Design is a skill and like every other, it can always be worked on. I’m sure your design skills may be great, though it can always be improved whether it’s your skill set, ability to brainstorm ideas or just being able to do it faster.
So here are 3 graphic design exercises that I’ve been doing at the moment to improve my design skills. I regularly do these whenever I have some time to kill or have less work on my plate.
Mock Logo Design
The guise of this exercise is simple. To mainly speed up your creative process.
1. Come up with multiple company names, whether they be existing companies or purely made up. (which I prefer so I can have a clean slate in my mind).
2. I prefer to create names from scratch as they allow me to have a clean slate in my mind and let my creative skills flow. A random word generator is particularly good for this.
3. Get out some paper and sketch out concepts!
4. It’s simple enough. If you’re confident you can set a time limit for the exercise.
5. Repeat daily, weekly or whenever you prefer.
You should be incrementally doing it faster with better concepts every time.
Create a Colour Scheme
Most graphic designers don’t take time once in a while to practice creating colour schemes. And yet it can make or break a design. Colour conveys emotion so it is important to get this.
1. Pick a theme or emotion you want to convey (eg. Bubbly, India, Winter, Festive).
2. Then simply build a colour scheme, preferably made of 5 colours to reflect the theme/emotion.
Here are also some brilliant resources on colour and colour schemes:
An Introduction to Colour Theory for Designers
Colour Scheme Game (For Fun)
Adobe Kuler
Quote Typography
This is my most used exercise to practice my graphic design skills. They always seem to make their way as a wallpaper or a shot on Dribbble.
1. Get any quote or saying of your choice. Quotations Page has quite a broad range of them there.
2. Pick a theme of sorts that would convey the feeling of the quote or you think would complement it and design away!
3. Set a time limit if you want to add an extra challenge.
So there you have it. I hope these exercises will help you as much as they helped me and help you flourish in your graphic design skills.