Believe In Your Web Design Skills But Never Stop Improving

31 August 2020

Wow, you’ve really compiled quite a web design portfolio! Your clients are happy with your work. You do everything you set out to do. Your pages are well-designed, effective, and user friendly, and your understanding of user experience is excellent.

But — you still want more.

There’s always another goal to reach, another skill to master. And that’s exactly how it should be. Web design itself is constantly morphing, changing, and adapting. Web designers need to do the same thing.

Here are five different tips to help you continue to improve your web design game, making sure that you keep your clients satisfied, and always reach for your next personal best.

Find Gaps In Your Skillset, And Fill Them

This tip calls for a lot of self-analysis, as well as a little humility. If you’re an accomplished, successful web designer, you may feel that you’re doing just fine as you are. But there’s no limit to how much can be learned about any subject, so this is a challenge to comb through your portfolio and work history and find something that you either don’t know how to do, or that you know you can do better.

A great way to highlight these skill gaps is by looking at current website design trends — more on those later — and seeing which trends you already know how to do. You might be great at setting up a traditional website, but do you know how to design 3-D elements? What about including color gradients in ways that facilitate the web page’s story?

If you’re really having trouble finding something to work on, open it up to others. You should be networking with other designers. Ask them to take a look at your portfolio and point out weak spots.

Alternatively, you may decide that you just want to up your game in a particular area. It isn’t always about what we lack — sometimes it’s just about building our ambition.

Experiment With Different Aspects Of Design

In that same vein, think about expanding your skill set by way of reaching into other areas of design. For example, you may be able to find the most effective, appealing way to create a layout for other people’s visual content. But can you create that visual content on your own?

Set yourself a challenge of creating an entire brand from scratch. Analyze the brand personality, create a logo design, jimmy up some content, and think about what you would want from a web design for that imaginary brand.

Stepping into the shoes of your clients can actually help you to improve your design game, because it makes you more aware of what they’re potentially looking for.

Analyze What Works In Other Designs

We can always learn from others. Sometimes we learn what to do — and sometimes we learn what not to do.

In any type of creative work, especially when it comes to articulating functional design, it’s always a good idea to look for inspiration from the experts. That doesn’t mean just imitating everything we see, but it does mean developing good judgement and taking the time to figure out what works and why.

Take a look at some existing websites that have been noticed for their good design, such as in lists like this one of 21 award-winning sites. You can usually find plenty of commentary on why good site design is clearly good site design, but it’s also important for your own sake that you can identify those reasons on your own.

Look at the sites that you commonly frequent. What draws you to those sites? What works best in the design, and where is the design weak? How could you fix it, and how could you employ the good ideas in your own designs?

Inspiration is always a good thing because it motivates us to continue to learn, adapt, and become better.

Play With Trends

Web design trends come and go — except for the ones that seem to make every trend list ever, like “simplicity” — but you’re not going to like all of them. And you may never get a chance to work with some of them, due to your client base.

But it’s always good to expand your experience.

So try playing around with trends, whether current or past. If you haven’t worked on a specific type of website before, give it a go. Even if you’re not doing it for an existing client, suppose that a client comes along in the future and wants that type of site. It’s better to offer a pre-existing experience rather than telling your client that they’re about to become the subject of an experiment.

Challenge Yourself

Our final tip is this: challenge yourself.

That means finding where you need improvement and pressing down hard. It means doing things like playing with trends, but it also means working in areas that you’re unfamiliar with.

If you’re a self-starter and don’t have any trouble finding motivation, you can do this on your own. Set a weekly or monthly goal to work on some new or difficult aspect of web design, and follow through on it until you’ve developed that new skill.

Some of us work better when we’re under pressure from others, however. But there are plenty of external design competitions to fuel that drive. Take a look at lists on sites like this AWWWARDS that point you in the right direction. Enter to learn — and enter to win.

You’re a great web designer, and you’ve worked hard to get where you are today. But there’s always something more to strive for, to keep your clients happy — and to keep yourself happy, too. By using these five tips, you can continue to grow your skill set, improve your value and status as a designer, and have more to offer to your clients.

Author Bio

Natasha Sokolov is a freelance content writer who digs deep to bring out fresh aspects of the topic she writes about. She can write on any topic under the moon in particular niches such as branding, digital marketing and online businesses.