There is only one way to improve your design work: do more design work. Try new things, tweak your work, get advice from others, listen to others, and spend some time away from a project. You’ll come back to it with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective.

Advice from two wonderful modern-day artists:

“Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.”

Chuck Close

“Do something, do something to that, and then do something to that.”

Jasper Johns

The process most designers follow

1. Research
   Determining the end goal and setting the course to achieve it. This includes interviewing the client, determining the message and audience, researching the competition, finding inspiration from other design work and ideas, and determining what design styles are appropriate for your client’s project.
2. Ideation and Design
   Defining brand and assets to be used and then begin designing. This includes brainstorming, sketches, progressive thumbnails, collaboration for ideas, thinking about your idea, talking about your idea, etc.
3. Critique
   have your work critiqued by yourself, peers, collaborators, sample audience, and the client.
4. Final Design
   Finalize a design (or 2 or 3) to show the client
5. Critique
   Critique again
6. Present
   Present and defend your work
7. Adjust and Redesign
   Adjust and redesign until your final product meets the needs of your client and their audience
8. Deliver your final design work
9. Reflect
   Reflect on your work and see what you did well and where you could improve next time

There are many ways to develop an idea – Try them all!

You can develop an idea by thinking about it, talking to other people about it, collaborating with others, looking at inspirational ideas, sketching, drawing, painting, or progressive thumbnailing directly on the computer. Try all of them and see which works best for you and your style and personality.

Here’s a wonderful student example of how to develop an idea . . .

Thank you to Ashley, my student, for letting me use her design work to inspire future students. Ashley met face-to-face with her client at New Horizons to determine their needs. After discussing their marketing needs for upcoming promotional campaigns, Ashley researched what other organizations were doing for similar projects. A simple web-based image search is a great start.

It helps to research the competition to know two things:

1. What everyone else is doing so you do something different
2. Learn what styles are currently being used and are appropriate for your client’s industry

Start Designing

Next, Ashley opened Illustrator and started thinking of the best way to visually communicate her client’s message to their target audience.

Here’s another example from Ashley

This sample shows again how many concepts it takes to develop and refine a good idea

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Again, follow a design process

You should follow a graphic design process to achieve the best results. Here’s an example of the process most designers follow:

1. Define your project’s objective
   • What does your customer want?
   • What is your message?
   • Who is your target audience?
2. Find inspiration
   • Research the competition
   • Research what other designers are doing
   • Find trends in design, type, colors, photos, and art styles
3. Design
   • Find a real guide or template to use
   • Sketch your ideas or jump right on the computer and start designing
   • Design 2–3 final concepts for each project
4. Present your work
   • Critique – get feedback and many opinions
   • Adjust your design to make it better
   • Reflect on your design and feedback