Why did I choose a web design career so that you should consider the same?🤔

Initially I chose web design out of nowhere in my college days. It was really hard for me to choose a perfect platform to learn web design. I decided to check out some books related to web design which allowed me to see the tech side of a web applications.

You won’t believe me.🤯 The first book I recommending to you gave me lot of insights on coding. When I dived deep into the domain, I could see myself getting inclined towards designing for web applications too. So I started to excersice my creativity while continuously learning and adapting to new technologies.

In this blog, I aim to share my knowledge and experiences in the past 6 years on how to start your career in the exciting world of web design. I have compiled a list of 5 most important web design books that you need to consider while choosing a career in web design.

So, let’s get started.😎

1. Web Design with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery Set — Jon Duckett

This book provides a solid foundation for web design by covering HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and jQuery. It includes interactive exercises and visually appealing examples to enhance your learning experience.

Get this book

2. Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability — Steve Krug

This classic book focuses on web usability and provides practical advice on creating intuitive and user-friendly interfaces. It’s a must-read for anyone involved in web design and development.

Get this book

3. Responsive Web Design with HTML5 and CSS3 — Ben Frain

Learn how to create responsive and mobile-friendly websites using HTML5 and CSS3. This book covers techniques for fluid layouts, flexible media, and effective navigation.

Get this book

4. The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web — Jesse James Garrett

Jesse James Garrett explores the essential elements of user-centred design, from strategy and scope to structure and surface. This book provides valuable insights into creating meaningful user experiences.

Get the book

5. HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites — Jon Duckett

With its visually stunning presentation, this book is perfect for visual learners. It covers HTML and CSS in a beautifully illustrated format, making it an engaging resource for learning web design.

Get this book

Choose it wisely to strengthen your web design muscle!😎

Expanding your knowledge and staying up-to-date with the latest web design practices is crucial for success in the ever-evolving digital landscape. The 5 most important books mentioned in this article for your web design career cover a wide range of topics, from coding and usability to responsive design and user-centred experiences.

So, pick a book that resonates with your interests and start exploring the exciting world of web design!😉

Are you the designer who states design discomforts like

…“I’m expertise only in illustrations,”

or …“I don’t know to work on landing pages,”

and even “Animation is not my cup of tea.” to the recruiters in interviews?

As a design recruiter, I interviewed many designers and heard most of them expressing their expertise in specific areas of design, and sometimes even outrightly state that they are discomfort in working in other design disciplines. While it may not be incorrect to hold such a mindset, but it can create self-imposed limitations that hinder personal growth and development.

What is a T-shaped Designer?

Having a deeper understanding and passion for a particular area of design is great, but understanding the value of having a broad range of skills and knowledge in different design disciplines is also important for a designer. This is what’s commonly referred to as a T-shaped skill set.

For instance, if you have deeper expertise in creating logos and brand identities for products, possessing the ability to create logo animations for product videos would be a valuable skill. This expanded skill set not only enhances your credibility with clients but also helps you to secure your financial stability.

But yeah, I can hear you asking “Wouldn’t it be an added advantage for the recruiter or organization to push me out of my limits and drain my mental energy and creativity?”.🤔

Answer

As companies seek to cut down their resources and increase efficiency, they are vigorously looking for designers with a broader skill set.

You will learn three qualities when you are the soul designer in the organisation.

• Project Management — You will learn how to manage organisations requirements. You would be able to set timelines for each projects.
• Transparency — You will be transparent with the stakeholders on what is possible and what is not on a specific time period.
• Team Management — Manage agencies and freelancers while outsourcing the organisation’s design requirement.

In terms of salary negotiations, having a T-shaped skill set can give you more leverage. By demonstrating your versatility and expertise in multiple areas, you can position yourselves as valuable assets to your employers, and demand a higher salary in return. This is particularly true in today’s competitive job market, where companies are seeking designers who can bring a broader range of skills and knowledge to the table.

But friend, at the first, the T-shaped design skills may seem daunting, it has the power to expand your skill set, increase your value in the job market, and demand a higher salary.

If you are a designer who wants to increase your value in the market, explore the power of T-shaped skill set and grab your cup of tea in each of the corner of the table in today’s fast-paced design industry.🤩

Here are some reasons why every designer should consider to develop a T-shaped skill set:

Versatility

With a broad range of skills and knowledge, you can be versatile on working in a different areas and take different projects. This can help designers to adapt to new technologies and trends quickly.

