Experience summary of art workers' self cultivation

Foreword: I haven't been able to understand art designer What is it? (This is a contribution.). Because there are really many requirements. At present, I can only understand it as front-end development+page design+ User experience The versatile hand of design. If so, then the real artist should be quite powerful. But it seems only small company This kind of people are called artists. Then I got tangled again. Please understand!

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With the growing influence of the company and the continuous improvement of its products, the relevant image design should gradually keep up with and need to be gradually improved, so it is a growth to recruit a fresh artist. The new students are hardworking and willing to learn, but they also want to aim far, and their starting points are similar. How about Cultivate art workers It becomes crucial. Summarize my experience of contacting and learning design and share with you, hoping to get more suggestions from you.

1、 Color matching

Actually, yes color The feeling of "" is the most basic quality that a designer should possess. His works are widely used in web interface, system interface, product packaging, etc. Some basic theories, such as cold and warm colors, contrast colors/complementary colors, color psychology, matching principles, etc., can be found all over the street, and interested parties can search for one or two articles at random. For art designers, what's more important is the feeling of color, just like the feeling of shooting basketball, which can be practiced the day after tomorrow. When Mars first came into contact with the design, he would also pay attention to the color matching of the signboard of a company or hotel on the roadside when taking a bus life In terms of the beauty of color matching, I can't remember how many color screenshots there are.

Mars believes that the designer's use of color generally has the following stages:

1. Primary stage: use yourself 1~2 colors with best premiere feeling , regardless of other factors and feelings of others;
2. Transition stage: start to feel one or two colors monotonous, Try different colors as much as possible In this stage, it is very easy to have aimless disorder;
3. Maturity stage: this stage understands the public's appreciation of color and starts Reasonably use 1~2 color schemes , can experience the subtle difference of different color values of the same color, most designers are at this stage;
4. The ultimate stage: One kind of color is used to the extreme , even only black, white and gray, completely immersed in a certain color, even a little abnormal, but its creative effect is the master's work at the sight of designers in the third stage.

In fact, this is also a process of continuous practice and accumulation, so that the feeling of color will be improved.

2、 Layout

In addition to having a good sense of color, art designers should also have a good grasp of the layout. The quality of the combination directly affects the effect of the work. In fact, it is not difficult to do a good layout design, but the following steps:

1. Layout preparation : Make clear what necessary words and pictures are needed for the main part of your expression. Don't think too much about details.
2. Layout Layout : There are many types of layout, and you can choose the layout freely on the premise that the key content is most obvious. For web pages, the most important content and pictures should be placed on the left and top of the page according to the browsing order of most people from top to bottom and from left to right.
3. Fine layout : overall color matching typeface , spacing between modules, illustrations, additions and deletions, etc. This step is meticulous.

Mars thinks that the best way to practice layout is to make PPT. It is not easy to make PPT beautiful and simple. For the pre-sales of the software industry, how to make beautiful PPT should be a required course for them to learn by themselves. The layout of PPT has been completed, and the layout of other web pages, brochures and other graphic layouts should be mastered.

3、 Details

The famous saying "details determine success or failure" is even more important in the field of design. Many details may be ignored by viewers, but designers must not let them go, such as background color, color gradient, spacing between components, title style, highlight style, font/size/color, line/segment spacing, illustration position/edge processing, input box width/height/border color/background color, button position, and so on. As before, only when you see more and compare more can you see these details. Some people think that these details are not a big deal, but the combination of multiple details makes people feel uncomfortable.

For example, the following is a comment adding form under an article in a system. The upper part is a program written directly by a programmer without beautification (above figure), and the lower part is a form interface designed with the help of a designer (below figure).

Ordinary people with normal aesthetics must think the following is beautiful, but they don't know what is good about it? Listen to Mars explain in detail from various angles:

1. Color matching: the font color seems to be taken directly from the 32 color palette, without any consideration; The form border color is too heavy; The form background is the same as the page background, without highlighting the level.
2. Layout: this component does not have multi line operations, so it does not need to use the list form; The Save button above the component title seems unreasonable; The position size of the component title is not striking enough.
3. User experience: It is clear that this is an interface component in the system, so since this person has logged in, do you still need to fill in the recorder? Time must be the submission time; The submitter mainly submits his own comments, so it is enough to provide him with an input box for large pieces of submitted content, which is simple and clear; For the submit button, the above figure needs to fill in the annotation content and then turn back to the upper left corner "Save", which is obviously unreasonable. The interface in the following figure is large and square, with a button on the right side, which looks obvious and is comfortable to operate.

The above aspects are all about individuals aesthetic If you don't plan to do aesthetic research, I don't think too much pure theoretical study will improve your aesthetic outlook. So my advice is: look more, imitate more, do more and compare more. Don't create blindly without aesthetic values. In fact, imitation is not shameful. It is the stage of learning after all. For example, some people imitate MJ to dance. Although they are not very similar, they will at least be loved and sought after by a small number of people, such as at a school/class Christmas party; If you don't understand the public aesthetic, you may dance like Sister Furong, which is just a joke. Cultivating a good aesthetic outlook can be applied to all aspects of life, and all aspects of life can also exercise your aesthetic outlook, such as photography, arranging your own room desk, clothing matching, etc., which can improve your life taste.

4、 Mentality

In the accumulation stage, the mind is calm Steadfast and patient Don't be impatient. Artists themselves are meticulous. It's useless to be anxious. With the basic aesthetic concept, you need to relax when creating, do what you want to do, eat what you want to eat, do whatever you want, and provide your own creative inspiration environment. Don't mean sitting in front of the computer to think, twice the effort and half the result will make you depressed to death.

5、 Skills

With a good aesthetic foundation and creativity, the next step is production. Compared with the cultivation of aesthetic values and the advent of creativity, Mars thinks that some tool skills are very easy to learn, which is nothing more than the problem that I draw with pencil or brush. Here is a brief introduction to the tools Mars has come into contact with:

1. Drawing skills: Photoshop (plane processing, etc.), Illustrator/CorelDraw (vector drawing) FLASH (Animation), Premiere Pro (post film) and so on are just application tools;
2. Page programming skills: html, css, JavaScript, etc;
3. Optimization skills: compressing pictures, web page optimization, etc.

We recommend NetEase Tutorials as we focus on a large number of online tutorials of the above tools. You can find some basic skills. You can master them when you use them more often. You can use them later to study and improve them. You should learn while using them, so that you can remember them deeply.

6、 User experience

User experience generally appears in Web Design In the system interface design, it is the interaction process between the user and the human-computer interface. The ease of interface operation directly affects the user's impression of the product. User experience is a higher requirement for artists, even a little beyond the scope of artists, but only artists understand these can they design the interface layout and overall collocation more reasonably.

Mars knows the importance of user experience, but he has not learned much in depth. However, it is convenient for Mars to record it while reading other people's websites and systems, which will be reflected in his own design next time. It is a stage of imitation. This is also the learning method that Mars has always used.

Finally, it is claimed that Mars is not a design major and has no theoretical basis. The above conclusions are based on practical experience and hope to get more good suggestions.

Notice： Thanks for the contribution of Mars, excerpted from the Standard Road