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How To Become A Designer Without Going To Design School: Home Videos Design About

The document outlines steps for becoming a designer without formal design education, including learning to see through drawing, understanding design theory, learning tools like Photoshop and Illustrator, building a portfolio, and getting a design job. It recommends starting with the fundamentals before jumping into software and provides many online and book resources for self-study.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)

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How To Become A Designer Without Going To Design School: Home Videos Design About

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Karen X. Cheng I learned to dance in a year

Home
Videos
Design
About

How to become a designer without going to

design school
by Karen on June 19, 2013 in Blog

Update: If youre serious about learning design and are willing to commit to practicing every day,
Ive created a (free) place for you to track your progress: 100.
I got my job as a designer without going to design school. I had hacked together my own design
education in 6 months while working a full-time job. I didnt think I was ready but started applying
for jobs anyway and got a job at a great startup, Exec.
To be clear, Im nowhere near as good as those design prodigies that come out of a 4-year
education at an elite school like RISD. But Im definitely good enough to do my job well. Im the
only designer at Exec, so I do a pretty wide range of things visual and interaction design, print,
web, and mobile app design.
Maybe you want to change careers and become a designer full-time.
Or you want to learn some basics for your startup or side project.
This is a guide to teach yourself design.
Step 1. Learn to see
The biggest mistake is jumping into Photoshop too fast. Learning Photoshop does not make you a
designer, just like buying paintbrushes does not make you an artist. Start with the foundation.

First, learn how to draw.

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You dont have to sit in a room with a bunch of other artists trying to draw a naked woman.
You dont even have to get that good at drawing. Just learn some basics so you can be
comfortable sketching with a pen.
You only have to do one thing to learn how to draw: get the book You Can Draw in 30 days
and practice for half an hour every day for a month. Ive looked at a lot of drawing books and
this is one of the best.

Learn graphic design theory

Start with the book Picture This. Its a story book of Little Red Riding hood, but will teach you
the foundations of graphic design at the same time.
Learn about color, typography, and designing with a grid. If you can find a local class to teach
the basics of graphic design, take it.
Go through a few of these tutorials every day.

Learn some basics in user experience

There are a lot of books about user experience. Start with these two quick reads that will get
you in the right mindset:
The Design of Everyday Things
Dont Make Me Think!

Learn how to write

Here is a sure sign of a bad designer: their mockups are filled with placeholder text like
Lorem Ipsum. A good designer is a good communicator. A good designer thinks through the
entire experience, choosing every word carefully. Write for humans. Dont write in the
academic tone you used to make yourself sound smart in school papers.
Read Made to Stick, one of my favorite books of all time. It will teach you how to suck in your
readers.
Voice and Tone is a website full of gems of good writing examples.
Step 2. Learn how to use Photoshop and Illustrator
Hooray! Now youve got a pretty solid foundation both visual and UX. Youre ready to learn
Photoshop. Actually, I recommend starting with Illustrator first and then moving on to Photoshop
after. Illustrator is what designers use to make logos and icons.

Learn Illustrator
There are a ton of books, online tutorials and in-person classes to learn Illustrator. Choose
the style that works best for you. Here are the books I found especially helpful to learn the
basics of Illustrator:
Adobe Illustrator Classroom in a Book Its boring, but if you get through at least half of it,
youll know your way around Illustrator pretty well.
Vector Basic Training This book teaches you how to make things in Illustrator that actually

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look good.
Now for the fun stuff! Follow these online tutorials and be impressed by what you can make.
Here are two my favorites a logo and a scenic landscape.

Learn Photoshop
There are a million and one tutorials out there. A lot of them are crap. Fortunately, there are
sites with really high quality tutorials. PSDTuts by TutsPlus is one of them.
Heres a good photoshop tutorial to make an iPhone app.
Heres another good photoshop tutorial to create a website mockup.
Carve out an hour or two every day to go through some tutorials, and youll be impressed by
how quickly you progress.
Step 3. Learn some specialties
Do you want to design mobile apps? Websites? Infographics? Explore them all, and pick and choose
the ones you enjoy to get better at them.

Learn Logo Design

Learn how to make a logo that doesnt suck: Logo Design Love
Youll want to take it a step further than a logo though. Learn to create a consistent brand
from the website to the business cards. Check out this book, Designing Brand Identity.

Learn Mobile App Design

Start with this tutorial to get your feet wet on visual design for mobile apps.
Read this short but very comprehensive and well-thought out book on iPhone design:
Tapworthy. It will teach you how to make an app that not only looks good but is easy to use.
Geek out on the apps on your phone. Critique them. What works and what doesnt?

