How to learn to become an Internet designer in 6 months?

We are seeing a growing number of individuals or small groups of entrepreneurs becoming a huge force in the Internet. Such entrepreneurs often have a very comprehensive ability to demand that they not only design products according to requirements, but also complete design and coding. I saw a designer named Nader who wrote an article about how he learned through self-study in 6 months, mastering interactive design, graphic design, web design, and mobile application design. I think his experience is not only for those who want to be a designer, but also for many developers.

　　Start with the practice of painting

Nader said that many people's misunderstanding is just beginning to plunge into the study of Photoshop. Photoshop is just a tool that doesn't make you a designer just like buying a paintbrush doesn't make you a painter. His advice is to start with the study of painting first.

This is not a high demand for learning to paint, and does not require you to be a painter or an artist, but rather to use your brushes skillfully to complete a sketch. Nader recommended a book called Can Draw in the days of the day, and said that it would take only half an hour of contact daily to achieve that goal. But the book seems to have no Chinese version, and you can buy it on Taobao or on the Kindle.

After this is the study of graphic design theory, including graphic design, color, printing and using the grid for graphic design, here Nader also recommended a book called The picture here and said that online can find some free grid graphics design tutorials.

Next, Nader that learning two skills--Understanding the basics of the user experience and learning to write, because he thinks it's important for a designer to communicate your ideas succinctly and clearly to others.

　　Learning Drawing Software

I think most people are not unfamiliar with these two Adobe software companies. Photoshop is an image processing software and illustrator is an industrial standard vector drawing software. There are a lot of books and tutorials available for your reference, but according to my own experience, the best way is to find some suitable examples to study. Nader also recommended some tutorials he thinks are good--how to redesign the Spendometer IPhone app, Create a clean Magazine & Blog Theme, creating an EnviR Onmentally friendly Green Type treatment and how to Create a landscape wallpaper for your Desktop.

Logo design, app design and web design

Here Nader also recommended a heap of foreign language books, I will not enumerate, but he put forward a few ideas are worth reference: in the design of logo should not be limited to graphic design, but to think more about its brand effect and business value; App design to combine with the example, look at a variety of applications, summed up their strengths and weaknesses, and strive to make their own design to be beautiful and simple and easy to use; for web design, look at those excellent website designs and, in addition, learn to work with their color and design schemes. I have previously described many of these tools and open source solutions in the front end Engineer Essentials: Count the useful web development tools. In addition, Nader also recommended that designers should be able to understand HTML and CSS, which can better help themselves to understand the site's building principles.

　　Complete your own design project

If you have successfully completed the above learning, you can apply them to the design project. Of course, it's hard to really find a business project at this stage, but Nader recommends some projects that apply to you:

Design an interesting t-shirt;

Find a website that experiences bad and redesign it;

Think of an iphone App and then complete the prototype design;

Participate in the activities of a hacker marathon, participate in the design of a project;

Go to the public package bidding design website 99designs.com participate in bidding;

Buy a creative workshop finish the inside of the plane design training;

Find a non-profit organization/project for free design for them;

In addition, Nader stressed that as a novice, to learn "copycat", from copying and imitating the work of others began. Dribbble, Patterntap or Pttrns have many excellent designer projects to learn.

　　Go get a job.

Nader said that now the designer is a very competitive industry, he completed 6 months of study after a group of designers have several years of experience. But he beat a lot of people to get a job because he knows how to work well with developers. That's why he suggested that everyone should learn the basics of HTML and CSS and take part in activities like hacking marathons, which can help you integrate with developers. In addition, as a designer, you should design a beautiful personal website for yourself, which will help you introduce yourself.