How does one get better at design?

I've been playing around with Adobe Photoshop for several years but I've made it a point to get good at it this summer. My ideas to improve are as follows:

• Tutorials (I try to do one everyday).
• Reverse-Design Websites (?)
• Compete in Design Contests - not necessarily to win. Just so you can apply concepts learned in tutorials.

Anything else you guys can think of? How did you get good at design?

- Tutorials! Definitely a great way to learn new aspects.
- Reverse-design ? never head of it =P
- 3rd point.. nuh uh.. people don't like the fact that you're using other peoples work (tutorials) and trying to enter them into contests, as some may say, I don't want a collection of someone else's work. So that could come back bad.

A point i would add though, inspiration websites, a well known 1 is www.inspirationking.com - great website with all the latest and greatest of web 2.0 styles! Great inspiration and ideas are caught from those kind of websites. So I'd say look around at them kind of sites, see what people like! Talk to clients, find out whats in and what.

But.. the main main key to design, is creativity! If you don't have creativity, no matter how long you design, you just can't get that 'design' in you.

Some people have it, some don't. Its a win loose world.

best of luck (Y)

same way you lean an instrument: practice.

you've listed enough reasons/methods to practice. it's up to how hard you push yourself.

I never actually looked at tutorials and used them. Honestly the best way is to find a nice site you like, and try to copy it. Now I am NOT saying rip the site, just do it for yourself. Make layers try to duplicate it. And once your done with that, you don't even have to show anyone, it is a good way to practice different styles. That is really how I learned.

Practice makes perfect, they say!

Well clearly practice is what needs to be done. But I would like to know the best way to practice.

If I spent six hours a day doing tutorials, I'd know how to do a lot of neat tricks but wouldn't know how to put anything together.

Are you even reading what we say? Forget tutorials, they teach you nothing that you would need to do websites and become successful. Try looking at OTHER websites and not riping, but take ideas and try to imitate them, you will get better and better then implement your own ideas.

Just brainstorm how you want everything layed out. Sketch the design on a piece of paper, decide what type of style you want and experiment

I found out I'm not the most creative person... unless I've had a few beers and have that happy accident. Emulating other people's work that you admire can help you at least develop a standard set of styles to work with. I'm more of a technical designer so I try to stay out of the graphics and design end and focus on function and clean code that works.

I found this article to be very inspiring for ripping ideas. This really helped me on the design level... white space is the stuff!
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007...clean-designs/

Originally Posted by SliceOfWatermelon Well clearly practice is what needs to be done. But I would like to know the best way to practice. If I spent six hours a day doing tutorials, I'd know how to do a lot of neat tricks but wouldn't know how to put anything together.

make up dummy briefs.

make a brochure/web site for an animal clinic. make something for a school. think of different types of clients that would want clearly different images - tattoo parlour will not want the same images as an elementary school.

that's half of what going to school for design is, is learning how to interpret and execute design briefings.