Your best resources for becoming a great artist or designer?

[doomtoo]

I've been working part time on becoming a better designer and artist.

The book 'the non-designers design book' has helped the most with learning design concepts, but haven't really found any other resources as helpful. I'm mostly looking at things I find are nicely designed, and using some of their elements.

I have a lot of art books to go through, and I try to participate on CGTalk's daily sketch forum when I can.




What do you guys find are your most helpful resources to becoming a better designer or artist?

[wes_design]

immersing myself into culture and not being afraid to talk or listen to my client and knowing when to interject myself into the conversation

[doomtoo]

Yeah, those are good tips for designing - I just need to learn to make things 'look great'- even for my own website....

[wes_design]

I am guessing you mean tutorials in a specific application:

go to this site: http://psd.tutsplus.com/ and keep searching on the web

Or mentor underneath a Art Director

[Frode Frank]

Reading everything I found on type and eventually drawing typefaces on my own is easily the one thing I've learnt most from designwise. There's tons to pick up on optical effects, rythm, whitespace, harmonizing shapes etc. All are essential to understanding good design.

[HalfDog]

Yeah, those are good tips for designing - I just need to learn to make things 'look great'- even for my own website....


That could possibly be the worst way of looking to be a good designer I've ever heard. What you're doing at the moment is cutting corners and mimicing trends and ripping others' designs. Pretty horrible.

What you need to do is learn the basic of design: spacing, pace, negative space, color, impact, voice, [so many other variables].

This is not something you pick up on a tutorial or just one book. Try 20-30 books and 200-400 tutorials and you will be an amateur designer.

The most efficient way was mentioned earlier: Get a respected designer/director to show you the ropes and mold you into a form with which you will eventually call your own after much "customization". Being a designer is much more fluid than other professions if you actually plan to be good and not a hack.

Also, be patient with clients. More than half the time, they try to sabotage their own project with ill-advised decisions.

[doomtoo]

That could possibly be the worst way of looking to be a good designer I've ever heard. What you're doing at the moment is cutting corners and mimicing trends and ripping others' designs. Pretty horrible.




The worst way? It seems the only way to learn design is from other people's design-

Any books or tutorials you care to mention that you found useful?

Assumably you're a mac person (based on the way you responded), but even Steve Jobs says "Good artists copy; great artists steal." - the only aparent way to become a good designer is to steal from others designs :-o

And no "good designer" can actually put into words what they do - assumably because if you're a good designer, your "method of designing" is to find a design you like done by someone else, and hopefully change it somewhat.


Apparently, there are no designers that can describe what makes them a good designer....

[wes_design]

The worst way? It seems the only way to learn design is from other people's design-

Any books or tutorials you care to mention that you found useful?

Assumably you're a mac person (based on the way you responded), but even Steve Jobs says "Good artists copy; great artists steal." - the only aparent way to become a good designer is to steal from others designs :-o

And no "good designer" can actually put into words what they do - assumably because if you're a good designer, your "method of designing" is to find a design you like done by someone else, and hopefully change it somewhat.


Apparently, there are no designers that can describe what makes them a good designer....

I'm guessing you stated all that to urge other people to answer out of hurt pride or hoping they will want to impress you. However I will answer because I am worried others might start to believe designers can't communicate what makes them work, or feel motivated to be a good designer. To state that if one can't describe their design ability into words is sufficient to being a good designer is clearly ignoring the many books written by good designers. It also confuses the stereotype of an artist with a designer, which are two different professions.

Also consider Ellen Lupton or even Erik Spiekermann
ie.http://www.vimeo.com/19429698 | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F691weEVpwc

However keep in mind the idea of mimicking and not adding on to the original without a clear purpose is merely copying and not designing.

[doomtoo]

I'm guessing you stated all that to urge other people to answer out of hurt pride or hoping they will want to impress you. However I will answer because I am worried others might start to believe designers can't communicate what makes them work, or feel motivated to be a good designer. To state that if one can't describe their design ability into words is sufficient to being a good designer is clearly ignoring the many books written by good designers. It also confuses the stereotype of an artist with a designer, which are two different professions.


I've talked to several designers, and most can't explain "how they learned", or good resources. The more helpful ones have stated they just look at other designers work, and pick stuff they like from them.

The one good book I've found so far is "The Non-Designer's Design Book" - which gives a lot of great tips, but would just like to find a series of "designers design books".


Typography links are great..... but just using typography isn't the secret to becoming a great designer, is it?

Any designers that can answer how they went from "doodling in their schoolbooks" to "creating awesome looking websites, book covers, posters, user interfaces, ect"?

Still looks like the only real idea is copying something that works- but then what methods create original concepts, if there are any?

[JohnFront]

The worst way? It seems the only way to learn design is from other people's design-

This is an option too! When books and tuts can't help, sometimes looking at others work in Deviantart, Behance and other Design communities, may inspire or even help grasping the tehniques.


Any books or tutorials you care to mention that you found useful?

Gladly will list, books and sites that can help get started.
Most of the sites and books I use are in Russian language, so that's why I'm not posting them here.

Sites:
psd.tutsplus.com
vector.tutsplus.com
webdesign.tutsplus.com/ - this one will help even if you're not web designer.
http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/
http://blog.signalnoise.com/
http://rypearts.com/branding-portfolio.html

Books
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1920744398?ie=UTF8&tag=logdeslov-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1920744398- Graphic Design as a Second Language by Bob Gill



Apparently, there are no designers that can describe what makes them a good designer....


For me, personally, the the words "Good Designer" doesn't exist, I always want to be a bit better. I've read many books and browsed many sites. Most of it helped me to get started. Of course I'm always being inspired by all kinds of designers from the various disciplines of design, but I always enjoy checking out the artwork of James White and the stuff from Michael Heald.

One thing learned is that from School you can learn a few things, but will get you nowhere. Use Internet as your "learning environment" for your designs.

Good luck buddy!

[Alish735]

Try to copy the things around us.