Photoshop

Can Design be learnt?

This has been a highly debated topic amongst those who are designers, and those want to become designers, but feel they do not have any artistic talent.

To start with, I believe I was one of those who did not have any artistic talent, especially as I have difficulty visualising things in general, and my mind works in a very logical way, however, with lots of practice I have found that my design skills have improved alot, though I do have a somewhat sledge-hammer approach to design.

A lot of designers who do have natural artistic talent believe that it cannot be learnt, and believe that those who want to learn must at least have some artistic flare, or understanding, but from my experience this is totally wrong, however I do have a few tips for those who are perhaps programmers like myself, and want to improve their design skills.

1. Grids

Though a lot of professional designers use this already, if your newish to design, or haven’t explored all the features like me, you’ll enjoy the use of grids. This can help you maximize the space you are using, and align things consitently.

To do this in photoshop, go to view, show, grids.

Then you can change all the settings in, edit, preferences, grids guides etc.

Ctrl + H - hide and show grids

For other software, or other versions of photoshop you will have to go searching about.

2. Use Photoshop, don’t use any other crap

I guess I just thought of this one really, all other graphics software is sub-standard in my opinion, they just don’t cut it. I’ve tried other software like Gimp (open source freebie) and Paintshop Pro (lots of versions), and they are really rubbish, awkward to use, and miss out on lots of features - also if you want to do something in design for a living, you need to use the industry standard - which is photoshop, so go pick yourself up a copy.

3. Don’t Over Use Photoshp Filters

Photoshop has plenty of great filters to play with but we’re all sick of lens flares ok, so don’t, unless your making a space website, cause then it looks really cool. But seriously, there are some obvious ones so just think twice about over doing it.

4. Make sure you save for web, and use gif / png’s and jpg appropriatley

Now assuming we’re talking about web graphics, make sure you use the cntrl + alt + s shortcut to save for web, mostly gif’s are great, but if your using photographs, jpg’s are the best idea. If you do use png’s remember that they don’t work so well in internet explorer 6, but they’re are javascript hack’s to fix this. PNG’s are great for transparency’s, but remember the browser limitations.

Hope this was useful, thanks.

Wuup

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