A few weeks ago, I asked my email subscribers a simple question: “Why do you want to learn how to design?”

I was completely amazed by the number of responses and thank you so much for that! I’m sure I’ll follow up with more questions in the future.

I learned that my email subscribers are not only designers, but they are also web developers, online business owners, marketers and copywriters as well. They’re all interested in learning design.

I instantly realized how important design is these days:

1. Advanced technology needs a user-friendly interface. Developers want to learn how to make their applications more appealing and easy to use.
2. Smart content marketing campaigns need a good visual presentation. Copywriters and marketers work side by side with designers, so naturally they want to better understand how they can work together more effectively.
3. Design has become the main selling point for most products. Business owners want to make sure their users have a great experience using their products.

Based on my email subscribers’ answers I put together three good reasons to start learning design.

Reason #1: Start your new career as a designer.

This was the most common reason why my subscribers wanted to learn design. Most of them who answered were students, but there were also people who already had a job but were not completely happy with it.

If you’re not a designer but wish to become one, it’s never too late to change your career. You can start freelancing on the side while keeping your current job. You can make a switch to full-time freelancing once you’re confident enough with the quality of your work.

There are so many career opportunities for designers. Every bigger company needs an in-house design team for their own needs. Every new startup needs a well-designed visual branding, website and products. Design really matters these days.

Reason #2: Improve your current design skills and be a better designer.

This was the second most common answer to my question. These people are already designers or have a design service in their offer but just want to be better at what they do. For some of them, design is a hobby and they just want to enjoy the quality of their own work more.

You should never stop learning design and improving your skills. It’ll give you more confidence and appreciation in the design community which might be very important in building your authority as a designer. We all want to stand out from the crowd and show off our best work to the world and our peers.

If you learn a solid design theory, that knowledge is basically timeless. Use it for your own work or come up with your own theories and pass the knowledge to other designers.

If you already run your freelance business, remember that your skills should not be the only selling point of your service. You can check out my advice on how to better sell your design here: “What Really Sells Your Freelance Design Service?”.

Reason #3: Help your team to be more effective.

This was a good reason for marketers, copywriters and business owners. They want to know how the design works so they can better communicate with designers and help their team achieve better results.

Ed Catmull, the president at Pixar Animation Studios, explained in his book, Creativity Inc., how changing their meeting room table’s shape from a rectangle to a circle had a huge impact on their company. It allowed more people to be closer to the center of the discussion and freely speak up and share their ideas during the creative meetings.

The fact is that in today’s modern web company, all employees are a part of the design team. Everyone has a chance and right to critique the design and give their feedback. I believe that everyone is creative and has the potential to come up with great ideas. Of course, it’s a designer’s role to gather the feedback and decide which way to go.

However, very often those most important design decisions are made by the executive team. If we all can have a little more knowledge of a good design, and how the process works, then I’m sure companies will make smarter decisions and create better solutions for their customers.

Summary

I believe that learning design is time well invested, and will bring you amazing results in the long run. It doesn’t matter if you dream about becoming a designer or if you’re already a designer; you still need to constantly work on your skills.

This entire blog post was based on your responses to my email newsletter. All of the answers were great and I really appreciate you taking the time to write them! To wrap this post up, I’d like to feature some of them. I hope you find them as inspiring and motivating as I do:

My motivation for learning is driven by a passion about creating a web presence that’s hopefully functional and visually attractive. I sell what I create (where I can and time permitting), but not in the sense of making a living out of it. This is my hobby – but – if I’m going to sell the results of that hobby it better be top quality, up-to-date work.

There are so many facets to this field that keeping up is hard work, specifically with a full time career, but there’s a lot of satisfaction in creating something from scratch, and doing it right first time.

~ Steve Shead

Most probably you don’t have only designers as your audience 🙂 I am a business owner and I want to learn not how to design but what to ask my team to design for me and my clients. I want to keep on moving forward in what we can do online to help my clients sell more.

Yes, that’s right. My company focuses on increasing sales of brick & mortar business and websites are one of the tools they need to use for success. Since websites are important why not do them nice? why not optimize the UX?

~ Red Blasko

I want to be able to create more vibrant designs, I want to improve my creative process, to be able to deliver much better product. I’ve seen your work, and not only its clean and easy to look at, its simply beautiful. I want to be able to look at my designs and see what I see in yours. I may not settle on you as my only teacher, but definitely you’re on my path of becoming a better web designer. This is why I signed up for your news letter and its also why I want to learn design.

~ Bartek Kregiel

It’s a simple answer: I want to produce better, more elegant design. I am not a designer but work with them. And to do that successfully I want to understand their challenges and keep up to date with current thinking. It benefits me; it benefits my clients.

~ David Potts

I’m interested in knowing more about what it means to design well. I love your work, Genesis has helped me a ton as a freelancer, and I read what you write hoping to pick up lessons between the lines. I want to know more about your process, what drives you, and what you’re up to.

I’d like to read about your process for creating a thorough style guide for Copyblogger, especially on how to create a style guide that a front-end developer can use. Thank you for all that you do.

~ Nick Tart

I’m learning to make websites so that I can start off in a new career that is both flexible (with location and hours) and lucrative. And I love design in general. I don’t know why I waited so long to learn!

~ Margaret Fearn

For me enhancing my design skills works to benefit both my freelance opportunities and my regular editorial job. Even though I am mainly in charge of words as an editor, every day technology becomes a more and more integral part of my daily tasks. With so many website tasks on the plates of IT departments, the more web skills an editorial person has, the better.

~ Allison Payne

I want to learn about design because I feel that the more I know, the easier it will be to educate clients and provide them with design solutions that are leaner and goal oriented.

~ Cam Cecchini

The reason I want to learn how to design websites, Is so i can put my own unique look and feel into a website, so i can express my thoughts and inspirations into the sites i design for my own use, and better understand what my clients want. I like simplicity in design and sometimes I love to implement minimalism. i want to create my own Picaso, something I will enjoy using and viewing, my own sunset.

~ Craig McIntosh