Real questions from real freelancers

"What are the most important design tools I should Learn"

Honestly, your tools don’t matter.

They will all change in 5 years anyway.
There are a huge no. of tools available in every field,
and the ease of these tools and templates available makes it too easy to run before you learn to walk.

Instead, spend time on learning the foundations.
I see a huge number of freelancers never learning the fundamentals.

If you’re a designer, focus your time on learning about hierarchy, composition, balance, contrast etc.
I’d spend 80% of my time learning Typography, this is the quickest way to elevate your designs to the next level.

Time saving cheat:

copy others.
Take the time to actually recreate what they’ve done, and unpick it, reverse engineer it:

  • why have they used that letter spacing?
  • why those colour shades?
  • why have they used less padding on the top of that button than on the sides?
  • Read design case studies
  • Google it, read about it, and repeat it.

When it comes to tools…

Don’t be distracted by the latest shiny object.

You don’t need to be proficient in Adobe premiere, capcut, Filmora to edit videos.

pick one software which gets the job done and do it.

Asked by

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Unkown

Freelancer

Answered by

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Nicholas Robb

Founder, Design Hero
Author of Life by Design

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