: How to practice designing on my own I am designer with 8+ years of experience in Designing websites. I am currently facing a down phase in my design skills. It seems like my design skills

@Martha945

Quite simply - Side Projects.

By creating your own side projects you are removed from the usual client restraints.
You can think of and implement more imaginative solutions.
If you are doing all the work yourself you will be responsible for all areas of the project. This includes areas you may not have focused on too much before. This should help you get out of the design rut you seem to be in.

I would also consider doing side projects that are not directly involved in your usual day job. So instead of designing websites, try designing a board game, a magazine cover or a pack of playing cards.

You will learn lots of new skills and tricks which you can then apply to your web design work.

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@Phylliss782

There are many tutorials available, learn form there, read the codes and try these codes as a modules and then implement these modules in the website. By these small modules a big code is been generated and the web page is created. Other then this read squarespace review

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@Turnbaugh909

What constitutes good design (to you) is subjective, as it is to all of us.

However we live in the age of pinterest and behance. So I'd strongly suggest searching through them both for websites you consider to have good/great design that are popular, heavily commented and liked.

Then start figuring out how to use the techniques of structure, layout and design elements they're using on content from your favourite activity, pursuit, passion or interest for a crowd you know and love.

Before you know it you'll have picked up excellent design traits that are somewhat objectively recognised as such and helped out your favourite online community with whatever you've created for them.

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@Turnbaugh909

A simple thing I do....

One project, many audiences.

Take a piece you've previously designed. Strip it down to just text. What the text reads is largely unimportant, but using text from a real project helps apply standard restrictions and requirements when randomly creating. That way you don't "cheat" by removing a sentence or word to make things fit better.

Now redesign it for:


A young, 18-30, hip, "rave", crowd
A senior citizens home
an investment banking firm
a mom 'n' pop local store
a huge, Fortune 500, company
a 30-50 year old audience of sportsman
an elementary school
a high school
a group of soccer moms
a hospital


Basically, use the same information and generate different designs based on the readership. This will help flex the creativity muscles and possibly help build an understanding of what works for one audience as opposed to another.

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@Harper654

This is a bit of a how long is a piece of string, but @GraphicsRPS has some good points. Personally, I am a fan of the Newtonian method: get away from the computer, go sit under a fruit tree.

I think what is helpful, is not trying to bang your head against this, it will probably only create more frustration. What I believe in is looking, doodling, collect bits and pieces (taking pictures of stuff you see around you, physical thingamabobs, neon signs, billboards, table legs, the angle of the light from the window). Search for strange things on the internet, search terms that does not contain "design". Collect screenshots, but do not get bogged down in them. Build something silly in Lego. Play. Did I say doodle?

You need to try to see a little differently, you do not have to develop the doodles into concepts, you do not have to look very hard at the photos, screenshots, bits and pieces. Read a little design history in a leisurely way.

These things, I believe, help develop a conceptual way of thinking.

It is easy to get stuck in the design parameters of your job (buttons, headings, footers, posts, ads, sliders, forms, 2D ...)

I will probably bore you all to death by recommending this book, but I think there are hardly any one source for better for eclectic inspiration:

The art of looking sideways, Alan Fletcher.

Doodle five post-it doodles every day.


Edit: This post might give you some pointers, as how to get re-inspired.


Edit: the OP asked for clarification. Apologise for long rant

How can I expand on how to develop conceptual thinking?

I do not mean conceptual in the sense of "developing this project for a client". That would eventually be a by-product. I mean conceptual thinking in a more global, wider sense; as a way to look at things differently. By doing that, you can get out from under the shade of what you see as your (visual and technical) limitations.

Conceptual thinking is a process that contains parts of these elements:


Creativity
Intuition
Abstraction
Seeing patterns
Association
Experience (both professional and personal)
Integration and relating seemingly unrelated ideas
(There might be a little bit of analytical thinking in here, but not
always)


It has been defined as:


Potential solutions or viable alternatives that may not be obviously
related or easily identified.


There is a game you can play that takes into some of the creativity that goes into it: get someone to name two unrelated object, terms, ideas, and in as few steps possible find a connection between them. This uses an associative, creative, conceptual way of thinking. You need to get to the core, see patterns, find new connections and use all sorts of knowledge and experiences you might have. The connections could be rhyming words, similar concepts, objects, people, philosophical thoughts. Anything, really, that could create a thread from one thing to another. It would be highly subjective, but that does not matter.

Two examples, from palm tree to bookshop:

palm tree - > coral - > corral (a fenced off area for livestock) - > prison (being "locked in") - > Oscar Wilde (was in prison) - > literature (he wrote books) - > bookshop

Palm tree -> fibre - > paper - > bookshop

(one is clearly more imaginative than the other :)

Another game is to take your experiences and make a map or a network and draw connections. Say you did a course at uni that was incredibly boring. Now connect that to your uncle Bob, your herb gardening or your last rock climbing trip. There will be a few detours, kinks, nodes and oddities on the way.



