One of the goals of value based marketing is that everyone loves to design. But modern society seems to be designed for everything, from the way it looks to the way it’s made. If you’re looking for a new design job, or even just want a new look for your old one, here are some ways to go about reinventing yourself as someone who designs.
Reinventing yourself as a designer doesn’t have to be hard or intimidating.
1. Read books and magazines.
Nothing is more boring than a designer who has never read any of the classics. Read as much design literature as you can; look at all the work people have done before you, then come up with something new that fits into the current trend, but that nobody’s ever seen before.
2. Talk to other designers.
Learn how other designers do things by talking to them about their jobs and projects. Discuss what they’ve done and why they did it that way. You don’t have to do anything exactly like them, but you can learn some useful tips and tricks from them, perhaps even some useful networking contacts or business clients.
3. Join a design association or club.
You can find these all over the place, online or in your community.
4. Find a mentor.
There are no hard and fast rules about who your mentor should be, but it’s important to find someone with experience that you can trust, who can point out things potentially useful to you as you go along in your journey of design.
5. Attend a design school.
This is certainly not the most efficient method; it could even cost you a lot of time (and money). But attending a design school can be a good thing, especially if you have the money to do it.
6. Check out the competition.
This is good because it allows you to see what your competitors are up to and thus gives you something to look out for. Plus, it’s nice to see what other people are doing, so that you can find a new spin or angle in order to distinguish yourself from them in a good way–for example, if everyone else is doing photography for advertising campaigns, but you’re an illustrator, maybe you can find something useful in there somewhere.
7. Don’t get discouraged.
Don’t allow yourself to get so caught up in the apparent difficulties of the job that you lose the will to go on. It’s a slow, painstaking process of learning, but once you become good at what you do, it all starts to make sense and you can see just how much fun all this designing really is.
8. Reinvent yourself as an artist or illustrator.
This would be my personal recommendation, as I think it is a more exciting field than merely being known as a designer . The potential here is very high indeed–you can use your imagination to create new shapes and forms that are then designed into objects for use by the public.
As an artist or illustrator, you can use your creativity to see things others have not, or to see what they have not seen.
9. Get yourself a good designer–or two or three.
One of the best ways to become good at designing is by having other designers around you who can show you the ropes and help you get better. It’s also good to have some kind of master scheme in your mind when it comes to design, something that allows you to look at a job and think out all the steps involved in it before you actually start working on it (this is called ‘blue-sky’ design).
10. Experiment.
I mentioned earlier about using your imagination, but you can also use this to your advantage when it comes to inventing new designs or styles. You can try out different colours and styles in the first place, then once you have a good idea of how they look you can move on to actually producing the design.
11. Be original.
Believe me, it’s not easy! But if you want to become a designer, you have to be original. If nobody else is doing what you’re doing, then it means that there’s something special about the way you’re doing things. And being original is one of the most important things about being a designer–in fact, it’s so important that I’d go as far as to say that if you’re ever in doubt about whether or not your designs are original enough, then they probably aren’t.
12. Be patient and persistent.
This is the hardest part of all. You can’t expect to just land a job and start producing designs for other people straight away. You have to work hard, study hard and work on your own projects with patience and persistence, sometimes even getting rejected dozens of times before eventually getting a shot at working with an actual client or employer.
13. Work hard.
You’re not going to suddenly become an expert designer after one day’s work; it can take years for you to become a real pro.
14. Have fun.
Design is supposed to be fun and exciting, but you don’t want to be so caught up in your work that you forget yourself and forget to enjoy the process, because then you won’t have fun either. There comes a time when it stops being fun, when it just becomes a job; once that happens, you have to find another way of making money or else risk losing your passion for design.
