Has it ever happened to you that when you look at other people’s design, you wonder how they managed to make it all so perfect? Whether it is the right font, the right combination of colors, or even the arrangement on the website – something simply clicks when you look at it.
Designing is not an easy skill to master, especially if you are working with clients who have different standards and requirements. However, a good eye and some dedication can go a long way for you, and help you make a perfect design from scratch.
So, instead of throwing your designs out, it is time to work on the best strategies for making it great. Surely, you can’t immediately make a terrific design, but one good version leads to another and then to another, ending with a rare and beautiful final result.
To reach your potential to the maximum, use the advice of professionals who have mastered the field of great designing. Here are some tips on how to improve your designs:
Table of Contents
Research the Brand
This is an advice every great designer out there will tell you. One of the most commonly overlooked things in design creation is failing to know the brand. At the start of their designing career, many focus on the colors and client’s specifics and in the process, they fail to take the brand into consideration. This is a huge mistake because the business industry and their brand’s specifics need to be the most present element in the design.
When you research and finally know the brand you are designing for, you will have a clear direction as to what you want to achieve and how you need to do this. Soon after you start implementing this, you’ll learn that such approach results in fewer revisions and faster work.
Speaking of brand, there is literally no limit as to what you can learn and how much you can know. The more you ask and learn about a brand, the easier it will be for you to make a design that is unique and focused on it.
Know the Industry
We already mentioned how important knowing the industry is and the reason for this was because this is one of the most overlooked aspects of designing. When you know the brand and have a plan for the design process, you need to continue by researching the industry, too.
Designs can and should be fitting to the current trends in one industry. If you fail to research an industry, you won’t create a design that fits its current trends. It’s not really a way to copy others’ design or blend in, but to avoid making mistakes and confuse the visitors as a result of them.
The research won’t just prevent your design from being confusing or ridiculed by others in the industry. Industry research also gives you a perspective at what the consumers want and need. After all, the primary goal of every designer is to design for the customers, which can only be achieved if you know what your audience expects of your design.
Finally, knowing the industry gives you an advantage over the competition. The more you know about it, the easier it will be for you to provide things others have omitted or fix things they’ve mistaken with their design.
Pay Attention to Details
Details are important. Failing to pay attention to them can cause you many problems and make you spend most of your time fixing things rather than focusing on making your design great.
Designing is something you do from scratch and to make it perfect, you need to be focused completely. If you keep making mistakes just because you failed to focus, you’ll soon be cutting corners and rushing to get things done in time at the cost of your design’s quality.
Since viewers look at every little details of a design, it is important to be as careful as possible. The more focused you are, the more perfect your design will be. It doesn’t mean that you won’t make mistakes, but these mistakes will be significantly fewer than before.
Use Your Creativity
Creativity is the leading force to making a good design and every designer out there knows this. That being said, you are probably roaming the web looking for inspiration to strike you. When you are tapped out on what to do with your design, you look for inspiration everywhere. The same happens to everyone – creativity is lost and regained all the time.
Use Your Creativity
This, however, does not mean that you should work on your design even when your creativity is low. You might be in a rush to finish or think that in order to get it perfect, you need to spend all your time working on it. The truth here is; your design can only suffer if you work at this stage. Therefore, you need to use your creativity whenever you approach your design.
Creativity can come in many forms and from different places but its basics are – it pushes you to do things. If you find inspiration in other designs, it might be good to take a break from your own to look around. This doesn’t mean that you will borrow other ideas, but that you’ll get the recharging with creativity you need to make your unique, creative design.
Tell a Story
Ideally, your design should tell a story. It is up to you whether you will include this story in the content or share it with people who want to understand how you made it, but you definitely need to have an explanation ready. A design can be the greatest there is, but without an explanation of why you did it that way, it might not make the same sense it does to you when others see it. Create a design that communicates things. If you are making the design for others, tell them everything they need to
know about it before you ask for their approval. Explaining the design is the same as giving others a chance to understand why you made those specific choices. Without it, you are risking your design being misinterpreted or misunderstood, which can make it less perfect than it actually is.
Don’t Be Afraid to Make Changes
You may be as careful as it gets and pays attention to every little detail, get a creativity boost continuously while working, and still make mistakes in your designing. It is only natural – every designer makes mistakes that are unpredictable and unintentional. This doesn’t mean that you can’t go back and fix them.
This is why one of the pieces of advice given by professionals is to take the time to look at your design from the perspective of the viewer. If you make changes early in the process, you can avoid spending a lot of time on revising the design.
There’s no need to be afraid of making revisions. They always come with the territory. In fact, designing is a wonderful skill and an endeavor that lets you fix your errors and improve things, which is one of the biggest advantages of this field.
Conclusion
You won’t be finding a single design that needs no changes at all. One design might look perfect to you, but someone will still find a flaw in it. Your goal as a designer is to do your best to make as appealing a design as possible. We hope that these tips from experts in the field help you in this task.
Author Bio
Lilian Chifley is a writer and editor at Aussiewritings.com. She loves reading books about modern technologies, spending time with family and shopping.