How to Be a Better Designer

Hi, design friends. Welcome to the CreativePro podcast. So happy you’re here today.

I’m Theresa Jackson, the CreativePro program manager. If you’re a design professional and you’re looking for practical tips and inspiring conversations, well, you’re in the right place. In today’s episode, we have CreativePro Editor in Chief Mike Rankin chatting with renowned speaker and author Nigel French.

They’ll be talking about how to be a better designer. That includes the importance of developing a designer’s mindset by being intentional and actively observing the world around you and, of course, also learning from your creative mistakes. If you’re new here, welcome.

Make sure to hit the subscribe button so you don’t miss any future episodes. Before we get into Mike and Nigel’s conversation, I want to share a little more about CreativePro because we have a lot to offer beyond the podcast. We have practical how-to events and membership, articles, tutorials, quick tips, and an awesome creative community that we would love you to be a part of.

And just for being here, you can save $100 on any upcoming CreativePro event with the discount code PODCAST, P-O-D-C-A-S-T, and that same code works for $15 off a one-year CreativePro membership at creativepro.com. While you’re at the website, make sure to check out the events page because we have two must-see events for designers coming up. Design and Marketing Summit is September 14th and 15th, and right after that is the Design and AI Summit, September 17th and 18th. Really hope to see you there.

All right, let’s hand it over to Nigel and Mike now. Hi, Nigel. Hey, Mike, how you doing? I’m doing really well.

How are you, my friend? Very well. Good to see you. Ah, same here.

So we are here today to celebrate, as I think of it, an amazing conclusion to a series of content we’ve been working on for years that traces back literally over a decade to the days of InDesign Magazine. And now we’re just about to finish it, and it’s called the How to Be a Better Designer series of articles. And just to make everybody familiar with that a little bit before we get into the details, so this is a 12-part series of articles that has been published in Creator Pro Magazine.

The final installment is coming out in the September issue. And throughout it all, it’s just thousands and thousands of words of amazing advice and examples in all aspects of just refining the craft of being a designer. And we’ll get into the specific ways that you do that, but I just I did want to start by just congratulating you on this amazing achievement of pulling this all together.

Well, thanks. I mean, it does seem like it’s been going on forever. And I could never have done it without you, because it’s through your prompting and shepherding, and the great work of mutual friend Linda, who edits my words, and Pam, who does the layout, that it’s all come together.

So it really has been a team effort. But I’m very glad to have it finished. Yeah, it was great to revisit it.

And it feels really good to have it finished. Although, is it ever really finished? That’s exactly what I was just gonna say. I was like, is it really? No, probably not.

No, I know that if I revisit it, I’ll find things about it that I want to change. But that’s just the way it is. Yeah.

So I feel like I should also just clue people in just a little bit to your and my relationship. So we go back, I think we met in 2012. Does that sound right? Around that time? 2010.

Okay, 2010. So that was actually before I was even the editor of InDesign magazine at the time. Became fast friends.

We’ve had many adventures together over the years. We have done road trips across the country and up and down the coast and driving through the desert. We wrote a book together.

And one of my great joys in recent years was walking into a bookstore with you in London and finding a copy of that Adobe Photoshop visual quick start guide on the shelf and getting our picture taken together with that. That really was quite something, wasn’t it? Yeah. It just filled my heart with joy.

So love that. But we’ve also enjoyed an amazing professional relationship as well. You have just written dozens of articles, recorded videos, spoken at the CreativePro shows for years and years and years to the delight of many, many folks.

You’ve taught a lot of folks a lot of important techniques and ideas. So again, thanks for that. I want to just also say how this got started.

So this got started in 2013, the how to be a better designer series. Yeah. It was a two part article because you had so much content.

And I just I went back and looked at those articles. It was the spring and summer of 2013. And it was about 9000 words for the total of the two parts.

