3 Key Elements for Improving your Design Skills

How can you continue to improve your web design and programming skills? Many designers believe in reading books and magazines, but there are many more ways of achieving this.

1. Do something new.
Do not be afraid of trying something you have never done before. The best way of learning something new is to do something you are not able to do yet. Chances are high, that you are doing something now, that you were not able to do before at some point in your life, right?. This will never change. Whether it involves a cms you have never used before or higher expectations from your client side, if you do not give it a shot, you will lose.

2.Do not always take the first solution.
It is without a doubt a rewarding feeling having solved a particular problem. Nevertheless, there are always alternative ways. Is your solution realized correctly? Is it possible to make your solution more efficient? Instead of trying to find all the necessary pieces you need, just try sometimes to build something completely from scratch. This is no joke, by understanding exactly how certain things work, you will be different from others.

3. Start your own projects.
If you just finished a project for a client, chanches are good that you did not do something drastically new. And of course your client will have a problem with you taking more time than needed to finish your work. There is a solution to this. Start private projects. Whether it is a Wordpress ad-on or just something useful, spending a little time after finishing your actual work with something private, even if it is not much, will expand your horizon. This is certainly not a waste of time, since you will learn something, expand your portfolio and in some cases it can very well help you to promote yourself.