There is no reason why your hobbies (say mountain climbing and herb gardening) cannot be useful in development. In fact, it is almost a prerequisite for the process, that you use "everything you have got". The trick is to not limit yourself to a narrow framework "I am here to create a website, I must use the compartment in my head that says: webdesign: colour, boxes, forms, screen size, code.".

Eureka!

The thought that creative people have epiphanies while sitting on the bus is often true, but they never come from nowhere. It is a thing the subconscious have been messing around with without you even knowing, and eureka! suddenly two unrelated things connect. From this you expand your world view so to speak; sometimes this is useful in a job, sometimes it gives a pleasant insight. Somewhere down the line it might become useful in a very practical way.

Often when working on a project there comes a point where I feel there is something wrong (do not get me wrong, I am not a touchy-feely hippy that are controlled by emotions.). But there is a gnawing feeling that something is not right, we are missing something. Often I cannot put my finger on it; I will tell my colleagues about this vague sense. Sometimes their conscious / subconscious comes up with a solution.

John Cleese said:


The really good idea is always traceable back quite
a long way, often to a not very good idea which sparked off another
idea that was only slightly better, which somebody else misunderstood
in such a way that they then said something which was really rather
interesting.


..and I think I wrote this:


Creativity is a numbers game. Creative people have loads of ideas,
many of them bad. The trick is to filter; mercilessly purging out the
bad ones, but never stop having them. Creative people fail more,
because they try more. It is hard work, not divine insight. What
hinders creativity and conceptual thinking is often a fear of
failure.

Researchers refer to the three 3xB. Bathtub, bed, bus. It seems a
lightbulb moment comes out of thin air. It does not. But change of
context and environment trigger other things that leads you back to
the problem, via crazy complex brainy byways impossible to track.


How to keep your general, global, seemingly useless, sometimes weird, concepts?
You could write it down, but the conceptuals are often vague. Therefore; doodle. Doodle, add words, draw lines, connect. Put things in your sketchbook with stickytape. It needs to be fast, so pen an paper tend to work best. Collect bits and pieces, from pine cones to examples of complex interactive systems to architectual plans. Sit under a tree, who is to say that seeing a snail or a sunflower you do not start thinking about the golden mean? Fibonacci? Spirals? Galaxies? Leonardo da Vinci? Mathematics? Horses? Atoms? Stephen Hawking? Robots? Interfaces? Buttons..... (on and on it goes).

How is this useful in design?

You will get better at finding new solutions. You will see and approach challenges differently. That will give you a fundament in your creations that are unique. You will break out of thinking purely in boxes on a screen. You will play more, and play is essential for creating new. Let not the fear of failure bother you. Do not mentally check what the client might think. Make stick animals.

Here is the thing: with conceptual thinking start then with the idea and then go on to create. Often it is easy to get stuck visually, and you start with your limitations. Turn it upside down. The practical techniques for achieving something is secondary to the idea. You can always learn particular methods in Photoshop when you need them. Programmes are tools, not a mean in themselves. They are good at certain things, and quite bad at others.

As for developing and refining visual languages, I believe that is extremely connected to conceptual thinking. Pushing coloured boxes around in Illustrator is not likely to get you very far. If you are making a site for a toothbrush company, buy a bunch of different toothbrushes. Play. Associate. "Invent" a toothbrush for a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Whatever.

I draw a good deal on paper. People often say things like "oooh, you are a born artist! I wish I could do that too!" Fact is: the problem is not that they do not know how to hold a pencil (i.e it is not the technology that limits them), what they lack is the ability to see, the willingness to learn to see, and a willingness to fail. And the hard work of doing it over and over.

You will never be "finished" learning and playing with conceptuals. That is the magic.

Did I make up all this by myself? No. It comes from my research into complex visualisation and creativity. Most of those we see as magically inspired designers and artists will tell you something similar.

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@Sarah814

I would say it depends on how well you view your skill level as a designer. I learned years ago that no one designer knows everything there is to know about designing. You are constantly learning new techniques, typefaces, layouts, programs, etc.

Now you seem to be in your own little niche with Web Design and plenty of years of experience it that field. I would assume as the years went by you got extremely better at what you did.

It seems by your question that you want to branch out into other niches and explore what those realms of design have to offer to your skill set. The world is filled with other areas of design. It just depends on where you want to go with it. There is Illustration, Publication / Editorial Design, Branding, Package Design and much more out there, you just have to find it.

All I can say is practice whatever it is you want to go with next. There is no real specific advice on what to practice on, your question is broad and so is the world of design. Hope this helps!

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