24 Fundamental Design Articles I Bookmarked as a Beginner Designer
- Deena Englard
- Jul 18
- 2 min read
I’m a big proponent of constant learning.
Especially early on in your career.
But always, really. The designers I see who are always in a learning mindset, are the ones improving at astoundingly fast rates. The ones growing their skills and their businesses with lightning speed.
I attribute a lot of my knowledge to having an open mindset and a desire to learn and grow.
While I was in college I was reading every design article I could find online, subscribing to every email list and reading every email. I spent every waking minute widening the breadth and depth of my design knowledge, trying to learn everything I could.
And I just found my old library of bookmarked websites. 🤓
(Long story, my Chrome got corrupted so I’ve been using Safari for the last 5 years. But now that I have a new laptop I can use Chrome again! And rediscovered all these bookmarks that I had forgotten about.)
So I thought it would be interesting to go down memory lane with you.
These are the pages I was reading when I was starting out my career that I thought were worth saving for future review or reference.
You don’t want to miss them.
Here are the most noteworthy sites and articles that I was exploring when I was a new designer:
Design
13 Tips for generating new ideas
6 ways to stay creative under pressure
A Designer's Life in 10 Hilarious Cartoons
10 rules of composition all designers live by
One of the most important skills to master to be a pro designer capable of designing anything, is layout.
Designing with contrast: 20 tips from a designer
What's a good designer worth these days? (from 2011 and yet still sounds relevant!)
Collection of vintage logos from a mid-70's edition of the book World of Logotypes
Color
How to choose your brand colors
The biggest collection of official brand color codes around
Colour Code
Color palette masterpieces from the world's greatest artists
Web Design
Eye-tracking heat maps
Learn from great design
I learned so much from this that I bought his ebook and read the whole thing!
Style Tiles
Design better online forms
Portfolios
6 proven design portfolio tips
May I Show You My Portfolio?
50 Mindblowing Portfolio Sites To Inspire Yours
Inspo
SiteInspire
DesignInspiration
Siulen Book Design
Javier Jaen Studio
MAD
Jessica Hische
I went through a calligraphy phase...