Learn Web Design

Read Dont Make Me Think to learn how to make a website that people find easy to use and
navigate.
Read The Principles of Beautiful Web Design if you want help making a website look good.
Make a list of the websites you think are beautifully designed. Note what they have in
common.
Now for the hairy question of whether you need to know HTML/CSS as a designer: It depends on
the job. Knowing it will definitely give you an edge in the job market. Even if you dont want to be a
web developer, it helps to know some basics. That way you know what is possible and what isnt.
There are so many great resources to learn HTML and CSS:
My favorite free one is Web Design Tuts.
My favorite paid one (pretty affordable at $25/month) is Treehouse. If youre starting from

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the beginning and want someone to explain things clearly and comprehensively, splurge for
Treehouse tutorials.
Step 4. Build your portfolio
You dont need to go to a fancy design school to get a job as a designer. But you do need a solid
portfolio.
How do you build a portfolio if youre just starting out for the first time? The good news is you dont
need to work on real projects with real clients to build a portfolio. Make up your own side projects.
Here are a few ideas:
Design silly ideas for t-shirts.
Find poorly designed websites and redesign them.
Got an idea for an iPhone app? Mock it up.
Join a team at Startup Weekend and be a designer on a weekend project.
Enter a 99 designs contest to practice designing to a brief.
Do the graphic design exercises in the Creative Workshop book.
Find a local nonprofit and offer to design for free.
Resist the temptation to include every thing youve ever designed in your portfolio. This is a place
for your strongest work only.
Steal, steal, steal at first. Dont worry about being original that will come later, once you are more
comfortable with your craft. When you learn a musical instrument, you learn how to play other
peoples songs before composing your own. Same goes for design. Steal like an artist.
Go to Dribbble for inspiration on some of the best designers. Check out pttrns for iOS inspiration,
and patterntap for website inspiration.
Step 5: Get a job as a designer
When I first started learning design, I went to a job search workshop for designers. I walked into a
room full of designers who had much more experience than I did 5, 10, 15 years experience. All
of them were looking for jobs. That was intimidating. There I was, trying to teach myself design,
knowing I was competing with these experienced designers.
And yet 6 months later, I got a design job. There was one key difference between me and many of
the other designers that gave me an edge: I knew how to work with developers.
The biggest factor to boost your employability is to be able to work with developers. Learn some
interaction design. Learn some basic HTML and CSS. Designers in the tech industry (interaction
designers, web designers, app designers) are in extremely high demand and are paid well. Thats
where the jobs are right now.
If you dont have any experience working with developers, get some. Go to Startup Weekend, go to
hackathons, or find a developer through a project collaboration site.

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Make a personal website and make your portfolio the centerpiece.

Go out and make serendipity happen tell everyone you know that youre looking for a job as a
designer. You never know who might know someone.
Research companies and agencies you might be interested in. Look on LinkedIn for 2nd and 3rd
degree connections to people who work at those companies and ask for intros. The best way to get
a job is through a connection. If you dont have a connection, theres still a lot you can do to give
yourself an edge.
Once youve got the job, keep learning
Ive been at Exec for a year now and have learned a ton on the job. I seek out designers who are
much more talented than I am, and learn from them. I find design classes (good online ones are
Skillshare, General Assembly, Treehouse, and TutsPlus). I work on side projects. I geek out at the
design section of bookstores. There is still so much to learn and to improve on.
Keep your skills sharp, and always keep learning.
Questions? Say hi at @karenxcheng.
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who
do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For
the first couple years you make stuff, its just not that good. Its trying to be good, it has
potential, but its not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer.
And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this
phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through
years of this. We know our work doesnt have this special thing that we want it to have.
We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you
gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Its
gonna take awhile. Its normal to take awhile. Youve just gotta fight your way through.
Ira Glass
91 Comments

91 Responses to How to become a designer without going to design school

Husain Zamin December 5, 2013 at 8:10 pm #

Dear Karen X Cheng,
Very educative post for us fresher artists.with wonderful links.
Thanks a lot!
Regards!
Husain Zamin

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FaisaL Ali. December 6, 2013 at 8:44 am #

hello,
nice start up points thanks!
today i ordered my rst two books
all the best
Faisal

Alysa December 15, 2013 at 4:27 pm #

Good piece! I learned so much!

Britney December 16, 2013 at 2:11 pm #

Great post! I learned a ton!

Chang R. Carson January 7, 2014 at 10:00 am #

Im emphasizing experiences here deliberately, even though that isnt always how others would
describe the job. I think one of the crucial things instructional designers can (and should!) do is make
sure that students have opportunities to actively practice what they are learning.

satya January 8, 2014 at 1:32 am #

Its really helpful for me to understand where we i lost in my previous interview. Thanks.

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