HOW DO I STUDY?

Natalia Gasior
May 13, 2018
3 min read

Updated: May 16, 2018

When I started university about 8 month ago I thought that knowing Photoshop is a good start, it quickly turned out that it was not enough and Illustrator will become my great love... despite all of my cursing and moaning.

But hey... all great loves have ups and downs. Even these between graphic design studentS and AdobE.

Everyone has a different way of working. I will share with you my personal tips which helps me during design process and make it for me much easier and pleasant. I hope you will find here something useful for you!

1. Stages

Making an work-order usually helps me with organizing my thoughts and I often come up with new ideas doing research like that. My stages differ depends on a project but they usually look like this:

A) BRIEF: What brief says? Mark the most important parts and requirements

B) MIND MAP: Make a mind map, if the topic of your project is f.ex."Space" - look for associations & ask friends for some

C) INSPIRATION?: If you want - you can look for inspiration on the internet or in a library, but it can be tricky! Ones you see some of other designers work, it may be harder for you to come up with something new and original, you will feel that "everything has been already done"

D) IDEAS: Ones you finished your mind map, and looked for different meanings/synonyms/associations/... - make a list of any slogans and catchy phrases, sometimes the idea for illustrations comes right after coming up with a text.

E) PICK COUPLE: Decide on couple of your best ideas - about 4/5

F) SKETCHES, SKETCHES, SKETCHES: make different versions of them but keep it simple - don't work too hard because it will take too much time, just drawings and sketches will be fine

G) DEVELOP 1 or 2: Now you have some of your ideas developed a little and you are able to compare them, see which one do you like the most, which one will be more/less challenging for you etc. - decide on one/two so you can develop it more

H) SCREENSHOTS: When you are working on your final idea, make screenshots/photos from time to time which you can paste on sketchbook or online doc later. You will quickly forget how you created something, especially that as a student you probably make a lot of thing by "trial and error method", experimenting, clicking everything just to try it for fun. For this reason - save your design process, so you can see later, step by step, how the project was made.

I) DUMMYS: Remember about "dummys" - trail versions! If it's a book, or even simple poster - when you print it, everything may turn out to be too big/small, set up wrong... It is always good to make a trial

J) "THANK GOD": Your work is done

2. PROGRESS PAGE

It is very important part - thanks to this, I learned more how to use Adobe and it made me feel better whenever i thought

"I can't do nothing... I learned nothing... what have I actually accomplished?".

During my first project I had troubles with making a simple curved line in Illustrator, couple month later I did three-piece poster with over 1 thousand elements - all done in the same programme. It's easy to forget what you've learned or how you solved some problems - this is why i am making a progress page after every of my projects.

I make notes of new options and tricks I have learned, point out what was difficult for me and my solutions; I also make a list of problems I didn't solve - couple month back it was "I still don't know how to make a heart shape with curvature tool", now - a little bit more advanced and complicated questions.