Collaboration

Being a T-shaped skilled designer, you can also be able to communicate more effectively with cross-funtional teams and stakeholders. This can help you to understand the perspectives and needs of other team members better, which can help to create more cohesive and successful projects.

Innovation

Be often more innovative than those with narrower skill sets. By having a deep understanding of a particular area, such as UX design, and a broad range of knowledge in other areas, such as marketing, business strategy, or technology, designers can see new connections and opportunities that others may overlook. This can lead to more creative and innovative solutions to design problems.

Career Growth

Finally, having a T-shaped skill set can lead to greater career growth and opportunities. Employers are increasingly looking for you who can bring a wide range of skills and knowledge to their table. You can also be positioned as valuable assets to any team, and those values can open up new career opportunities in a variety of fields.

The design industry never ends to evolve and change time to time. As a smart designer, it’s essential for you to be versatile and adaptable over a period of time. From increased job satisfaction to better career opportunities and greater job security, the benefits of being a T-shaped designer are clear.

So if you’re a designer looking to stay competitive and relevant in the industry, now is the time to start developing your T-shaped skills and becoming a better designer.

“Did minimalism become a social status for designers or any business stakeholders which sadly lead to losing interest in design?”

I always had this question in my mind and never brought it out assuming I’m the only person who is thinking this. But this LinkedIn post spoke out the essence I had in my mind. So I think it is time for me to speak about this now.

Yes, I personally feel we are losing interest in design in terms of minimalism and we became lazy to strive hard for better designs. Most of the designers from freshers to management still think minimalism is only of eliminating design elements and “Tadaa..”, we achieved a minimal design.

Not at all. Let me try to give you clarity on what minimal designs are.

Firstly, let’s understand what is minimal design and what you need to focus on.

Minimal design first appeared in eastern cultures such as in Zen Buddhism. Strongly influenced by Taoism, the Zen School of thought embraced simplicity, the “clean” and the harmonious. This philosophy then influenced the lifestyle and the notion of living place and aesthetics.

Dieter Rams, a German designer and considered one of the most influential designers of the 20th-century states that good design is as little design as possible. “Less, but better” since it focuses on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials.

Did you notice that?

Focuses on the essential aspects.

Minimal design is not about eliminating elements from a design. Minimal design is about focusing on the essential and removing the distractive elements that disturb the design.

If we remove all the small essential details or the essence of the design, in the name of minimalism, the product or the design doesn’t serve the purpose. It will remain no character or no details.

For example, let’s take any washroom sign board.

How do we find that there is a washroom? With help of the “gents” and “Ladies” sign board. Those are its own characteristics to find out there is a washroom.

If you remove the sign and shorten the word with “G” for gents and “L” for ladies, in name of minimalism, it is going to be hard for you to find out whether there is a washroom.

Now you might get a thought that minimalism has the advantage of doing less, production costs will be less, and less design effort. Yup, you are right. But…

What you can take from this example? I’m not against minimalism. But never compromise on its own functionalities and characteristics in name of minimalism.

I would have spoken about this topic in detail in my Tamil podcast called “THIKKU DESIGNER”. Listen to the full podcast to understand how well we can make better designs in name of minimalism.

This is a Tamil design podcast which aims to ENRICH the designer’s lifestyle by talking about the problems and giving different perspectives to approach them.

What is the one WOW factor of any product that you use that make you a potential customer of that brand? You might think of the affordability or the compatibility or the quality of the product? In my point of view, none of these guarantees the loyalty of the brand.

Still didn’t get the point? Okay! Let me put the story this way.

What makes an employee potential to the company? If you give him all the perks and benefits of the company, he becomes the one. Only if he gets appreciation and promotions which are his benefits, he becomes potential to the company.

Another example. As a brand designer, if my branding service gives you a purpose and solves all your branding problems, you will eventually become my loyal customer. But I term it as “Potential Client”.

As a brand, it should be your basic vision to give them the benefits of your products/services and should solve the customer purposes and problems.

I can give a live example of what happened to me to understand it better. Lately, I had some weird reasons to go to malls all alone. As a brand designer, I go there to check out every brand for my branding & identity inspirations.

Yes I know, it’s weird. That’s what designers do.

There is this incident that happened to me in that mall on the same day which made me answer the question “What makes me loyal to a brand?” as a customer.

SkinCare Products

A few days ago, I went to a skincare brand showroom (I prefer not to mention the brand) to buy sunscreens and face moisturizer for me. One reason I prefer online shopping and not going to the showroom is the sales staff who annoys you by pushing you to buy all the products. But sadly, that is their job to close their target of the day.

