I’m pretty comfortable with photoshop at this stage. This time last year i barely knew how to open it up (well maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but i was nowhere near as useful with it as i am today). In order to take things to the next level i’ve decided to start looking in to designing in 3D.
Ideally, i want to stick with photoshop and just nail it. All aspects of it. Every tool, every setting, every pixel. It has a 3D tool but i’m clueless as to how to use it. So over the next couple of weeks, i’ll be doing some serious homework on it and starting to produce 3D designs.
Being able to design ‘on tap’ is a huge weapon in my arsenal. Admittedly, i’m still a novice though… i can see weaknesses in all of my designs. I know they don’t look right even if i don’t have the design vocabulary to explain why they don’t look right.
If i can get used to 3D and increase the speed at which i design & think, i’ve no doubt the quality of my designs will improve. You can see the improvements i’ve made over the past 40 days or so by checking out my older designs.
Some improvements are visible – you can see the difference in the style & quality of the finished products. The designs are becoming ‘smarter’ (well, most of them). But you can’t see that i’m reducing the time it takes to complete them. When i first started, i was lost. I’d ask myself;
- What font do i use?
- What pattern do i use?
- Do i use a background?
- Do i use icons?
- Is that text too big?
Nowadays i don’t ask those questions, i just start experimenting, just get stuck in. I’m able to match a design to a post much better. I’ll look at a post and come up with a keyword or two that sums it up, then base my design around that word. This easter design is a good example. It just looks ‘eastery’.
The colour, the balls, the chunkiness of it all… i can do better, i know i can, but there’s no way i could have done that a couple of months ago. And that’s what’s important… it’s not the quality of the designs i produce which is important (to me)… it’s the progress, the work rate, the development of everything… so long as i’m improving, working hard and experimenting, i know the quality of the stuff i’m producing can only increase over time.
So you can see why i’m trying to get in to 3D… it’s the next step on the ladder. It’s something new and that means i can only get better at it 🙂