Staying Up to Date in Design Industry

How do you become innovative? First of all you need to understand the past, analyze the present and predict the future. In order to create better products and understand design you need to be updated and open-minded. In this article I’ll try to explore the ways of staying ahead in the design industry. I’ll talk mostly about web scene but tips and resources are fully applicable in other design fields too.

Open Mindset

Staying fresh and up to date in any situation in life whether it’s your relationship, hobby or professional work is coming down to mindset. You need to understand that everything around you is evolving and changing very quickly.

“The only thing constant in life is change” ― François La Rochefoucauld

Forever learning and curious minds will eventually take the lead in any industry and design is no different. Always be open to learn more, dig deeper in design fundamentals, design related fields like psychology, human behavior, history and other to make you understand design better.

No matter how many master degrees you have got, how many world class projects you’ve created or even if you have written a book or two in the field your knowledge gets old and rusty. You have to keep up with new technology and methodologies that change the world and generally make our, creators and designers, work easier and more accessible to users.

Activities

Take a side project

One of the ways to stay up to date is to practice your craft daily. Even if you don’t have any work to do on design or just feeling like nothing is on your mind do some designs just for fun. Side projects are getting more and more praise from world class designers like Tobias van Schneider from Spotify or Sacha Greif and are changing how professional designers get hired. You don’t have to have a degree from famous university nor a stunning client list, it is enough to have a side project that makes you happy and lets you explore your potential and express your creativity.

Do some volunteer work

Take up some pro bono work to explore the possibilities of design and try out new techniques and tools you always wanted but were too constrained when doing a corporate client work with endless and strict style guides. There are many companies and organizations in need of their design refresh. It is our duty as designers here to make our world more beautiful place.

“The life of a designer is a life of fight: fight against the ugliness.” ― Massimo Vignelli

Acquire a new skill

Learn something different. Coding is going very closely with design nowadays, teams that have designers and engineers working closely tend to produce amazing results. According to Wells Riley from Startups, This Is How Design Works, startups like GitHub, Airbnb, Square, and Fitbit have design at the core of their business, and they’re doing phenomenal work.

There are many passionate communities and educational websites where you can learn to code in your spare time. It is fun too, considering modern gamification applied and immersive communities doing “real world” work that may result into great and unexpected success.

Team Up and Create Something Together

As I already mentioned, hobbies or side projects are becoming the new resume for design industry and you should definitely give it a try. However, not all of us are fortunate with plenty of spare time due to school, family or health. There is always a way to make things happen, you can easily find awesome people and team up to create something just for fun.

You can try intense work events like Startup Weekend or hackathons. I cannot list out the places where you can find certain events as it is very different depending on the location but simply do a Google search or try to look for some events on Facebook, Eventbrite or Meetup.

There are couple useful online communities for finding a co-founder, idea or simply a member for a side project. Check out WeekendHacker, Build It With Me, CoFoundersLab and Founder2be just to name a few.

Networking

Meeting new people is essential in any field and having a strong personal or professional network will change the way you work and will put the odds for success on your side. There are many meetups, drinkabouts, hackathons and conferences around that will expand your horizon and will let you find new like-minded people. Active people who create stuff will teach you more about the industry than staff writers for big blogs, magazines or outdating books in the field.

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” – Jim Rohn

Step out of your comfort zone and meet new people who conquer the status quo and create innovative products for the world to push your own limits up. Here are some potential places where you can go and hangout with creative people: Silicon Drinkabout, CreativeMornings, this year’s design conferences list.

Digital networking is essential in 21st century. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ are the places where you can find the latest news from designers and creatives from different companies that shape the future of design industry. Follow people, interact with them and help whenever you can. Honestly speaking, I wouldn’t be where I am now if not all of my digital network mostly expanded using Twitter.

Tools

There are many tools available to get your work done and advancing in your craft. Many experienced designers claim that tools don’t matter, what really matters is a result. However, you should always seek for new ways to become more efficient and automate tedious tasks as much as possible so you can spend more time doing the fun stuff.

Keep an eye on new tools and techniques. If there is a tool that many designers switched to, there must be a reason, it might make your work easier or more enjoyable. Don’t dive into new things just because they’re new, give some time, see what people you trust speak and give a try yourself. Always have in mind that there is a learning curve that may cost time and stress but once you acquire a new skill or technique you will have more benefits and will be able to stay in front of the industry.

Check out communities like Designer News, Sidebar and Product Hunt to discover great tools and promising projects. Subscribe to different newsletters that are sending out regular findings on technology and worth trying tools. Some of the most popular ones are: Smashing Newsletter, Webdesigner Depot newsletter and Designmodo newsletter.

Resources

There are many resources available for free that you can take advantage of when learning new skills or simply making your work quicker. Read a book from time to time that discusses new things in the industry, a great website for finding your next design book is Designers & Books.

Check out huge resource collections like oozled, Web Design Field Manual and The Toolbox to find high quality graphics, software, tools and inspiration.

Check Feedly for subscribing to your favorite RSS feeds and Prismatic for incredible content discovery based on your interests.

Flipboard is also a great tool to find out what is going on in the design field.

Design Galleries

Finally, what we would do without brilliant platforms that let us share our work and get inspired by others. There are many great platforms where you can find incredible designs and get inspired. DeviantART, Behance, Awwwards, Dribbble are the top ones where you can also contribute and show your work. And here is a huge list of nearly 100 websites for visual inspiration where you’ll definitely find something you like.

Conclusion

Design is a big and fascinating industry that is changing and evolving at a rapid pace. In order to stay up to date you need to be really interested in the field as there are quite a lot to do to stay ahead. Hopefully these tips and resources I’ve collected in this article will help you become a better designer and become the next trend setter.