As a UX design student, my focus has been on identifying and solving users' problems. As I continued growing as a designer, I knew that my visual design skills were what was lacking the most in my design arsenal.

Every now and then, I would find a design tutorial and give it a shot. Almost every time I finished one of these tutorials I learned different tricks in the design tool I was using, as well as improving my visual skills.

I decided to challenge myself by following a different flat design tutorial for 30 days straight. After the 30 days were up, I was a much stronger designer than I was the month before. Some things I learned from these 30 days?

<aside> 🤔 It's okay to mess up. I learned the power of trial and error and learning on the fly has become a new strength of mine!

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<aside> 🤔 Share your work! Show your work to your design community and gather insights from more seasoned designers. I shared my designs on LinkedIn throughout my challenge and not only did I make some valuable connections, but I am now working on a project for a new application to provide illustrations to their video because the Product Lead saw my designs from this challenge!

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<aside> 🤔 Even if you aren't using the design tool in the tutorial, you can still try to translate those instructions to what you have access to. All of these tutorials in this challenge were made for Adobe Illustrator, but I only had access to Sketch so I had to learn to translate these instructions to the Sketch platform. A new example of adaptability and problem solving to add to the resume!

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<aside> 🤔 The mask tool in Sketch became my new best friend.

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How to Complete the 30-Day Challenge

If you are interested in taking on this challenge yourself and looking for some tips, here's a quick list!

<aside> ☝ Pick your design tool and stick with it. Whether it's Sketch, Illustrator, Figma, or something else, use that system for the entire 30 days. This will help you become an expert with that particular tool.

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<aside> ✌️ Set up all of your artboards before you start. I set mine up to be 600 x 600 and labeled each one as "Day 1," "Day 2," etc. This helped me stay organized and saved me time setting up the design each day.

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<aside> 🤟 Find a way to hold yourself accountable. Want to share your designs on a social media platform? Go for it! Want to keep it more private? Share them with your roommate! Whatever is best for you, find a way to hold yourself accountable so that you will finish the entire challenge.

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