No matter what level you’ve reached in your career or journey as a designer, there is always room for improvement! Today I’m going to cover a few ways you can improve your design skills and reach your next level.

Design Magazines
Magazines like Advanced Photoshop, Photoshop Creative and Digital Arts are great resources. Not only do they have great and easy to follow tutorials to help you improve your skill, learn new techniques, but they also provide you with some free resources like stock photos, textures and brushes. Added to this they also have articles that give you some insight into what is going on in the industry.

Hit the Books
Books are a great way to learn or brush up on the fundamentals, or even learn how to use a new piece of software. I highly recommend the SAM’s Teach Yourself in 24 Hours books, as well as the Adobe Classroom in a Book series. One of my own personal favorites though is Scott Kelby’s Photoshop for Digital Photographers. Since I’m big on photography, retouching and photo manipulation I consider this book essential.

Become an Apprentice
The downside to a design education is you’re likely to have a professor that hasn’t worked directly in the field for 5 or more years… in an industry with standards and technology that change nearly every year and even sometimes every few months.  Becoming the apprentice of someone actively working the field today, and every day has many benefits. In particular you are learning “exactly” what you need to know, and what is relevant because these projects are live and for real clients, not theoretical or based on standards, techniques or technology from years ago, or from a perspective that isn’t relevant to your part of the industry.

Go to Design School
Despite what I just said, there are reasons to go to design school (don’t forget that I did this too!) , one the main reason being you will learn the fundamentals and get advice from people with at least a decade or two of experience. Don’t get stuck on the fact that some of their information may or may not be dated, there are plenty of things that were true 100 years ago that still hold water today, so be mindful, ask questions and be sure to get your money’s worth out of your professors. Also make sure you take advantage of the fact you may have access to software equipment you wouldn’t have otherwise. Spend as much time as you can in the computer lab if that is the case.

Online Tutorial and Blogs
The internet is great, there are a ton of free resources out their just waiting for you. DesignJuices, SmashingMagazine, PSDTUS, and Fuel Your Creativity, are just a small sampling of some of the best resources out their for tutorials, stock images and even give aways that any designer would be lucky to have. But you don’t need luck, just sit down take your time and use these sites to help improve your skills.  Don’t forget my own blog is here for you too!

Youtube Videos
Sometimes the quickest way we can learn something is by seeing done. If you don’t have a designer on call that you watch do something clever, no worries, that why we have Youtube! If I don’t know something I can find a no nonsense video that will show me how to get it done. There are countless youtube channels dedicated to tutorial and demonstrations of Photoshop and all the other design programs, with nearly every technique under the sun.

http://youtu.be/OzBjQmcdGDs

Experiment with Design and Art!
Don’t just play it by the books, dive right in and just try something new and see what happens. Some the greatest creations in exist were mere accidents, so don’t be afraid to have one! Enjoy seeing just what you can do without following the rules exactly or try deviating halfway through a tutorial or even combine things you’ve learn or seen elsewhere. If somethings starts working out, don’t over think it, just go with it.

I hope these tips were helpful to most of you, if you are designer and have any other advice for the rest of us, feel free to speak up in the comments.

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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Roberto Blake | Typography | Graphics Design Is

Many designers, have and will continue to underestimate the amazing power and range of typography.
There are several reasons for this, but the reality is that typography is essential to a design skill set.
When stacked against photo-manipulation, digital painting, vexel artwork, and animation, the prospect of working with type, doesn’t sound all that exciting to most people.
Truthful, its because they don’t know any better.

All of the above mentioned techniques/skills can be incorporated into typography or used to balance it.
The range of design styles to which typography can be utilized is nearly unlimited, in fact there are very few designs that would not benefit from having typography introduced to them at some level.

So how can typography make me a better designer?
By getting used to the idea of conveying your message visually with type you can save yourself a lot of time creatively. The process for a design that uses a lot of photographic elements, or elements that are hand drawn, or digital illustrations is extensive. This does not even include the time it takes to develop inspiration or the process of experimentation. The work in editing and adjusting your images before you actually even start designing is very involved.

With type you can jump right into things without having to extract, adjust levels or curves, or work within alpha channels. The fact that if you’re working with Adobe Illustrator, all of your artwork is scalable and easy to reproduce, or move over to work with your other elements doesn’t hurt either.

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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Roberto Blake | Graphic Illustration | Paper Gangsta Girl

Paper Gangsta Girl
Like my other image Poker Face, Paper Gangsta Girl is an image inspired by a Lady Gaga song. For this image I wanted to combine certain effect in a subtle way.

I’ve seen this particular stock image used by digital artist in the past in a way that made me feel the effects took away from the image rather than complimenting what was already good about it. I tried to bring that feeling of movement and energy to the piece in a more minimalist way, while embracing a “hip hop” theme.

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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Roberto Blake | Graphic Illustration | Buttercup

Buttercup
While in Barnes & Noble I decided to pickup the book the Princess Bride on a whim last week only to find that it was going to be playing on telvision soon! This being one of my favorite movies growing up, and one of my favorite novels as a teenager, I decided to do a series of images as a tribute. “Buttercup” is the first image in the series. I found a stock photo that I felt favorite the lead heroine and decided to work some photoshop magic.

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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Roberto Blake Graphic Illustration Star Girl

Star Girl
Star Girl was interesting to work on, I used several effects here including one the required me to make a custom flare-brush set. This has since become one of my most popular images on both Photoshop Creative and Advanced Photoshop.

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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Roberto Blake | Graphic Illustration | Poker Face

Poker Face
More often than not I get the creative inspiration for my artwork from music, movies, or books. In this case I was inspired by watching the music video “Poker Face” by Lady Gaga. I found the colors, objects and symbols that repeated throughout the video (mostly associated with cards and gambling), to be a great source of design inspiration. Feeling the need to work more with closeups I decided that the stock image on the cover of  Issue 55 of Advanced Photoshop Magazine, would be perfect for this project.

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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