As you get into using our range of print yourself cards, labels and business cards you are bound to want to start working on improving your designs. To achieve this, you will inevitably have to start researching what it takes to become a designer. To help you on your quest, we have pulled together a list of great resources that can help you learn to become a designer.

 Some helpful books

We enjoyed this blog by a designer who taught herself. She suggests a number of helpful books to help people learn to become a designer. They include You Can Draw in 30 Days to help you to learn how to draw and Picture This which is recommended for giving a good grounding in the foundations of graphic design.

 Fonts and colours

Most layouts and designs involve a font element and many are dominated by text. This blogger declares that “fonts are the single most important factor in design” and offers some helpful resources and links to aspiring designers. There are also some links to resources to help designers with colour rules.

Copy others

Why reinvent the wheel? There are countless examples of great design out there for a learner designer to take inspiration from and try and emulate. A quick search and we found grainedit.com which pulls together 1950s to 1970s-inspired design, and is a great starting point for anyone looking for a vintage style to their design.

Another example of a helpful site is dribbble.com – a website where designers upload their work. One nice thing about this site is if you see a design with a colour you like, you can search for other designs which use the same or similar colour.

Illustrator

Illustrator is the industry-standard vector graphics tool that enables designers to create logos, icons, sketches, typography, and complex illustrations. This site offers links to tutorials to help new designers get to grips with this important tool.

Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is the leading image editing software tool around, allowing users to crop, resize and enhance photos. Creative professionals and designers swear by it but there are also affordable packages for home users. From this site you can access numerous of helpful resources to boost your Photoshop knowledge.