Now, do you remember the experience of writing that all those years ago and just pulling together? That’s almost like writing an ebook. Well, how it happened was I got a call from Anne Marie Concepcion in I think it must have been February of 2013. And for whatever reason, John McQuaid couldn’t make his slot at the PEPCON conference.

And she asked if I step in and do something along the lines of what he was doing. And I sort of rejigged it a bit to fit the material I had and what I felt comfortable talking about. But that was the genesis of it.

The three hour session that I did in Austin, Texas. Oh, that’s really interesting. I had forgotten that it was connected to the event.

Yeah. I mean, in preparing that I felt like, wow, there was so much work that went into this. I need to I need to get some more mileage from it.

So I can’t really remember the specifics, but I’m guessing we had a conversation, something along the lines of, I’ve got all of this stuff that’s kind of ready to go. Would you like to publish it? Absolutely. Yeah.

So fantastic. I’m so glad you remembered that thing about Anne Marie and John. That really kind of helps me figure out how this came to be in the first place.

So there it was, the nine thousand words, two articles published in the early 2010s. And then it just kind of sat there for a while. And you continue to do all your writing and sessions and stuff like that.

And then a couple of years back, CreativePro magazine replaced InDesign magazine. And we had this sort of broader scope that we could start to cover. And that made me start thinking about content we had done in the past.

Like, could we resurface some of these things and revisit some of these topics in that broader context? And this pair of articles seemed like just perfect for that, because now you can talk about anything. Like originally the article, we sort of shoehorned it into the in-type category. That was a series of articles we did on typography.

But it’s so much it was so much more than that. And then what ended up happening, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the twelve parts that we have published now in CreativePro magazine were basically the sections of those original two articles. Or did you tweak stuff and make changes since then? I did make a few changes.

Yeah, I can’t remember exactly what they were, but I feel like there were originally 10 sections, and it’s somehow grown to be 12. Yeah, you probably had some more things you couldn’t write about back then or just hadn’t considered. I get that.

And then my other reason for wanting to revisit this was to expand the content offerings in our design category. So CreativePro, we publish all these how-to tutorials on specific tools, like InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, and you’ve written tons of those. But we were surprisingly weak in the pure design category, at least until we acquired the John McQuaid material, the before and after magazine stuff.

So I was really hard up for some really meaty design, pure design content. So that was my other reason for getting into it. I want to ask you, do you have favorites in this series? Favorite topics that you enjoyed writing about the most? Are you proudest of? I don’t think so.

I mean, I like to view it as a whole. I mean, the whole process of it was really… I felt like if I write this, if I were to follow my own advice, I would be a better designer. So my objective is to try and take on board some of the things that I’ve been saying and follow this advice myself.

And how’s that working out? Well, you know, it’s an ongoing process, but it’s easy to give advice, but not always that easy to follow it. Well, that is true. Yeah, absolutely.

So to make people familiar with the exact content that we put into this series. So we started the current series in March of 2025, which was issue 41 of Critter Pro Magazine. And you started with sort of a look backward.

It was study the past was the first topic. And then I feel like it’s also really interesting that all the way at the end, you circled back to that in the very last installment, which is going to be published in the September issue of Critter Pro Magazine called The Rules. And within that sort of wrapper, you delved into the nitty gritty stuff of like, using a grid, learning how to use white space, type, color, all the sort of nitty gritty stuff.

And then we elevated back again to the broader topic. So I’m really happy with the arc of this story. And you talk about design as storytelling and problem solving, like those two main themes that I think you keep revisiting in here.

The whole series is a story. As I was looking back at all of them, that I’m really, I’m really proud of it. And I’m proud of the quality of writing that you did.

You’re incredibly eloquent writer, some of the best content like I’ve ever published in the 14 years. Thank you. I got the receipts here.

I printed out some of my favorite quotes from some of the articles. So you said you didn’t have any favorites, maybe that some will come. Okay, well, maybe the first one study the past.

