Don’t be just a designer

3 min readMay 18, 2021

The “design” job titles are really in demand. Everyone out there want to be a designer — UI designer, UX designer, Interaction designer, Visual designer, Product designer etc. You name it. You can be a great designer by solving problem through your design but that won’t help you grow. In this blog, I’ll be sharing 4 skills, you should learn to be a successful designer.

1. Content Creation

Content creation is the act of producing information for an audience to be viewed on media platform. By creating content, you make your social presence, build an audience of yours, attract potential clients.

The secret is not to do more, it’s to create content that matters

2. Marketing

Marketing is all about communicating and promoting your services in a visual appealing way. You can be a great designer but if you can’t market your services, you can’t land more clients.

Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell

How to market your services:

Make your own portfolio
Engage more on social media platforms (Insta, Linkedin, Dribble, Behance..etc)
Share your experience and knowledge on social media platform.
Make an account on freelance serving companies like Upwork, Fiverr, Peopleperhour, etc and list down your services and share.

Negotiation

Negotiation skill are part of the core skills that enable you to communicate your value. If you’re as skilled in negotiations as you’re skilled in design, you can use your first job with client to persuade them to take on more contracts with you. With this skill set you will have greater job satisfaction, as you have clear objective and set milestones.

Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

I’m still learning this art 😬

Bonus tip: Clients usually have a unique needs, so try to have flexible packages of services rather than one size fits.

Time Management

You can have all the design skills or ideas or different things you wanna try as designer but if you can’t manage your time, you’ll barely be able to do stuff as you’ll burnt out yourself from unorganised time management.

If you wanna do more work in less time is by scheduling and doing that task. Simple as that.

Tips to manage your time:

Understand how you work — The best designers know their strengths and are in control of the time they spend and the work they produce because they are focused and plan out their priorities.
Take breaks- As designers, working with breaks and constraints allows us to focus more on the problem and provide a framework in order to achieve a goal.
Have smaller goals: Nothing can be achieved overnight. Small goals will lead you toward your bigger goal.
Reward yourself: It’s usual to get burn out and not feel very motivated. In order to stay motivated, you need to celebrate your small wins.

I believe there are many more things what designer can do to stand out in this growing industry. I also believe that we won’t stop being just a better designer but also grow ourself as an artist.

Anyway, feedback or comment? I’ll really appreciate it!

Reach out to me on LinkedIn: sahilbishnoi