To my delight, none of that happened. When I entered the store, there were two staff who started to attend to me with a polite smile asking “How can I help you?”

Once I asked him to show me my sunscreen product, he brought two of the different products that would match my skin tone. He recommended me to use the other new product that I was not aware of. I was a little hesitant and had no chance but to try it anyway. He even taught me how to apply it to my face. And to my notice, I felt better.

What to be noted?

He didn’t push the product, he taught me how to use their product.

Since I was new to that product, I asked him “ what would be the side effects I might get?”. He smiled at me and explained all the side effects that occur from over usage of the product. The next thing he told throw me off. He continued to say “You don’t need to apply for every two hours. Your skin is less observant to apply for every two hours. If you do so it might lead to the development of skin cancer. Use it wisely.”

The words that were running in my mind “Well played, my boy. You won the marketing game.”

What should you learn as a brand:

Transparency: Don’t sell like you have the best product in the world. Sell it with all pros and cons of the product. Accept the cons of your product and sell it wisely.

Communication: Communicate in such a way that you control the emotion of your customer. He addressed all the pain points of why I need to shift to a new product from my existing product. NOTE: PAIN POINTS.

Targeted Audience: Sell the product only to the audience who really want your product. Never push the product to everyone.

Brand value: Ensure your brand communicate the value to all your targeted customers. If it miscommunicates to one customer, it is a failure to that brand.

Conclusion

So, I believe all the above factors which I have mentioned plays a major role to build your potential customer. It would be better to address these factors at the beginning of your brand.

As a brand designer, I develop strategy-based brand identity systems for small and mid-start-ups with elements like logo design, brand theme, brand collaterals, typography, brand colour palette and brand guidelines.

We are helping out different start-up brands with our branding solution package at reasonable pricing.

If you choose to define all these factors that were discussed in this blog for your brand, you can reach out to me at mail.karthikkrishnan@gmail.com or my Instagram handle.

Photoshop selections are used to isolate any of the subjects from the image approximately or accurately. You might have seen many photoshop selections tools like quick selection, Magic wand selection, lasso selections, and marquee selections which pretty good does the same thing around selecting the subject from the image we want.

But we don’t try to understand why Photoshop has these many selections is one interface. In this read, we will be covering the topics of all types of photoshop selections tools.

1. Marquee Selections
2. Freestyle Selections
3. Quick selections
4. Accurate selections — Pen Tool
5. Smart Selections
6. How photoshop Selection tools made an evolution?

Have the patience to read it. This will help you to get an idea of any photoshop selection tools.

1. MARQUEE SELECTIONS

• Rectangle Marquee Tool:

This rectangle marquee tool does nothing but makes a normal rectangle selection. This can be easily attained by clicking and dragging on the canvas.

The shortcut of the rectangle marquee tool is (M).

Normally, when you click and drag, the selection will be a rectangle. Unless if you hold SHIFT to make a perfect square selection.

• Elliptical Marquee Tool:

Elliptical Marquee Tool is one of the photoshop selection tools which pretty does the same as the rectangle marquee tool. But does the selection in a circular or elliptical way.

This is also easily attained by clicking and dragging on that canvas. The shortcut of this tool is pretty the same. (M).

Normally, when you click and drag, the selection will be in an elliptical way. You can hold SHIFT to have a perfect circular selection.

I know what you think in your mind. How come the shortcut keys of these photoshop selection tools can be the same?

The answer is, you can toggle between the Marquee tool selections using (Shift+M).

I hope I clear it now.

• Single Row Marquee Tool:

This selection tool will help you in selecting the pixels on a particular row of the canvas. This can be easily achieved by clicking on the region of the canvas.

Unfortunately, We don’t have any shortcut keys for this photoshop selection tool. We manually need to select the tool by holding and selecting the rectangular marquee tool.

• Single Column Marquee Tool:

This selection tool will help you in selecting the pixels on a particular column on the canvas. This can be easily achieved by clicking on the region of the canvas. This will select the column pixels of the particular region.

As same to the properties of a single row marquee tool, Photoshop doesn’t provide and shortcut keys rather you got to select manually from the panel mentioned below.

On the note, the Single row marquee tool and single column marquee tool mostly used in the pixel stretch effect. Probably I have used it in that. I hope it helps in all other design works you do.

2. FREESTYLE SELECTIONS

• Lasso Tool:

Using this tool, you can draw a freestyle selection around any region of the canvas. This can be easily obtained by shortcut key (L).

