One of the most common questions I get asked over the years is how to stay skilled up as a designer. Well it’s rather simple, I keep studying. Now everything we do is a learning curve, and that almost seems natural as a designer, but learning also comes from studying. I have no formal education, I have a masters in nothing. But I have committed a lot of my spare time, to learning through studying online courses.
I try and study something new just about every day. Sometimes it’s just reading articles online, sometimes it’s trying a technique or an idea I have had, but mostly I use a couple of really good online resources.Some of my favorite resources to study are
- Treehouse, for a wide selection of design, development and other soft skill courses
- Udemy, for specific application and skill courses
- Skillshare, which is good for just about anything, someone who was brave enough to teach, was willing to share.
Granted this doesn’t give me any sort of certification, but in an industry where it’s probably better to do good work than have any certification, studying daily, is a pretty good thing to do. If you’ve read my blog thoroughly over the years, you’ll know I also read, a lot, so I will be sure to share a few of my latest finds real soon.
The tip here is to become disciplined in your approach to staying skilled up within our industry. It doesn’t matter that as a Creative Director I might not use most of these skills, it just challenges me to think differently and fills me with knowledge about things I might have to give direction on.
Another thing is to at least learn something, be it a chapter, a full discipline or just a workshop, try and study something every day.
One last thing is to learn new things, stuff that makes you uncomfortable, challenges you and is something you never even considered you could do.
I am genuinely interested in design, in all it’s forms, it’s as much a hobby to me as it is my career, and seriously no one has ever really had to hold a gun to my head to get me to learn more. I think due to my lack in formal education in my youth, I have learned to love studying.