It is a common problem for new designers. Design rookie how to grow up quickly, become an excellent UI designer, there is no shortcut to design improvement, only you see more, do more practice, more thinking, and pay 99% of your sweat, will quickly grow.

First, love design, do not forget the original purpose

Love design, be a positive and optimistic designer. Regardless of your design skills, you love design because love is the only thing that keeps you going. For example, when you go to work every day, you feel very miserable and unhappy, and even feel that going to work is worse than going to the grave. No matter how good you are and how good your design level is, I think you can’t make satisfactory works, and it’s hard for you to get further improvement. Therefore have a love of design heart, and keep yourself positive and optimistic to be a happy designer, your work and life will become more wonderful.

Look and think more

See? Why? Where to look?

To see excellent design works and play more apps is to cultivate and improve personal aesthetic level. There are many platforms now, so I go to see them every day: Behance, Dribbble and Pinteres have many excellent works, and there are also many excellent works on Domestic Websites such as Zuku.com and UI China. If you collect your favorite works, you will have a qualitative improvement in your aesthetic level in a short time.

Bring about Behance

Bring Dribbble

Bring about Pinterest

But what if someone says I read a lot, but I don’t feel like I’m improving? Because you just saw, but did not go to think and analysis summary, under the premise of one more, must want to see while thinking, to analyze the interface of you see what format layout, colour collocation, the design style and design feeling which strengthen the design elements, and take these things to the corresponding summary, then apply to your actual project, This is the right posture, day in and day out, that you feel yourself designing

3. Manage knowledge base effectively

We browse all kinds of information every day, collect all kinds of design materials as our inspiration sources, to broaden our horizons and avoid the limitations of our thinking. But how can we accumulate and manage effectively while browsing and reading?

We often browse and collect many works and articles in fragments, but this seems to be the step. Why can’t you use it when you need to?

In fact, this is not enough. For example, after reading an article, you might as well think about it. Do you have a better place to speak? If there is, it will be extracted and combed and recorded, as the saying goes: “a good memory is better than a bad pen”, nothing more out to see, so as not to forget; What’s good about a good piece of writing, shallow level analysis, words? Layout? The color? Creativity? . Dig deeper, text size, thickness, word weight, spacing, typography…

In fact, most of the time may not be able to understand, you can wait until the future encounter similar problems or have a new experience to re-read, review the old to learn new, and gradually form their own knowledge network.

2. In the process of material collection and classification, I always find myself unable to find a certain work that I have collected before. Due to the lack of material management, the application efficiency of collected works is very low, and the collected works are not of great value. Therefore, it is necessary to effectively and timely arrange and standardize the collection of works of material, for my use, just do not waste the hard accumulation oh! Otherwise, it’s just a lot of fun.

Of course, each category can be further subdivided as it wishes. These categories are not set in stone and can be refined and reduced gradually according to individual needs and accumulation.

Four, do more exercises

As the saying goes, “it is better to pass the eye a thousand times than to pass the hand again”, only to see not to practice the false handle, see more, and not to do that is also useless, so we should do more practice; Some people may say that I am tired of working during the day and often work overtime. How can I have any spare time? Here, I still want to say a chicken soup: time is like the water in a sponge. After going home, watch less entertainment programs, play a few pesticides, with these time to more masturbation is enough, recently in the circle of friends to see a variety of cards, design cards, sports cards, English cards, calligraphy cards, this way you can self-supervision to do a lot of things, you might as well try.

People are inert, but we must try our best to overcome and overcome, only look not to do that is useless, but also more to practice and practice, integrated above believe that your design ability will also have a qualitative leap.

5. Design and execution ability and business communication ability

In fact, there are essential differences between design and art, art is usually to discover or put forward problems, and the essence of design is to solve problems. In fact, the design method is to discuss how to optimize the problem.

In the field of mobile Internet, the role of design is to strike a balance between business and user needs, to meet both business interests and user expectations. But this is really a rare thing, to achieve this requirement, designers must have excellent design execution ability and excellent business communication ability.

Generally speaking, the growth of designers can be divided into three stages, that is, entering stage, comfortable stage and mature stage. Different stages have different design methods. From beginner to senior to expert, we should have a clear position of ourselves.

Enter period this stage is new person or work not long, it is study stage more. More work is to copy the wireframes for design, in order to complete the requirements for the goal. Basically or see more practice, steady and steady, from quantitative change to qualitative change.

After 2-3 years of study, I became familiar with the software skills. I began to take charge of projects independently at work, gradually became familiar with the design process, designed with different styles for different needs, and began to consider the logical problems of products with conscious and independent thinking. Many designers get stuck in a comfort zone where they feel less pressure to get work done.

Maturity may take a long time from the previous stage to this stage. Designers at this stage have their own design style and thinking, design methodology system, and influence the younger generation. In addition to completing the job, I can also promote and guide the work of other departments, and do data analysis and other related work together with products.

This stage is more about the change of thinking, can stand in the overall perspective of the project, and win the trust of the team.

2. Business communication skills

At work, designers will inevitably be subject to objections from product managers or supervisors after their designs, such as fonts, colors, ICONS, styles, etc., which are difficult to convince from a subjective aesthetic perspective. Therefore, designers need to be comprehensive when considering problems. Behind each design element there is a corresponding problem to be solved. Of course, we also need to be able to judge the solution itself.

Designers are no longer the solution to a single problem, nor is it just a link in the design process. We should constantly improve our comprehensive ability and improve communication efficiency.

Six, diligent and keen, keep up with the trend

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. So is being a designer. In addition to the usual accumulation, but also pay more efforts and persistence.

1. Increase skills and enhance self-competitiveness in tools and software, especially in today’s increasingly fierce job competition, more and more demanding recruitment requirements, to master professional skills must be more, more skills do not pressure the body ah; You should know dynamic effects design software and 3D design software, such as Sketch, AFTER Effects, C4D, etc.

2 visual keen, follow the trend of the popular UI design is to keep up with the trend of The Times, grasp the current design trend, the reason why can become a popular trend, it shows that this design is welcomed and loved by users; Incorporate current design trends into your design projects, and your work will improve a lot. For example, this year’s popular gradient (multi-color gradient, camouflage gradient), illustration design trend, 2.5D illustration style and 3D design trend; In addition, add some dynamic effects to your works appropriately, and apply the design style of these apps to your actual projects, which can also make your works to a higher level.

In your spare time, read more books, you need to learn some theoretical knowledge, you need to build your knowledge structure, improve cognition. You can also learn more about things other than design, such as the latest fashion trends, basic knowledge of front-end development, interaction design, product operation, etc. Only after fully understanding these, can you do a more accurate and effective design.

At the same time, it is highly recommended that you expand your social circle and go out to communicate with others when you have time, such as participating in sharing activities, offline communication activities and so on. Learn from it by listening to what others share, and find the gap by communicating with others. Therefore, proper use of your spare time and leisure time can be very important to your career advancement.

Total knot

The year of 2018 has just begun, a good beginning is half the success, as long as you keep working hard, that is the best, because the harder you work, the luckier you are.