Sketch every weekend

Thinking about designing for the web, but don’t have confidence? Let me share a quick story. I’m not the greatest drawer in the world. I wasn’t classically trained. I have terrible handwriting, and my knowledge of typography and print is limited.

But I do consider myself a designer. And the one way I cope with my lack of illustration skills is by drawing on the computer. It started with Pixlr, then Photoshop, then Illustrator, and now Sketch. The stuff I used to create was awful. Seriously, it was really bad. But I picked 1 object every weekend and I sketched it. I found stuff on Dribbble, picked simple cartoons and shapes, and just tried to mimic them.

In the beginning it was just an earnest attempt at getting better. But eventually I became good. And it gave me confidence to make better design decisions when building UI/UX components for the web. It allowed me to trust my design gut and to interact with other designers in the world.

You don’t need to be a world class artist to design the web. But you do need to have a design instinct. And that comes with practice. Don’t forget to practice. Sketch every weekend.