How to develop skills as a web designer?

Question

User interface

I’ve been studying web design for about half a year now, I’ve watched a bunch of lessons on YouTube, online courses and now I’m in a stupor, I don’t know what to learn next and where to develop my skills? in the courses they tell the same thing, only in different words and I don’t learn anything new for myself. There were several real orders, but it is difficult to find new customers. I’m making landing pages to add to my portfolio for non-existent, fictitious companies and I don’t know where to go next. But it seems you won’t get far on landing pages alone. Has anyone else experienced this, how did you get out of this situation?

Answer 1

Recipe from Athanor:
0. First, develop at least a rough plan and formulate your goal - when moving somewhere, it is important to understand where. Well, for example, at least understand in what area it would be interesting for you to work on the web, too, the web is different. When you have a plan, you will be able to understand what specific skills need to be improved.
1. Build a knowledge base. Of course, it is necessary to gain theoretical knowledge about the basic principles of design. Here one could advise a bunch of books, but it's all classic and easy to google, I advise you to start with the books "Typography and Layout" and "User Interface" by A. Gorbunov - this is just a base-base, we give it to all our beginners to read, at a price- the quality is much more useful than any skillbox courses, you can buy at bureau.ru. They also have an interesting tips section on their website. You can start with this and pay attention to the books that Artyom Gorbunov advises.
2. Form "watchfulness". Look at other people's projects on behance, decompose them and analyze why they are made this way and not otherwise, just scrolling and admiring is not enough.
3. Always do something. It’s not enough just to read, take an online course and watch all the lectures from design prosmotr, they can only give a motivational kick, but the main study and pumping takes place during the work itself. Come up with fake projects for yourself, try to redesign existing services, for example, “Aeroflot website redesign”, whatever, or come up with a challenge, for example, make 1 page every day or draw an illustration a day (here you can google, for example https:// www.dailyui.co/).
!Important. You need to move on to real projects as soon as possible, even if it’s difficult to find projects for money, you can always do something for friends and acquaintances for symbolic money, barter or beer, but the main thing is that you have a real customer with whom you need to negotiate - This is a very important skill.
4. Watch seniors work and ask for advice. Do not underestimate this point - a couple of phrases from an art director or an older comrade can give a "kick" that no book will give.
5. Learn to "sell" yourself. Start preparing a presentation of yourself now, when it seems that there is nothing to collect from a portfolio and there is nothing to write in a resume. This is a separate design task that also needs to be solved in order to prove its usefulness and get a job or get projects.

Answer 2

Study the style and design elements of different thematic areas of sites (children's, technical, site of a certain game, floristry, interior design, etc.) and their types (blog, portal, forum, landing page, etc.).

Answer 3

hard to find new clients

This is how you develop your entrepreneurial skills.