What’s the one thing you practice every day without fail? Journaling? Playing an instrument? Your craft? It could be anything. But sticking to the topic, let’s discuss why we designers should practice short design exercises every day. The point is not why we should practice something every day. Rather, it’s what happens when we practice something every day. For me, the following things happened –
1. It becomes easier to build a habit
2. The power of compounding
When you do something every day, you naturally tend to get better at it and faster. Little by little, our skill becomes sharper, which contributes to an overall improvement in our designs.
3. Learning by doing
The daily practice encourages learning by doing, which is the best way to learn anything. When we do something new, we run into roadblocks, which on overcoming, grant us a greater understanding than only reading or listening ever could. Multiply that with the days in the month, and you’ll be surprised how much these short exercises can help improve your skill.
4. Improve productivity
The daily practice encourages learning by doing, which is the best way to learn anything. When we do something new, we run into roadblocks, which on overcoming, grant us a greater understanding than only reading or listening ever could. Multiply that with the days in the month, and you’ll be surprised how much these short exercises can help improve your skill.
5. Letting go of perfectionism
We often tend to overthink our work, wasting much mental energy and time on non-trivial things. Having a time limit to complete a short task every day allows us to let go of perfectionism. We learn to embrace our flaws and find the patience to seek mastery through practice.
The daily logo challenge is a popular design challenge. You can subscribe to the challenge for free using your email, and the prompts will be delivered to your inbox every day for 50 days. It is a great commitment to get better at design and build a worthwhile portfolio while doing so. They also regularly feature the design attempts on their social media handles. So, watch out for yours! Share your designs on social media, receive feedback, critique your peer’s work, and with each day of the challenge, get one step closer to mastering logo design.
Memorisely, founded by the product designer Zander, is a fully remote startup that offers UI/UX learning resources. The Memorisely monthly UX/UI challenge is a free one-month challenge that holds the participants accountable to improve their skills every day. These challenges vary every month. To start, click on “start challenge” and fill in your details. Upon doing this, you’ll get access to Memorisely’s slack community, where you’ll see the daily tasks as well as connect with fellow creatives. At the end of the month, participants are encouraged to share their designs in a monthly showcase. This challenge is an amazing way to upskill yourself while getting active feedback from a community of creatives.
If you’re looking to get better at UI design, this is another great challenge for you. Started in 2016, the Daily UI Design Challenge now has over 250,000+ participants all over the globe (as mentioned on their website). Once you subscribe to the challenge with your email, you’ll get a unique UI design challenge every day from Monday to Friday. Practice design daily with the challenges, share your work on social media, and build a solid design portfolio. Another attractive aspect of this challenge is the rewards they give out randomly in the form of design resources, product discount codes, and more.
Inktober is a month-long art challenge that takes place every October. Created by artist Jake Parker, Inktober is a challenge that allows artists to see how much they can improve in a month. Funnily enough, Inktober has something for everyone, be it designers, illustrators, artists, or even writers (read the FAQs). The prompts are released on September 1st every year, and you can start uploading your work from October 1st. The best thing about this challenge is that there is no right or wrong way of doing it. The freedom to express your craft however you want allows you to break away from the everyday mundane tasks and get creative. If you’re reading this after October, you can still practice the prompts from this year or the previous years by yourself and participate in the official Inktober next time.
Typography is one of the most important aspects of graphic design. Started as a personal project in 2014, 36 Days of Type has transformed into a famous Latin typography challenge with participation from designers, visual artists, and creatives from diverse fields. The dates for each edition of the challenge are released a few days before the start, between February and April. Upon commencement, the task is to design your interpretation of one alphabet or number each day, ranging from A to Z and 0 to 9. Practice manipulating type with this challenge and develop a better eye for it in doing so.
I used to feel that I needed to practice for hours every day to get better. Because of that, I ended up procrastinating a lot instead of building a daily habit. The amount of confidence and skill-building that comes with staying accountable is priceless. Whether it’s designing Logos or User Interfaces, give these challenges a try. Remember to keep the tasks short and fun so that you don’t exhaust yourself. It’s okay if it isn’t perfect; it’s still a step forward. If you know of more exciting daily challenges, share them with us in the comments section. Good luck!
