Calibrate your monitor

Calibrate your monitor so that your white is a true white. This will give you the best sense of how colors are supposed to look on and offline. Without proper calibration, you could actually be damaging your work due to the shifts in colors on other people’s monitors. It’s always best to start at “true white” and work from there.

Understand how colors work offline

Almost as important as calibrating your monitor is an understanding of how colors will look when printed. Ink colors are different from screen colors, and it’s important to understand how they relate to one another, or else you could end up with disastrous results. Remember that different papers and materials will soak up ink differently, creating different colors depending on what the materials is that is printed onto.

Always use vector graphics

Always use vector graphics. Vector graphics can be resized, up or down, without any issues. Your images will be able to be printed at any size or placed on a website or document at any size without pixelation and distortion. . JPGs and other raster formats are great for fixed-size images, but absolutely terrible for anything else. Don’t use them, just don’t. You will always be disappointed with the results, and your clients will lose faith in your abilities as an artist.

Choose your fonts wisely

There are things in typography that are considered in good taste, and other things that are in bad taste (such as overuse of the fonts comic sans and papyrus) - learn what these things are and stick to them, for the most part. This will prevent your graphics from looking amateurish, muddy and hard to understand. While you’re at it - make sure you use spellcheck and grammar check.

Nothing is more embarrassing than getting 500 very expensive posters back from the printer only to find out that you misspelled your very own name. Proofreading and spell check can save you that pain - since it is hard to proofread your own work, it might be wise to have a friend do it for you. They can also give you an opinion on the design overall, which is a good refresher if you’ve been looking at the same thing for hours and hours.

These are some of the fundamental things you need to remember to do in order to begin to be a competent designer. Failure to leave out one of these steps will result in amatuer and unprofessional products, rather than work you want to display proudly to potential employers.