Honing your craft as a graphic designer is something that takes a long time. There are no shortcuts to becoming a good designer or illustrator, but there are some things that you can do to improve the quality of your designs. Here are a few tips for novice designers and artists:

Practice As Much As You Can

Use every free moment you have to practice – whether that’s working on new projects, following Photoshop tutorials, or playing with new concept designs on your iPad. You can’t become a good designer if you just play with an art package occasionally. The most successful designers take every opportunity they can find to hone their craft.

Work With Clients that Value Your Time

If you want to become a professional designer then you need to look for good clients. Don’t waste your time with clients that want you to work for free, or work for pennies. Usually, these clients are unprofessional – they don’t value your time and they probably don’t know what they want. This means that you’ll either end up being forced to make a bad design (because the client is always right), or a project that you accepted because you thought it would be a half day job will turn into a two week job and you’ll waste time that could have been spent seeking better clients and honing your skills.

Have Fun

Working as a professional designer is hard work. You will spend many hours tweaking images for clients, and the projects you are working on will not always be something that you are inspired by. To succeed as a professional designer, you will have to enjoy designing for its own sake. You will be far more successful if you are doing what you love, so find the parts of design that bring you joy, and focus on them.