How to Become a Designer

If you want to learn design, begin by learning to take better photos. If your eye cannot compose a nice photo, you likely need to develop the fundamental spatial sensibility required to make a nice design, and learning photography is a simple way to do this.

The next step is to get comfortable talking about design. Find examples of design that you consider good or bad, and explain, in your own words, to someone else, why you think this. At first it will be hard and people might not understand you, but you’ll get better with practice.

Once you feel comfortable explaining a design that you think is good, create an account at figma.com and just try to replicate a part of that design. This will get you to acknowledge every detail of the design, and you’ll quickly realize that you can do this!

You’ll discover that even the most impressive and intimidating designs are composed of simple primitives that you can grasp immediately.

To quickly learn how these primitives come together to make all sorts of neat effects, peruse the source files of more experienced designers: https://www.figma.com/templates/

Finally, buy a fixed-gear bicycle and pick your designer name: a one-word name that sounds vaguely foreign to everyone, like Filberto or Omna. Hurray, now you’re a designer! 🎉