Thanks DN: Am I a real UI designer? (1 year update)
almost 8 years ago from Marcus H, Design by Marcus
I made a post around a year ago asking if I'm a real UI designer and got a great response from the community. There were so many awesome and helpful posts that it took me the best part of day to reply to them all. I look back at it regularly because there's lot's of great advice in there!
Here's the original post :- https://www.designernews.co/stories/42878-ask-dn-am-i-a-real-ui-designer
So all-in-all I've been learning design for the past 18 months and I'd like to think I've made some decent progress. I started out with my first client at $20/hour and I'm now at $35/hour which is pretty great! I plan to raise my rate to $40/hour in January although I'm moving away from hourly work and will be quoting fixed prices whenever possible.
In the beginning I sought out inspiration more than I'd like to admit but I'm finding I need it less these days and I can get closer to the end goal without relying on outside help so much. I still have loads to learn and own a large amount of courses that I want to start working through asap, the actual amount of them is pretty ridiculous.
Here's a look at my progress so far, I hope 2016 will bring as much improvement as 2014-2015.
2014 - http://imgur.com/a/GqTQq (really horrible stuff) 2015 Jan to Jun - http://imgur.com/a/qqJ5J 2015 Jul to Dec -http://imgur.com/a/GcZSa
I've come realise that talent is not really that important for UI design (not sure about other area's of design). Time, hardwork and a love for the craft is more than enough to put you on the path to good things. I started with no talent for this so literally started at zero and I think I've done ok.
Here's a few resources I've found useful in my journey thus far :-
Paul Jarvis' Creative Class - https://creativeclass.io UXPin Ebooks - http://studio.uxpin.com/ebooks Austin Kleons's Steal Like an Artist - http://austinkleon.com/steal/ The Non-Designers Design Book - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0133966151 Tutsplus -http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/courses
Thanks again to the community of Designer News for the encouragement a year ago and all the great posts in between!
Marcus http://www.marcushanda.cohttps://dribbble.com/marcushanda
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