I mean, I, before I was a graphic designer, I studied history, I have an MA in history. So I got that. And then I never used it.

I somehow fell into being a desktop publisher, and then a graphic designer. So to be able to incorporate that into my design work feels like a synthesis that I’ve been striving to make for some time. So maybe maybe that’s my favorite.

Yeah, you definitely scratched that itch. And and brought it home with some really eloquent prose. So I’m going to get into a couple of my favorite quotes from some of some of the articles.

I’m going to go back to one, which was part eight, which which we published last November issue 49. If people want to look it up. And by the way, if people are looking for this series on the Creator Pro website, there’s a couple ways you can do that you can either just go to resources and then magazine, then you can browse through the back issues.

Or you can just simply cut to the chase and search on the phrase how to be a better designer, and then they’ll, they’ll all pop up. And I should be clear that this is member only content. So you do need a Creator Pro membership and a subscription to Creator Pro magazine to read the full the full articles.

Okay, that said, I’m going to talk about part eight, which was sweat, sweat the details, which I really love this one. So you talked about this theme of paint the back of the fence. Do you recall that one? Yes.

Yeah, I can’t take credit for that term. I mean, it’s isn’t that a scene from Tom Sawyer? Oh, is that where that came from? I didn’t even think that’s where it comes from. But then it sort of became a is it an aphorism or what? But yeah, just became this symbolism.

This thing. Yeah, this isn’t Yeah. Yeah, I paint the back of the fence.

I mean, I’ve always tried to do that, you know, set my documents up really methodically, and structure them well. So if anyone does open them up, and has to look under the hood, they won’t be shocked at what they find. And of course, you know, but more importantly, that you you make it easier for anyone who might inherit that job.

Even if that person inheriting it is you, but a future version of yourself. And I’m wanting to pick it up and be able to work on it without having to learn all over again, what it was you did. So it should be transparent.

Right? Right. Yeah. Because you don’t know when or how that that file is going to get opened up in the future.

And you know, is it going to? Yeah, all that stuff. And it resonated a lot with me this this concept, because that sort of the devotion to the craft and the pride that you take in building something that actually works, works visually, it works. Technically, as a document that you can edit and output, and it will and it will look right.

I love that. And that’s like one of my favorite parts about producing the magazine on a monthly basis. It’s okay, there’s always, you know, the internet never sleeps, there’s always an issue that you that’s on deadline that’s coming up, there’s always that stress.

So you always have to stay looking forward. But also, you have to be able to let go of the past and not like, you know, just keep thinking about like, Oh, that could have been written better, that could have been designed better, that could have been whatever. So that’s my antidote for that is is like, make it as good as you possibly can.

And then be done with it. And it’s like, Okay, I am, I know I did, I made that as good as it possibly could be. And now I can move forward.

So that taking that pride in the craft, lets me sleep at night, because I have to keep being dragged to the next issue in the next issue. Yeah, it’s its own reward. I mean, just makes your working life that much more pleasurable.

Yeah, you feel like you’ve done, you know, you’ve really done the best that you can. Yeah. But yes, I know.

But but balancing that with actually getting the product out of the door. Because as our editor has, on more than one occasion reminded me, this is Linda. Good is better than done.

No, sorry, good. Good is better than perfect. That done is.

I mean, let me let me take that again. It’s better than perfect. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, it absolutely is. And and you address that, that very notion in a couple issues later in part 10, which was one called step away from the computer.

And I love this quote so much. I’m actually gonna just read it verbatim, because it’s in a section called the tweaking spiral. Okay.

We are all familiar with. So yeah, I’ll read your words back to you. So you wrote, we nudge elements a fraction to the left, adjust the opacity, a few percentage points this way or that.

Try one more variation because we can rather than because we think we’re onto something. But sometimes it’s simply a way of avoiding a harder truth that the idea itself isn’t strong enough yet. When the foundation is weak, all the refinement in the world will produce only a better polished version of a weak idea.

