Junior Digital designer: my first year.

Published in

8px Magazine

4 min readApr 15, 2020

Today marks my first year as a paid digital designer. Previous to this job, I worked in digital marketing and managed to squeeze a bit of social media assets design, but it was far from what I wanted to spend my days doing.

It’s been a steep learning curve to go from self-taught to where I am now, so I’d like to share some things I learned this year and some resources that I used to help learn.

What I learned in my first year of design

The best investment you make is in yourself

My parents have always wanted me to learn more, they raised me to be curious and to wonder which I am forever thankful for. They showed me the importance of any education. Whether it was University or YouTube tutorials, they always incentivised learning something new, developing my skills and learning new ones.

Suffice to say that I spent a lot of time making sure I learned new things. I learned all sorts of skills from paper cutting to pottery, not to advance my career directly but it made me feel more alive.

If you’re eager to learn something, even if it seems small or unrelated to your job position, do it. Curiosity fuels creativity and in the long run, it will piece together.

Jack of all trades, master of some

Disclaimer: I might well change my mind, but as it stands at 20:29 on 10th April of 2020 and one Pink Gin in (basic, what can you do) this is how I see it:

You are better off learning lots of things than mastering one.

As a junior there is so much to learn, so much to explore. How will you know what you’re good at if you don’t at least try? I have the attention span of a toddler and jump from thing to thing BUT I do strongly believe that a lot of pressure is put into young designers to have their skills nailed down. Design is a craft and there is time to perfect it, but surely one of the perks at this stage of our careers is to have fun and experiment. Don’t get too hung up on one thing that you aren’t doing very well at this point, you will have time to master them.

If you don’t know, ask.

This one everyone knows about, my only advice is to reach out to other designers and creatives. There is a huge amount of support in the online design community. Slack groups to twitter, by in large people are pretty open to giving advice if you ask for it.

Check-in with your expectations

You are at the stage that you are in. I found it hard to be proud of how far I’ve come, partially because of imposter syndrome, partially because I kept feeling like I was not meeting the expectations of people around me.

With one year’s experience there is a lot more I wish I could do and be better at but I’m not. It is very easy to look at other designers, whether it’s on dribble or Instagram and it feels like you are not doing enough. The design world can feel like a popularity contest, but you don’t need to take part in it to be a good designer. Although I use Dribble and Instagram to both share my work and to find inspiration, I found that too much of it resulted in me feeling deflated and disappointed in myself for not designing this or not having perfected the skill of calligraphy which I never even tried. Now I am kinder to myself, I acknowledge the things I need to improve but equally the things I have achieved so far. And I remember that design can be subjective and not fulfilling everyone’s expectations isn’t my burden to carry.

Like everyone else, I am doing my best.

Resources

Here is a list of resources that are helping me improve as a creative. Some of them are paid, some are free and others a mix. This is not an extensive list of all the design resources out there and I am always welcoming of new suggestions.

Tutorials/ Courses

SuperHi- Where I am currently learning how to code & has an amazing supportive community.

https://www.superhi.com

School of Motion — Really great tutorials for motion design

https://www.schoolofmotion.com/

Design+Code — a range of courses from design to coding languages

https://designcode.io/

Youtube channels:

DesignCourse — Garry teaches anything and everything from Design to Coding

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVyRiMvfUNMA1UPlDPzG5Ow

The Futur — Great videos on not just practical skills but also soft skills, like how to be a more confident designer and get that job

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-b3c7kxa5vU-bnmaROgvog