Design Tutorials: Practice makes perfect

I did a lot of photoshop(& illustrator) tutorials back in the day(a year or 2 ago) but once I had mastered the “glassy ball” and “grunge-look” I kinda stopped doing them. I recently started doing tutorials again and I have become a big advocate for them. Here are some reasons why you should be doing multiple tutorials a week:

1. You will discover features you never knew about.
2. You will learn multiple ways to do the same thing(maybe your way isn’t the most efficient).
3. You will find interesting links to sites that will help you.
4. You will learn that every designer has a different process.
5. You may hate the end result, but that one step in the middle may be your favorite new trick.
6. You will save time.
7. You will learn that there are a lot of skilled designers out there(you may even meet some of them).
8. Your work will be of higher quality.
9. You will learn new trends(even if you learn to hate them).
10. You will have fun doing them and you will want to show your friends what you can do(even if it is creating a cartoon crocodile from a pencil sketch).

The ultimate goal is good design. Don’t let your skill set hold you back. Learning the technical stuff is the easy part.

Some links for ya…

• http://psdtuts.com/
• http://www.smashingmagazine.com/category/tutorials/
• http://pixelmana.com/?p=31
• http://vectips.com/tutorials/create-a-brushed-metal-texture/
• http://freetransform.net/?p=77
• http://www.gomediazine.com/tutorials/intricate-patterns-in-illustrator/
• http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/tutorials/illustrator-tutorial-create-a-colourful-abstract-wavy-ribbon
• http://www.adobetutorialz.com/
• http://www.dennisplucinik.com/blog/2007/08/28/60-advanced-adobe-photoshop-tutorials/