Growing

In the web design field today, people are wanting more and more out of their web experience. As it stands, plain HTML pages are gone, replaced by dynamic, mostly aesthetically pleasing designs.

The issue is, however, that it can be hard to stay on top of the technical and design industry if a person doesn't make a conscious effort to do so. Design is one in which it is significant to do this, as the competition is especially fierce.

I am astounded when I find designers who merely work to live rather than live to work. In the design industry, living to work is crucial because it takes passion in order to stand out from the rest of the design pack, and to continue to learn and improve in design.

A few weeks ago, someone I knew was fired. I was fairly decent friends with her; we sat next to one another, and I would tease her often. I have come to realize that one of the reasons for her release was a lack of care and laziness - not caring about her designs, or looking to see how she could improve them. It is unfortunate, because she worked with a team of three other very talented designers, and all three of us loved to gather around and discuss the latest in design news, and were just a generally great team with great compatibility because of how we worked and struggled to improve our department, and look for ways to better please our clients.

The best way to improve in design is doing just that. Finding a love for what you are doing - because if you can't enjoy design, then I don't think it is ultimately possible to truly succeed as a designer (on the other hand, I do not feel that it is possible to succeed in anything unless you truly enjoy it or find some other reason to press to do your best). And once you have found that reason to delve deeper into design, exploit it - use things like Google Reader to read syndication feeds from design blogs like Smash, or just read what other designers are saying. And most importantly - don't be completely apathetic to new things.