Self Education
Since leaving university, I have been trying to find different ways to improve my skills. The opportunity to study design in university was something I am grateful for but I knew I had the responsibility of continuing to educate myself. There are so many resources on the internet to use and it definitely got very overwhelming for me.
Here’s a broad compiled list of resources I have found the most useful recently. All these designers and resources do a great job in covering the practical and technical sides of being a freelance designer.
The Futur. / https://thefutur.com/
This platform has been one of the best resources I have found and wish I knew about it earlier. As much as I despised lectures in university, I really enjoy watching and listening to the talks on their YouTube channel and Spotify. The talks are easy to understand and the conversational tone helps it stay interesting. They explore a lot of topics around how to help creatives make a living out of what they do. This includes pricing, motivation, portfolio work and advice on running a creative business.
Stefan Kunz / https://stefankunz.com/links
As mentioned before on my previous blog, Stefan Kunz has been a great influence in improving my lettering skills. I have followed a few of his live streams which have been really enjoyable and informative. He breaks down how to use composition and grids according to different styles of lettering and typography in a simple manner.
Jasmine Dowling / https://www.jasminedowling.com/
I have been following Jasmine for a very long time since her work is very similar to the work I create. She shares a lot about her mental process on Instagram and posts blogs about how she overcomes challenges as a freelance designer. I really like how her work is influenced by her personal lifestyle which I believe is very important in establishing your own identity.
Will Paterson / https://willpaterson.design/
Will is a great logo and branding designer to check out as he shares a lot of insight into his creative and technical process. I have particularly been watching his content to watch him review online portfolios and a couple of his logo tutorials as well. The way he delivers his content is very straight forward, informative and easy to watch.
I hope this helps anyone else who feels stuck with understanding how to improve their own design knowledge and skills beyond their formal education. A useful video I recently watched to help me overcome being overloaded with too much information is this talk between Chris Do and Melinda Livsey. I highly recommend watching this video which has also been turned into a podcast on The Futur’s account.
Feeling Overwhelmed— Information Overload ep. 6 w/ Melinda Livsey
To narrow down what kind of skills you want to learn, ask yourself what you specifically want to know about. The ideas I had in mind were usually too broad and unstructured. I was always too ambitious about what I wanted to learn at one time. This usually ended up with only not being able to remember much because all the content I looked into were disconnected. I also didn’t give myself time to practise the concepts too which is really important for retaining and understanding information. I will be posting about what resources I have used to target specific goals in the near future. If you have any recommendations on resources to check out, please let me know as well!
Take care
— S