How Strong Design Opinions Can Help Heighten Designers Prominence?

by Unknown | Saturday, September 27, 2014 | Design 17 Comments

Every designer has different opinions on design, and what they think about design greatly influences their work. In fact, the designers having strong opinions most likely end up delivering valuable work, and thus are able to build a prominence in the web design community. So, if you're one such designer then you should think about sharing your opinions with other designers across the world, as it might help improve your visibility in the design community and boost your career.

Recommended reading: Designers: 15 Places To Build and Showcase Your Portfolio

Let's have an overview of some of the following reasons as to why and how you should share your design opinions:

Blogging About Your Work

The best way to pursue others to use your work is to write blog posts wisely. Especially if you're a freelancer posting posts on your website about your design work frequently, serves as a great SEO tool that get your site better search engine placement. And the more higher you get listed in SERPs (search engine result pages), greater are the chances that you'll be located easily by users seeking to hire the services of a web designer.

Besides, blogging provide users a good idea about your capability as a designer. Well, if you've some great work to showcase certainly users will take your design opinions seriously. But remember that merely saying some nice things about designs isn't going to work, you also need to produce some good work samples.

Crowdsourcing via Social Networks

Often when it comes to crowdsource product ideas, a lot of designers fear of sharing their design opinions on sites that trick them into presenting their work for free or at a very less price. However, you can crowdsource your opinions in an effective manner that offers you good returns, by using social networks.

Crowdsourcing via social media channels doesn't ask to produce free work and rather helps in getting opinions of other designers, what they have been communicating about web designs, and also help to build up connections within the design industry. Besides, there are dozens of social media followers who often look up to the design community to find some good designers whom they can entrust for their web designing tasks. And if you are able to develop a good rapport with those social media followers, they might promote your services to their friends and acquaintances.

Don't Hesitate To Give Opinions About Wrong Design Practices

Is something in the design industry bothering you? Are you not in favor of some design practices? Well, then don't hesitate to speak your mind. Talk to other designers and give them your opinions about what they're not doing right and how they can correct it. Besides, talking about controversial ideas in turn sparks interests among people to listen to what you've to say, and also helps us explore new things and grow as designers.

Bear in mind, don't expect to get some positive feedback regarding your thoughts you've shared about some other designer work, in fact, you'll most likely get negative and some obnoxious feedback. But make sure to stick to what you've to say and challenge people, and at some point of time you are likely going to be rewarded.

Back Your Opinion with Qualitatively Rich Body of Work

Merely bragging about your opinions and work on social networks or having your design portfolio online on sites Behance, Dribbble etc, no doubt are effective ways to broadcast your work and thoughts on design. But some (if not all) people might not count you as professionals if you don't have your own official website. You should build an online brand that tells people about your specialization and particular niche.

Also, if you're working as a freelancer it's necessary to build your own site equipped with work samples and contact details. Also, if you've been running a blog then make sure to link it to your site, or you can have a blog page embedded into your website. So, if you don't want to miss your chances to make clients you would be a perfect match for, then make sure to support your design opinions by presenting a qualitatively rich body of work.

Let's Wrap Up!

You might have heard of the proverb “sharing is caring”, and it fit well in the design industry as well. If you're a freelancer and want to make yourself visible in the design community, then you should share your design opinions – be in the form of some work samples or blog posts etc. to other designers. Moreover, in case you have been working as a freelance designer it's very important to share your opinions in the design industry to make people know about your freelance business.

Mike Swan is a web development professional who works for the Markupcloud – PSD to WordPress service provider. Mike also happens to be a blogger with a strong passion for all things WordPress.