Expert: Huma Riaz - 6/19/2008

Question
Dear Huma,
I am a J2EE developer. Lately wanted to enter into web
designing field, first as front end designer and then
backend developer also. Back-end is not really an issue
as i am a programmer.
I have just started taking classes for Photoshop and
following book Adobe Photoshop in a class room. Very
factually speaking, i am not a very creative person,
but i want to learn web designing. Do you think a person
like me who is not very creative can become a good designer?
What are the best tips for learning photoshop?

Best Regards,
Ben

Answer
Dear Ben,

What my logic is that being a good person in logic is always hard to understand the aesthetic sense, but there are people out there who manages both. A good programmer faces difficulty to understand/ implement creative graphics and same vice versa for programmers.

You can learn graphics, and with great practice you will be able to understand the difference between a good and bad design.

What the basic point is to observe, copy and create.

Try looking around yourself as a creative person, the designs you see, the work you do, try to find the beauty out of every common thing you see. and then try to implement that into design, it is hard to tell that how to do that, but in short think creative. for instance, if you see a TV commercial which inspires you, try to remember and use any piece of that (maybe a single line out of it).

Copy: copy the designs you like, yes! The first step of being creative is to make something exactly you like, and then make changes in to that. If you can start making your favorite designs absolutely as those, then one day you will be able to make something like that as well. :-)

Create: try practicing something which is difficult for you create, lets say it is hard to make a guitar, try making it in a piece of paper or PS, if you can do it, you can create a design of that as a own.


I hope this will help Ben, I can only suggest but the major part is inside you that you have to explore it in any other possible ways. This chapter needs a comprehensive overview, but due to short of time and typing, I can only manage to say less, but still if you find any thing to be clear don’t hesitate to ask,


Huma Riaz
Location: Karachi-Pakistan