Writing about Life in the digital age

I’d go even a step further and say that the fastest and most effective way of learning is to copy what other people have done. It’s the ultimate “standing on the shoulders of giants” — instead of spending years developing a skill, you can gain it by simply following in the footsteps of professional designers. This is why step-by-step tutorials work so well for learning design.

The problem is that as a beginner, you don’t yet know what good design looks like. That’s why I included the top inspiration sites where you can learn to “see” what good design looks like.

Weli, I hope this resource comes in handy. If you need a printable, offline .pdf version of this list to tick off all read materials, download it free here:...

In order to arrange your design, you need a place to start. Backgrounds are the foundation of your graphics — it helps pave the path to forming a successful composition.

Textures and colors help create depth and contrast, allowing your graphics to stand out and get noticed. Well composed images can help create space for you to overlay text, while visually communicating your message at the same time.

Using a background can help give your designs more context and provide a visual element to help support your content.

Bonus: We’ve designed most of the images in this article as templates for you to personalize! To use them for your own stuff, just click them and they’ll be ready to edit in your Canva account (No Canva? It’s free!).