neither pity nor pragmatism

There’s nothing wrong with looking for inspiration elsewhere! I almost always start by looking at examples of book covers I really like and taking pointers from other designers. Once I know roughly what I want the design to look like, I basically just start mocking up stuff with stock images and illustrations (: I’m not sure if you want me to go more in-depth into my whole process but this is it in a nutshell. Just lots of revisions and looking for inspiration in other people’s work.

I *think* I made one for Diagonal Alley but I can’t find it right now cause I’m about to board a plane lol. I’ve been meaning to get into making edits again so I’ll add the Hogwarts Express to my list!

Ummmmm I truly am not sure what you’re talking about lol. Do you mean the actual quality or the design? If you’re talking about the design then with those posters, I made sure to keep the text design relative simple with only a few embellishments so it didn’t crowd anything. I also made sure to keep the busiest part of the image/background in the lower half so the text had room to “breathe” (I hate this saying lol) and so it didn’t get lost. Hope that helped!

The best way to learn is to just do it. I started by messing around in Photoshop and learning the basics about photo editing, then moved into graphic design. There are lots of online tutorials that you can read and follow to learn about the basics. While it’s useful to do general knowledge-gathering, I find it’s actually more helpful to work on specific projects. For example, I actually learned a lot by just creating graphics on Tumblr. If I saw an effect I want to replicate, I’d either find a tutorial or find my own way of achieving the same look. You learn more when you bend the tools to your needs, if that makes sense. It gives you a more intimate understanding of the ways they can and can’t work.

Look for designs that you like so you always stay inspired to learn and improve. It’s hard to be good at graphic design, but not impossible. You don’t have to go to school for it, you just have to have a lot of patience and to really want to work towards a goal. It took me pretty much ten years to go from editing selfies to making graphics on Tumblr to illustrating and designing for my campus newspaper to finally working at a professional level. Again, I didn’t take a single course on graphic design, so it goes to show that if you’re willing to work at it, you’ll get somewhere. The best advice I have for you is to just sit down and do it—every day if you have time.