- Collect any kind of artwork or design that grabs your interest. It may inspire your own creativity in the future.
- Have a book collection. Books ranging from artistic, technical and inspirational will help your focus on these details when you are creating your graphic design masterpieces.
- Design blogs are an invaluable asset on the web for any graphic designer. by reading these blogs written by other great designers will give you insight and inspiration when you least expect it.
- Start your own design blog. By doing this it will give you a more in depth awareness of the design community and will make you more thorough in your own work. you just might learn something too.
- Join and participate in the online design community. This will help you to meet others in the design community who can give you constructive input and ideas on your works.
- Take a lot of pictures. This will help you file away anything from the environment around you that can inspire you in the future.
- When you have free time it is helpful to create fake assignments to sharpen you graphic design skills.
- Recreate someone else’s design on your own time. This helps you to see what they could have done better and the improvements that you have made to their design.
- Redesign your old works. By doing this you can have a laugh at your old crude artworks and see just how technically advanced you have become since then.
- Attend classes taught by guest designers. These can be at your local university or community centre. This way you are always learning something new.
- Network with other graphic designers on the internet. This way you can meet more advanced designers that you can get tips from and will push you harder to make more elaborate and amazing designs.
- Take some new classes to freshen your skills and to broaden your horizons at you local junior or community college.
- Schedule an appointment to sit down and talk with other designers and studios in your area. This can help you meet people that can become invaluable contacts later on and can answer questions that design school could never answer.
- Travel abroad to different countries. Experiencing different cultures and their artwork will make you a more well rounded graphic designer.
- Learn a new hobby. By doing this you can have something to focus you attention on to get your mind off designing when you’re in a creative slump.
- Buy a sketch book. this will let you be able to work through your ideas without limitations of graphic design programs.
Examples of graphic design software you may or may not have heard of.
There are many different kinds of graphic design software programs on the market today. But which ones are the best? Let’s find out.
* Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 – This program is #1 on the market today and used be a many a reputable design agency.
* CorelDraw Graphics Suite X6 – This program is rated #2 and gives you the most bang for your buck. It is recognized as the best value program on the market right now.
*Xara Designer Pro 7 – This software is ranked #3 and was ranked 8.98 in recent reviews out of a possible score of 10 so it’s well worth taking a peek.
All three of these professional graphic design software programs boast these features, ease of use, digital imaging features, print layout features, superior help and customer support.
Open Source:
* Gimp – This program is easy for beginners and boasts features such as: customisable interface, photo enhancement abilities, digital retouching, hardware support, and all major file formats.
* Picasa – Picasa is great for novice beginners and has a wide array of features such as: No duplicate images, automatically organizes images, you can search images based on colours, recognizes faces in any graphic, has great user help and support.
As you can see, graphical design is a technically and creatively competitive field that is an art form no different than oil on canvas or a watercolour painting. These steps and programs can help you become a more insightful and creative graphic designer. So go ahead and make your own combination of these steps and software programs to benefit your own needs and expectations
Marmalde London are a design agency based in London, if you would like to see examples of our previous work please visit us at www.marmaldelondon.co.uk