Master the basics of visual: how to become a self-taught UI/UX designer

Recently, quite often many people asked me the similar questions: what’s your design process ? How did you start? What skills are required to become UI/UX designer? What tools do you use? By this article I’ve decided to answer all of these questions and describe how I started and become and UI/UX designer.

How I’ve started

As far back as I can remember, I was always passionate about creativity and was eager to build/create something out of nothing. My journey with graphic design started when my grandmother bought me a first PC. I’ve spent hundreds of hours learning basic design principles by reading articles, books and watching video tutorials. Back in the 2007–2008 I started learning the basics of html/css code and designing very simple one page websites. Working on concept/training projects really helped me get into industry pretty quickly. At the beginning of my career I spent most of my time freelancing — designing, coding very simple websites. After a while I’ve realised I need to find out full-time job in order to improve my skills, knowledge and experience.

In September 2010 I joined the web design agency based in home town Lublin, Poland. I’ve had great opportunity to collaborate with other designers, developers and work closely with our clients. I’ve got involved into product development cycle which really helped me in understanding the web design process and helped me to become a lot more experienced designer. In addition to my full time job I was also doing freelance. In that period of time, three of mine concept/training projects have been featured on behance.net. Those nominations have given me great opportunity to work for clients from different countries.

In September 2014 I moved to the United Kingdom to start working as Senior web designer at Mothercare LTD. That was a huge step in my career and it has changed me a lot as a designer. I really started to understand the…