer."

01. Start with free resources

There are plenty of resources to get you started. Creative director Matt Rice of London studio Sennep recommends Codecademy. "It a great place to start for beginners and the lessons are free," he explains. CodePen is another good place to start experimenting. "It's a good resource for inspiration in terms of more playful things you can do with code," Rice adds.

02. Study the masters

That was more or less how Rice originally approached coding. "I took people's cool experiments, looked at the code and tried to work out how they were done, or a least manipulate them to create something myself," he explains.

03. Learn by doing

Coding is largely a question of learning by doing, Humbert believes. "Build real-life projects that give you results you can share in your portfolio," he advises. "For example, you can try to build a WordPress plugin that you can then share with the community, and get some feedback from an experienced developer."

04. Read up

Illustration: Flavio Montiel

• 16 top online coding courses
• Nail your HTML with this cheat sheet
• 9 of the best resources for learning HTML and CSS

Illustration: Flavio Montiel

Many people find coding is a lot easier and more fun than they imagined, but it does depend on where your natural talents lie. If your brain just doesn't work in that way, fear not: you no longer need to be able to code to bring your interactive ideas to life.

01. Start prototyping

A moving prototype is a great way to see how your design might work in reality. "Making static designs come to life helps you understand pain points in your design and discover what works and what doesn't. Some tools we've been using at Sennep include InVision, Marvel, Flinto, Pixate and Atomic," says Sennep's Matt Rice. For a more in-depth look at some tools that help you design moving prototypes without dabbling in code, look here. 

02. Do an intensive workshop

A related field is UX, or user experience. UX is essentially about designing systems that users find easy and pleasurable to interact with. Rosie Isbell, senior experience designer at Wolff Olins, boosted her UX skills a few years ago by completing a UX workshop run by Adaptive Path.

"It was 'intensive' but really hands-on, which meant I was able to bring it back into the work I was doing the very next day," she says. "It really encouraged me to continue to focus on service and experience design and push this within my projects and career." The latest iteration of the course is called SX Intensive, and explores how to design multi-channel experiences.

03. Read up

Joseph Bramall of Well Made Studio first embarked on learning UX and frontend development by searching around the web and Twitter for courses and workshops.

"I ended up buying A Practical Guide to Information Architecture by Donna Spencer and going on a UX Bootcamp course run by Leisa Reichelt, who has some amazing projects under her belt. From there I went on a massive self-initiated learning drive," he recalls.

"It's helped my career loads. I've been able to take more responsibility for projects, communicate better with suppliers and other designers and have more control over the way things work and who we work with."

04. Be inquisitive

For those wishing to boost their UX stills, Bramall advises: "Be inquisitive, read as much as you can, and remember to focus, UX is a broad field and you won't be able to cover it all. Take small steps and you will get to where you want to be. Join UX and web design groups and take an active interest in it."

05. Read up

Illustration: Flavio Montiel

• The 20 best wireframing tools
• 10 top prototyping tools
• How to prototype a mobile app with Adobe XD
• 5 ways to improve your UX design

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