And you end up with something that looks professional, but is boring and says little. That’s why stepping away from the computer is so important. So eloquent, just I love that passage there.

And we’re so as designers, we are so familiar with the tweaking spiral. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I feel like that’s a that’s a lesson that I have to keep on learning.

I could have applied that lesson to what I was doing earlier today. Doing a little bit of nudging, a little bit of opacity sliding. Yeah, I can’t blame you too much, though, because we do love the craft.

We love the the toy become tools, tools become toys at some point, you know, like, and it is fun, like we have fun. And it is good to explore all of those options. But there’s, you know, there’s nothing like a good idea.

No, no. And that is, yeah, maybe that’s the ultimate takeaway is that it really is about the problem solving the storytelling, the idea, rather than the specific nudging stuff. And then I want to talk about the last installment, which is going to be published in just a few days.

That’s called the rules. And then there’s a there’s a section that you sort of wrap things up. And it’s called rules are tools.

I’m going to read just a little bit of that as well. So it’s a good design then is not about following rules blindly. It is about understanding which rules matter, when they matter and why they matter.

The more deeply we understand the principles developed by those who can be for us, the more confidently we can decide when to embrace them, adapt them or deliberately depart from them. Again, just great stuff. Just building on that sort of accumulated wisdom, I think was the other phrase that yeah, because we I mean, if you wanted to say that more succinctly, just know the rules before you break them.

Yes, that that is that is essential, because otherwise, you’re just sort of flailing about. You also talk a lot about constraints being your friend, like instead of instead of having this infinite choice, infinite freedom where you can’t focus on anything, but like, design something using just one typeface or just one color or one format or something as a way of disciplining yourself and refining that idea. I love that concept as well.

And it works that that approach really can can get you out of a creative rut if you just impose some really quite rigid sounding constraints upon yourself. And then you having to push against them can often yield good results. Yeah, and it’s going to be a simpler design and simpler is often not always, but often better.

Yeah. In one of the articles, I think you quoted that Paul Rand was like design is, what is it design is something about complexity and simplicity. I should have brought it design is simple.

That’s what makes it so complicated. Thank you. I’m probably paraphrasing there.

But that’s that I think I think that was my paraphrase of his quote. Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, it takes a long time to get to a simple result, because you do feel compelled to try the more involved solutions. Do you have when you’re first working on a on a design, initial idea, the initial assignment? How do you start? Like, do you start by like, sketching things on paper? Do you jump right into the software? Like, where do you even begin? Or is there? Well, if, if, if you’ve, if you believe everything that I’ve written in these 12 articles, you would think that I always start by making thumbnail sketches and thinking about it a lot before I go to the computer. And that is almost always the best way to start.

Do I always follow my own advice? No, sometimes, sometimes I’m just so excited to start that I just sit down at the computer and just start doing it. And I’m, I have a little voice in my head that is nagging me telling me you should really go and think about this a bit more before you you start getting into the details. But sometimes I can’t stop myself.

Yeah, you just have an idea. Ready? It just pops in your head and you just want to go Yeah, yeah, you just you just want to go down one path, even, even though you know that ultimately, you might have to retrace your steps, or you’re going to end up going down a different path. You just have to get that one out of your system that that particular line of thought.

Yeah, absolutely. Do you have a favorite tool or do you love Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign equally? That’s maybe not a fair question, right? Choose between Can I say Lightroom? Oh, yeah. All right.

So that’s one thing that we have not talked about really is is your photography. So you know, you’re an amazing photographer, you’re never without your camera when I’m around you. So you bring that sort of photographer’s eye to other parts of design, like typography and things like that.

That’s Yeah, that’s a great, that’s a great point. So Lightroom would be your? Well, no, I love them all. I love them all equally.

I probably spend more time in InDesign than any of the others. So if if if you’re limiting me to only one application to take to my desert island, it will be InDesign, I think. Okay, fair enough.

