A guideline to be a professional designer

When you want to be a designer you have a dream of making money. It’s much relevant as well as easier to do too. But difficult while you thinking design as only drawing something or using color. If you can’t think design as a key to solution of a problem it’s really difficult to be a designer and thus make money. I’ll try here to draw a guideline to be a professional designer.

Firstly I’ll illustrate here that why people fail and secondly draw the ways.

Cause of failure:

Some common questions I’m asked regularly by many beginners like followings:
“I’ve been trying for two years but can’t make money”
“I’ve been trying for …… but can’t design a professional item”
“I’m doing ………….but coming nothing”
and they are about frustrated. I don’t be surprised with their questions because I know that a ship without a rudder will take a year for only a kilometer.

I’ve a slogan: “Passion and patience with exact guidance”. Most relevantly I want to explain this slogan here.

At first you have to have a passion to be a designer. It’ll drive you to search and do a hard work to run after goal. Besides passion you must have to be patient in acquiring knowledge and make yourself fruitful with skills. Remember that, skill without knowledge really like a one-wheeler vehicle and again knowledge without skill definitely like only a wheel itself. I think it’s clear that you need both knowledge and skills enough. Fine!

If you have knowledge and skill simultaneously you’re definitely a strong vehicle to move ahead. Now you need a driver off course. Otherwise you’ll either stand on the same place forever or fall in an accident if try to move ahead.

Hey guys, I’m trying here to draw your attention that you must need an exact guideline in order to make an effective utilization of your knowledge and skill. You’ve much knowledge and skill but no exact guideline, you’ll really waste many times in vain.

Now we come back to the questions I attached above. People who have been trying for many years but couldn’t touch success, I appreciate their patience. And I recognize that they obviously have passion. But I repent to their failure as they hadn’t an exact guideline. If they had exact guideline they would definitely touch the success much faster. So, there is no way to avoid a guideline to be a professional designer.

I myself an evidence that I started to learn on January and started to make money on May. And I can seriously realize that If I hadn’t a guideline it would be same for me as to that people.

It may be that you know the pros and cons of the working tools (photoshop, illustrator …. etc.). But when you design something, experts say “it’s not professional”. Why! What are the mysteries behind! Yes, you should think and meditate. No worry, I can help you here to think.

• May be you couldn’t think your design to be a problem solver of a user. You’ve to think first:
  1. What are you doing?
  2. What are you designing for?
  3. Whom are you designing for?
     • Male, female, age etc.

• May be you couldn’t match color with your target:
  1. Subject, people, culture…..etc.
  2. Preference and application by color meaning and color combination
• May be you couldn’t use exactly meaningful shapes
• May be you couldn’t apply a standard typography:
  1. Font family meaning
  2. Font size (h1, h2, ……. h6)
  3. Character and line spacing
  4. Significant white space
  5. Typographic rhythm

• May be you broke the visual/typography hierarchy
• May be you were not careful to the design trend

Now you may easily think and point out the problem your designs are not professional for. Can you say that all the above facts are maintained exactly in your designs rejected as unprofessional by the experts? I think you yourself can find the problems out what they are not professional for. Now we’ll fix all the issues one by one.

The ways:

All the six topics above are mandatory. There is no way to treat any of them valueless. I’m not saying them enough but essential to follow. You should follow them as a guideline to be a professional designer.

You’ll feel them a massive of duty as you’ll have to learn all them with sub-branches. But it’s nothing if you’re really determined to be a professional designer. Most relevantly I mentioned this slogan “Passion and patience with exact guidance”.

It’s really universal that nothing is possible for one without having passion. If you’re passionate you’ll start at once and fix them all one by one. And thus this pace will play a role behind your next activities which will contain professional quality.

If you’re not passionate here you should terminate yourself just here and engage to another field to build a different career!

When you’re passionate, you need patience enough to overcome all the issues. If you’ve no patience enough you’ll feel them difficult. But when you’re patient toward your goal you’ll be capable enough of running after your goal by working hard. Relevantly those guidelines(6 topics above) will be maintained by you. So, what’s there to be frustrated!

Finally we are clear that what you should do now. But if I draw all the topics here in a single article it would be too longer to read once. So, I think it would be better to illustrate them each in a single article one by one. See you again with next topic.

Thanks.

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More articles may be helpful for you:

• Typography hierarchy
• Color selection and effective color application
• Difference between serif & sans serif fon