Design. What exactly do we mean by design? Anything you can visualize and create is called design, be it logos for brands, interfaces of mobile apps, or banners and posters for a movie.

If you think you have a creative mind and want to design valuable and appealing things, this field might be your niche. You should read this entire doc and go through the links attached to it to get a good idea about the different aspects of design and how to get started with it.

Design is much more than just creating pretty images and artwork; the design is the process of creating solutions to problems you identify, making products easy for customers to use, or creating practical designs that serve a well-defined purpose.

For instance, while designing a poster, you should not just think about making it beautiful; you should also consider what the poster is for, who it is targeted towards, and where it will be displayed in the real world.

This playlist should help you gain a better understanding of some of the principles of good design-

Design for Beginners(YouTube playlist)- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv7bzx6dCkyat4E-IVWi4fYyydRdEhmMl

This article might be helpful as well- The 7 principles of design.

This video will help you learn how to think like a designer-

What Is Design Thinking? An Overview (2020)

Typography

Understanding typography is one of the most crucial aspects of good design. It is the art of arranging letters and text to make information legible, clear, and visually appealing to the reader.

These articles will help you better understand typography and the usage of fonts in design-

1) What Is Typography and Why Is It Important?

2) Understanding Typography

You must carefully pick your fonts; your fonts’ choice should make sense when applied to your design. Check this article out to understand how you should think while choosing fonts.

You can download fonts from Google Fonts and Font Squirrel.

Colors

Working with colors in design is more than just picking colors that look appealing; you must ensure that your color palettes are suitable for your design. Different colors evoke different emotions in people, and even slightly altering the saturation or brightness of a shade can make a huge difference.

Read up about color theory here to understand this concept better.

You can use these websites to generate color palettes for your designs-

1) coolors.co

2) colorinspo.com

3) uigradients.com

UI/UX Design

UI/UX Design is an essential part of design many beginners may not be familiar with. So I will briefly be covering what UI/UX is and why it is crucial.

UI stands for User Interface, and UX stands for User Experience. They are both very closely related but not the same, contrary to common misconceptions.

A user interface is what you see while interacting with digital products like apps and websites. Everything that is part of the visual layout and structure of a product, like buttons, a series of screens, or navigation icons, are part of the user interface; anything that the user may interact with can be considered part of the UI. All the principles of design, such as hierarchy and white space, are applied to UI design.

On the other hand, user experience is the overall experience that a user has while interacting with a product. UX design encompasses many things, UI design being one of them.

This may seem a bit confusing if you have never heard of UI or UX before.

This video should give you some valuable information about UI/UX Design and the differences between them.

I also suggest reading this article if you wish to delve a bit deeper.

Software

To get started with design and start making stuff, you’ll first need to download software that meets your specific requirements and familiarize yourself with it.

There are a lot of options available as far as design software goes. Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop are widely used for graphic design, and Adobe Xd and Figma are some great options for UI/UX design.

We’ll be briefly going over how to get started with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Xd, but feel free to explore Figma, Affinity Designer, Sketch, or any other design software if you wish

Adobe Illustrator

Illustrator is one of the best tools out there for creating vector graphics, which means if you want to make logos, flat illustrations, banners, or any pictures of the sort, you will find adobe illustrator very useful.

These videos will help you understand some of the essential tools in illustrator-

1) Learn to Draw Anything with Adobe Illustrator CC

2) Learn Illustrator in 5 MINUTES! Beginner Tutorial

3) HOW TO USE THE PEN TOOL - Adobe Illustrator

Also, check out this article.

Adobe XD

Adobe XD(Experience Design) is used for designing user interfaces of digital products like mobile apps and websites.

This video will give you a good idea about what UI Design is and how to get started with Adobe Xd. I highly recommend watching it and following along.

Note: To familiarize yourself with the software interface, you should open it and experiment with all the different tools that you see on the screen, irrespective of your prior knowledge.

How to become a pro

As with any skill, getting good at design will take time and practice. After visiting the links attached in this doc and gaining a decent understanding of design, you should start applying what you have learned to actual projects.

Start by following some tutorials (linked at the end) to familiarize yourself with the software. After that, try creating some work of your own.

You can use sharpen. design to generate prompts for design tasks to work on.

Inspiration is always helpful and can help generate new ideas.

These are some great places to find design inspiration-

1) Dribbble

2) Behance

3) Awwwards

You can recreate other people’s work to practice but never publish it or try to take credit for it; you cannot consider it your original work.

You should also keep in mind that mastering a software/tool does not make you a good designer. Technical proficiency is only a tiny part of the process.

The best way to practice and improve is by regularly working on projects of your own. The first few pieces of work you create probably won’t be very impressive, but you should not let this dishearten you. Just keep designing regularly, and you will gradually start improving.

Keep coming back to this doc whenever you need to refresh your memory.

Feel free to get in touch with a CW member if you have any questions or want feedback on your work :)