You don’t need to finish the selection. You can leave it open and it automatically completes the selection where you left.

For this kind of selections, Wacom is more preferable for making a freestyle selection for patching any region.

• Polygonal Lasso Tool:

This tool is a little similar to the pen tool. You can make points on the canvas to have a selection.

The properties look the same as the lasso tool but you will have control of the points. You can either complete the selection with a closed path or double-clicking on a point that will close the selection.

Let say if you placed a wrong point on the canvas, you can get back to the previous point by pressing BACKSPACE.

The shortcut key for this tool is (L) where you can toggle between freestyle selections using SHIFT+L.

• Magnetic Lasso Tool:

This tool is similar to the polygonal lasso tool. In this tool, you have to define one single point and move the cursor around the canvas. It detects the movement of the cursor and defines the path along the path.

There are no special shortcut keys for this tool. We have to toggle between the lasso tools using SHIFT+L.

Wacom is preferable for this tool. This is used in a freestyle way with a slight control in the points using Wacom.

3. QUICK SELECTIONS:

• Quick Selection Tool:

We normally use this tool to select a subject in a very short time. This selection tool selects all near most pixels around the area we clicked.

This would be the quickest way to select any subject rather than using a pen tool or lasso tool to go around the subject.

The shortcut of the quick selection tool is (W).

• Magic Wand Tool:

Magic wand tool does pretty well the same as a quick selection tool. But here you need to understand how both the selection tools work. It does a wider range of selections.

It selected all the identical pixels on a larger range in the canvas. It is one of the oldest selection tools in Photoshop.

This tool is more efficient for removing the white background from the subject.

4. ACCURATE SELECTIONS:

This section is all about the pen tool. Tbh, Many designers suggest mastering in pen tool. We have a lot to talk about the pen tool. Surely I will make another blog on the pen tool.

Here will give a glimpse of how the selection is made using the pen tool

• Pen Tool:

We can say the pen tool is the master of all selections. Because you can have control of the path and adjust the path using its handles. We can make an accurate selection using the pen tool.

You have to define the path using the pen tool and right-click on the path to making a selection.

The shortcut for the pen tool is (P).

I know what you think. Even a lasso tool does a similar way of selection. Why should I use a pen tool?

Your question is right. But when it comes to curved edges, the lasso tool doesn’t make perfect in that situation rather than using a curvature pen tool.

Apart from this, we also got smart selections which would be super interesting.

SMART SELECTIONS:

• Color Range:

Color Range is a smart selection where you can find them under Select — Color Range.

Ok, let’s try to understand the color range selection.

In the right middle, you can see three samplers. It samples the color from the subject to have a selection. The sampler with ‘+’ sign helps you to add color (i,e adding selection) from the subject.

In the preview box, you will see white color which starts to appear. That is the region the color range has selected.

We also have a select drop-down box where you can select channels like Red, Green, Blue(RGB) Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, Black (CMYK). (FYI, black is called K).

The FUZZINESS slider is used to add the essence of the selected color along the pixels. You can also play with that for smooth selections.

The RANGE slider helps you to increase the range of the pixels you selected.

Interesting isn’t?

We also got another smartest guy.

• Select and Mask:

This smart selection is used to refine the selections we made. In this smart selection, you can have control over the smooth, feather, contrast, and shift edges.

These smart selections techniques would help you to refine your rigid edges.

How photoshop selection tools made an EVOLUTIONS?

I know every selection tool does the same thing. All we need to know where we should use them and how. If you can remove the white background using the magic wand tool in a click, I would use it rather than using a lasso tool to go around the selection.

For example, if your client is in a hurry to catch a train, then quick selections got you covered. Every tool is unique in its own way. Better know their usage and use it wisely.

In later Adobe Photoshop CC 2019, Adobe upgraded with an artificial intelligence option called “Select subject”. This option automatically analyses your images and detects your subject.

This gave relief to all the designers who got fed up with selecting subjects. This reduces the time duration of the designer who selects the subject for an hour. But It doesn’t make a pretty job for all the images rather gave an initial start for selecting a subject.

Even later Photoshop 2020, “Object Selection Tool” reduced the stress of selecting the subject.

You can click and drag on the subject. It automatically detects the subject. If the selection is not pretty good, you can even zoom in the subject and correct the selection just by click and dragging.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. ❤

This tool is the best friend to all the designers now.

I think I have covered all the selections tools.

I hope this article gave you a clear idea about how the subject is selected.

STAY HOME. STAY SAFE.