3 Habits I Have Developed to Become a Better Web Designer

I remember a time when I was fascinated by the people who knew how to make websites and I used to think to myself “I wish I knew how to do that as well”. It was a skill I always wanted to acquire because 1) it was cool and 2) let’s face it, it’s also a great way to earn a decent livelihood (According to PayScale.com, the average web developer’s salary ranges from $36,000 to $80,000).

As great as all of this sounds, I didn’t just want to stop there but rather keep pushing myself to get better at it with every new project. After all, I believe that humans are never moving in a straight line, you’re either going up or going down. Even when you think you’ve come to a stop, you’re actually going down because the whole world around you is moving so fast and it’s always moving up that you, in fact, are actually going down.

Keeping that in mind, with the emerging of tools like WordPress, Squarespace and many other frameworks that require absolutely no coding knowledge, making a website wasn’t the problem anymore but rather designing a good website is something that still lacks out there and that is what I wanted to focus on next.

Here are some of the habits I have developed that have not just changed my perception of design but have also allowed me to become a better web designer over the years and even led me to work with big organizations like Mitsubishi and the National Center for Big Data and Cloud Computing (NCBC). 

Start Reading More Books on Design

I know most of you will already be bummed by the idea of reading books. I understand! I have been there myself and I never liked reading at all until recently when I forced myself to start reading (courtesy of COVID-19 quarantine) even if it was just one page a day. 

Why is reading important? Firstly, as Timothy Ferris says in his book The 4-Hour Work Week that if you want to become an expert in something, read the three top-selling books on your topic. By expert, he does not mean that you’ll become a know-it-all but you’ll know enough to call yourself an expert i.e someone who knows more than 70-80% of the people on that topic.

Secondly, there are two aspects when it comes to design. One is the skill and the other is the mindset. Skills are basically the tools you use to develop a particular design and that is something you can easily acquire by watching a tutorial on Youtube but the mindset, on the other hand, is the ability to start looking at things from a different perspective that will tell you what you have to develop in the first place. Now that is not a skill you can just acquire overnight but it’s like a habit that will take time to build. These books will basically tell you what is that thinking you have to develop in order to become a better designer. 

That being said, these are some of the books I’ll recommend for you to get started

Obviously, there are many other great books out there but these are some of the books I’m currently reading or have already read that I loved but like every other thing you do just reading about it won’t be enough. You’ll also have to practice what you read and that brings me to my next important habit.

Study The Websites You Use Everyday

We all spend more than half of our time on the internet every day and in that time we go through tons of different websites so the easiest thing you can do to put what you learned to practice is to start studying the websites you use rather than simply scrolling through them. See what things they have done right and what things they have done wrong that could be improved.

Even these big companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, etc. having a huge team of talented designers don’t have the perfect designs and if looked carefully you can even spot some bad design choices they have made on their websites/products. It’s all about making a practice to start observing things through a different angle and this does not just apply to websites but everything that’s around you. 

When you keep doing this for a long time, it will eventually become a habit for you and the next time you’re making a website yourself, you’ll automatically be in that mindset where you start observing your own work through that perspective as well. Another advantage of this is that after you’ve studied a lot of different websites there’ll be a huge collection of good and bad designs imprinted in your brain and the next time you come across a design problem, you’ll instantly remember a solution for that same problem you saw on a particular website that you can also implement.

Never Reinvent The Wheel

As a designer, you tend to be a little egoistic and wouldn’t want to use anything that’s a work of someone else’s thinking. While I do appreciate the sentiment, I also believe in doing things the smart way which brings me to my next habit.

If there is something you can use that already exists out there, then without feeling guilty about it use it rather than reinventing the wheel.

What do I mean by this? There are tens of thousands of different themes out there made by experienced designers and developers that will reduce your effort when designing a website because they have done most of the work for you. Use Them! No, I’m not talking about the free themes out there but the premium themes that actually provide some value.

Spending a couple of bucks to reduce your effort is the smartest way to go. Sure, these themes might not exactly be according to the requirements of your website but don’t just use them blindly. Using a theme will basically give you a good base to start with that you can then modify based on your requirements. 

If you look at the websites I have developed, for all of them I’ve used a theme that I bought from ThemeForest but if I show you the theme and my website side by side you won’t be able to actually tell that a theme was used to produce that particular website because although I did set up a base using that theme, I also used my own thinking to decide what components of the theme can be used as it is and what components need to be modified for a better design experience. 

At the end of the day, the users don’t know or care whether you’ve designed the website yourself or used an existing design. All they care about is the final output that is able to fulfill their needs. After all, design is not about making the website elegant, it’s about making it as functional for an average user as possible. For that, even if you have to keep things simple then be it (The K.I.S.S Principle).