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Hi, everybody! I’m Philip Anderson. And in this video, I’m gonna talk to you about 20 ways to be a better designer. As designers were always looking to get better, we’re always looking to improve our skills. Our design skills are contacting skills. Our strategic skills here 20 ways that you can be a better designer number. One study, the history of design. You can’t do innovative work unless you know what went before you so get some books on design, go back in the history of design and study, where a lot of these movements, ideas and concepts came from number two learn. The fundamentals of art design is a little bit of art and a little bit of science, so on the art side, you really want to learn the basics of visual art, so things like composition and balance and color and form and materials, all of the things that go into how humans visually perceive things number three learn to sketch sketching is a highly underrated skill. These days, a lot of designers go right to the computer, and it really takes a lot longer to get design ideas out on a computer than it does through a quick thumbnail sketch. So I encourage you to keep a sketchbook and sketch all the time, particularly when your concept in a design, you can bang through a lot of ideas very quickly number. Four, go to school go to an accredited art school. If you can afford it if you can’t go to a community college, go and take courses online. Things are all the way from free to just a few hundred bucks there’s. No excuse for not getting educated in design. Number five is a no-brainer just design design. All the time volume is gonna make you get better number. Six is get feedback, so get outside of the circle of your family and get feedback from other designers. Get yourself set up with a mentor. Get hard feedback on your work because that’s what’s gonna make you get better number seven. Copy your heroes. Whoever it is that you’re inspired by whoever it is that you think is an amazing designer, copy one or two of their pieces. You’ll be amazed at how much you can learn by actually copying someone else’s work. There are always new onces that you don’t realize when you look at something or some technique that they used in order to get a certain effect, and until you do it, you never really learn how it was done So copy people. Number eight is stay inspired, so gather inspiration voraciously gather inspiration like a religion. Carry a sketchbook with you. Tear things out of magazines. Put them in that sketchbook. Take pictures with your phone start. A Pinterest board gather images from around the net stay inspired, gather inspiration. Because when you need inspiration, you’ll always have that to go to. Number nine is think conceptually, so design isn’t just about visual aesthetics. Designs about ideas. Design is art. That has a job to do, so. You want to think about the concept behind your work? What is the purpose of your work? What emotion is is supposed to get across. What kind of action is it supposed to precipitate? So think about the concept of your work, not just about how it looks number 10 think strategically, so just like thinking, conceptually thinking strategically is thinking about your viewer. What is the action that you want your customer or your viewer to take when they experience your design, whether that’s an illustration or a video or a graphic design. Think about what the strategy is behind your work number. Eleven is practice, smart design. What smart design is is a combination of the art in the science of design, so the visual aesthetics and the strategy and the concept behind the work. Dad is what makes up smart design, so think about the balance between those two things number twelve on your own career. There is no free lunch. No one owes you anything. No one owes your promotion. No one owes you more money. You have to make the decisions about the type of work that you want to do the type of place. You want to work the type of clients. You want to work for you own your career so every step of the way the decisions you make are what’s going to take you through the career? You have to own it. No one’s going to do it for you number. Thirteen is take the initiative. Challenge yourself every step of the way. Get off your butt! Give yourself a goal. Give yourself some sort of carrot that you’re going to pursue whether that’s a new skill, A new job, a new title, a new position, a new client always take the initiative and continue to push yourself and challenge yourself number. Fourteen is asked for forgiveness, not permission asking for permission Whether it’s from your boss or from your client to do something that you want to do is not the right approach. Just do what you think is, right. Take the initiative. And if then they don’t like it, then ask for forgiveness later, but at least that gives you the opportunity to push yourself and always putting out there. What you think is the best thing number 15 learn new stuff. Always be challenging yourself to learn the next thing. I always say this in my videos, but define yourself as a lifelong learner, whether that’s a new application, new design technique, whatever it is, always be learning Number 16 Learn how to write. I did a whole video on this. About how it’s important for designers to know how to write whether that’s an email to a client, a description of a project to your boss or whether it’s a blog post or an article designers have to know how to write number 17 learn how to speak. And when I say learn how to speak. I mean, how to verbally articulate what it is that your works about develop that vocabulary that you can use to describe your strategy. Your concepts, the aesthetics of your work. Because presentation skills are one of the most valuable skills for designers number 18 Learn how to listen knowing how to accept. Constructive criticism of your work is one of the hardest, but also the one of the most valuable things that you can learn and do in your career to become a better designer because that’s going to enable you to hear how to improve your work. How people are perceiving your work? So learn how to listen. Learn how to take criticism number 19 feed energy. Don’t suck it wherever you are, whatever you do, bring a positive energy to that interaction whether it’s an in action with a client with a co-worker with someone you met at a conference instead of living in negativity we’re living in the problem, always live in the solution, always feed energy, don’t suck it and finally, number 20 is my mantra go beyond the brief, so always over, deliver whether that’s over delivering in quality or quantity or interaction or communication always go beyond the brief, deliver the brief, but always take it a step further because that’s what’s going to differentiate for you from all the other designers in the world, so that’s it. I hope you’ve enjoyed this video. On 20 ways, you can be a better design. Hit, subscribe below, so you can see my videos when they come out and subscribe to my newsletter. It’s called Brand. Muse comes out every two weeks, and I share an insight resources and trends on entrepreneurship and graphic design and with that thanks again for watching bye for now [Music].