The tips from past students that stuck out to me:
Don’t settle on the first thing that works. This is definitely something I struggle with in design — once I find something that works, I struggle with making myself continue to experiment with the design because I think to myself, if it works, why change it? But my best designs have definitely come out of a lot of experimentation and change.
It’s okay to find inspiration in other publications. I always feel like I’m not creative enough as a designer when I use ideas I’ve seen in other publications, so this is really refreshing to hear.
Get opinions/feedback often. I’m a very Type-A person, so I struggle with asking for other people’s opinions. It’s also nice to know that I can show my drafts to Professor Strong and get solid feedback.
Sketch before. This is also something I struggle with — I’m not good at drawing by hand and I usually just “sketch” on the computer because sketching by hand feels like a waste of time to me. This is going to take some discipline to get myself to do this for designs.
Print out very often. I definitely tend to avoid printing out as much as possible because of the printing fees, but it’s important to acknowledge the difference between the way a file looks on the monitor versus how it looks on paper.