Do you ever dabble in outside the Adobe ecosystem? Have you used like Affinity stuff or other third party kind of? Yeah, I’ve experimented with Affinity. And I mean, the price is right. When it comes to Affinity.

It’s, I was impressed by what it can do. And I expect that at some point, I’ll be dabbling some more with that. But that is no, I’m most of the time I’m within the Adobe ecosystem.

Yeah, as as most of us are. It is an interesting time with lots of new products and things to play with and see what they could do for you. Actually, I want to do I do want to loop back a little bit to the photography thing and drill down and see if there’s any more there.

Can you think of any specific ways in which being a photographer, having that photographer’s eye influences the way that you design something or approach a design project even? Well, probably in terms of composition, because you’re when you’re composing a photograph, you’re thinking about what to include and what to exclude and what angle to take it from. So the framing and the cropping are very important aspects of what you ultimately get as the image. So there’s definitely that.

And then the simplicity, I like, or I try to take simple photographs with not too much competing information. Having said that, I also like taking really busy photographs as well sometimes. But generally, the ones that appeal to me most are the simple ones.

And I think simple designs appeal to me as well. So there’s an interplay between the way I see things photographically and the way I see things on a page. That makes a lot of sense in terms of composition, you know, whether you’re composing a page and a page layout program or looking through the viewfinder.

And also the the sort of storytelling, right? Because you’re you’re telling a story with with a photograph of the subject, but the way you frame it, and you know, all that other stuff. So yeah, I definitely see how the two things connect. Very cool.

Let’s see about drilling into some of these other topics, just some of the other titles and articles. So things about learning about typography, like how type works. That was the second article in the series.

And you’ve been sort of creator pros, like in-house, you know, specialist go-to guy for typography for many, many years. So when it comes to learning about typography, do you have tips for people who just want to get better at choosing and using fonts, or finding their own voice? Any sort of general advice you would give someone on type? Well, studying the history of typography is a very good place to start and a good foundation for how you use type. But it’s really just about practicing and making a lot of mistakes and failing, but then failing a little bit better than the way you failed before until ultimately, you know, maybe you’re succeeding.

But to anyone who wanted to practice type, I’d say just grab some words and put them on a page and put them on a page in a way that appeals to you and look at the way other people have put a similar number and a similar type of text on a page in the past and what you can learn from them. And just the exercise of copying a layout that you really like can be very informative. Find a layout in a magazine and reproduce it.

And that will highlight all sorts of issues and problems and solutions that you otherwise, just as a casual reader of that text, you wouldn’t think about, get to think about. Yeah. So that reminds me of two other articles in this series.

One is DIY, do it yourself, where you advise people to do all the things that go into design and take a turn at them. So actually try to design a font, you know, go and do some painting, some artwork classes and things like that and just see what actually goes into making these things. So you understand them better.

Love that one. And then of course, using a grid, like learning how a grid and that structure works for layout. Yeah, absolutely essential.

Do you go into like bookstores and flip through, you know, books and to look for solutions, ideas, things like that? Yeah, a browse in a bookstore can just be tremendously informative. If you’re looking at covers, or if you’re looking at the interiors of books, there are so many, I mean, there’s a million and one different solutions. So just browsing through the books, seeing how others are solving this very, very common design problem of making a book is tremendously useful.

Yeah, it is a lot of fun. I mean, I can see you have a crammed bookshelf, I have my places overflowing with books as well. And I love going to bookstores and libraries.

Those are like my favorite places. So absolutely. And I think this also touches on another one of the titles, which is be a perpetual student.

So you know, you’ve been doing this for a very long time, you’re very accomplished, but you embody this humbleness that you know, there’s more you can learn, there’s more skills you can develop, and you’re always on the lookout for that. Is that fair to say? You feel that way? Well, yeah, I mean, I think we all probably have a bit of an imposter syndrome going, you know, we’ve all been touched by imposter syndrome. Yeah.

So we, you know, this maybe is something of an inferiority complex thinking, Oh, my God, you know, at some point, someone’s gonna find me out. And so I’m wanting to keep up with, with best practice to avoid that to avoid being busted. But, yeah, I mean, the deeper you get into these things, the more you realize there is how much there is to know.

Yeah. And you talk about teaching as as being a great way to learn something like you learn something, teach it. That old truism.

Yeah, if you want to learn it, teach it. Yeah, that absolutely holds true. I wanted to be a better designer.

So I wrote this 12 part series on how to be a better designer. Did it work? I think it worked. Yeah, it certainly has helped.

Yes, it has helped. And it’s an ongoing process. It’s helping.

Excellent, excellent. Well, we will certainly, even though this series is wrapping up, we will certainly keep you busy with many, many more assignments. Good, I hope so.

The magazine and videos and shows and everything else going forward. So anything else you sort of want to bring up about the series, things that people should know about it before I sort of tell where it’s going from here? No, I’m not entirely sure where it’s going from here. So I’m keen to hear your thoughts.

Well, one thing that we’re going to do with them is we are gathering all the articles together, all 12 parts into an ebook that is going to be available for CreativePro members. That will be done this fall. Linda is gathering it all together, just editing it, taking out little things like in the next issue and stuff that doesn’t make it sound like a book.

But that should be pulled together pretty quickly. We’ll put a nice, a beautiful cover on it and make it available to folks. So that’s coming up soon.

And I just also, I guess I want to ask, have you personally received any feedback from readers or people you met at CreativePro Week or anything like that? Have people mentioned the series to you? I wish I could say I’ve been deluged with responses. There has been some and it’s been good, but it’s been more of a trickle than a deluge. Yeah, it’s not like the old days when you would post a blog comment and get 20 comments as well.

But I get that. And I have to say, you always make Pam’s day when you comment on the layout because it’s not a chore. It’s an experience designing one of these articles that’s supposed to be about being a great designer.

Yeah, yeah. Well, she’s done a fantastic job on it. I agree.

And she’s had a lot of fun with it too, like finding that sort of kernel, that theme that matches up visually with the ideas that you’re getting across. And she always reads the entire article before trying to come up with some visual metaphors. Yeah, you can tell that she’s familiar with the content.

Yeah, yeah. I think she’s going to be as sad as anyone that the thing is wrapping up because it’s been a fun series. So I guess I’ll just end with this.

What’s next for Nigel? What kinds of projects are you working on right now? Well, I have been quite busy recently. I’m working on a number of books, designing books for self-publishing authors. And simultaneously with that, I’m working on stuff with Ken Jones of Circular Software to come up with a book design system.

And also, I’m preparing some videos for the Photoshop Creative – sorry, the Photoshop Virtual Summit, which is in September, and for Adobe Max in November. And some other things as well that I’ve slipped my memory right now. But yeah, I’ve got quite a lot of things going on.

Excellent. Well, as I said, we’ll keep you busy for many years to come. So just to wrap up, I would encourage anyone watching this, if you have any kind of interest in refining and developing your skills as a graphic designer, to check out this series of articles and to also give us feedback.

So when you read the article, leave a comment, email me, Mike at CreatorPro. If you leave a comment on the article, Nigel will see it, I’ll see it, and we love getting – completing that loop. We don’t want to just talk at people, we love hearing back from you and stuff like that.

So please let us know if you’re reading these articles, if you’re enjoying them, what you’re learning from them as well. It has been a long – I’ll go back to the road trip thought. It has been a long and winding road, but it has been a wonderful adventure making this series of content with you.

So thank you so much for it. Well, thank you. And thanks for coming up with the idea to resurrect this material and refresh it.

And thank you for all of those email prods for me to get my article in by a certain time. You always deliver, my friend. You always deliver.

Thank you so much. Cool.