Advice on how to improve?

Don't understand why people in this community spent 100s of hours into making signatures & avatars.

If you really want to be something in the design world, then stop wasting your time into making useless art. How about making professional logos for esports and companies, UI designs, Photo manipulations, brochures, menus, etc...it's these that will give you a real name in the design field.

Signatures & avatars have absolutely no contribution what's so ever to the industry nor to being a professional designer. It's simply a social construct in communities like Sythe.

I say this because I used to sell signatures & avatars which really isn't much money at all. I realized it's a waste of time and decided to pursue something real, been like this for a few years now and I can never be anymore happier with the decision I made. Further on, not to brag, but I'll be applying for internship at Google, Facebook, and less well known for companies next year. I also say this because I am an Interaction Design student at university, you'll realize how pointless it is make to signatures & avatars once you step into a small patch of the real world.

Trust me, signatures & avatars will not get you anywhere. You may make $10-$20 from people just for a piece of text. But that money isn't really much compared to how much you can make as a professional designer in a category that you enjoy.

One thing that I cannot deny is, making signatures & avatars may teach you some Graphic Design and color theory, but you will not develop a proper understanding of the principles until you actually make something of value.

I always encourage people in this community to step out of this "signatures & avatars" field, but some people are doing it because it's a hobby and just to make a little bit extra of money - which is understandable.

However, on the other side there are professional Graphic Designers in this community claiming they are professional just because they make signatures & avatars, which to me is pretty much clear evidence of ignorance.

 

I can see where you’re coming from. Though seeing as I have little to no experience in graphic design I am just trying to start out slow and do anything that helps me master different parts of Photoshop. Not saying that I’ll exlusively be working on avatars and signatures. For me it is just a way of improving myself in this area - never really planned on making money out of it.

 

Yeah same here, i got into design 3 years ago only because I started making signatures and avatars the very first time.

 

I agree and disagree with this.

I disagree because everyone needs to start somewhere. I learned a lot by making graphics here - things that I would've never learned by doing random stuff on my own. Sythe also allowed me to have the necessary motivation to continue to learn, and I don't think I would be doing graphics today if it wasn't of this site.

Now, I somewhat agree because 99.99% of the time, when you design for companies, you will not be doing signatures/avatars with a bunch of effects like we see on Sythe. Opening my eyes to other types of graphics 2 years ago was definitely worth it for my career.

Having said that, I think doing graphics on Sythe helps a lot by introducing you to the different tools and motivating you to learn more. You will learn a lot of techniques that will be useful in the future when you use your tools. However, it is important to extend your knowledge to other types of graphics once you know how to do the things you see here and learned to use the different tools. You will be able to use a lot of the techniques you learned on Sythe, but the mentality is different in the "real world" and you will have to rethink how you use these techniques.

I wouldn't discourage anyone to do graphics here. Experience is experience, and you will be able to learn a bunch of techniques that are going to make your life easier in the future. What I would say instead, is to always be open to different types of designs.

 

I guess this is aimed at me?

I'll just start with some preamble.
Throughout this post I will be assuming a 'professional designer' to be someone who is pursuing graphic design as a career and makes art primarily for financial gains. I would also like to say that while the majority of people who make signatures do so without with the intention of becoming professional, these views are my own and don't represent those of the signature community.

This being said, I would not consider myself a professional designer and therefore being something in the professional designer world is not something that interests me. However, while creating signatures isn't a lucrative practice, I don't believe that signatues are uselsss just as I don't consider any form of art to be useless. As art, is a form of a expression and is 100% subjective. Therefore, there are no grounds to dictate that a piece or form of art is objectivity superior to another.

Now to what signatures mean to me.
Making signatures can be simply put as an emotional outlet to me that presents itself in the form of a hobby. Signatures are about trying out varying forms of art and posting them primarily on forums for people to critique. To me, signatures were never meant to be 'professional art', I made them to learn and the signature community is a great place to learn. Making signatures can build a solid foundation and is what people generally use to progress into the professional design realm. While making signatures isn't of value in the financial sense, I consider it invaluable when it comes to growing as an artist. I don't consider signature/tag art to be composed of just text tags or anime renders surrounded by an array of effects. Signatues/Tags can encompass many forms of art such as photo manipulation, photography, digital painting, etc.

Overall, I see forum signature/tag art as a difficult area to understand unless you have had some significant experience in the area. Signatures are just a method of learning and they teach you a lot about the principles of art (depth, lighting, colour, flow, texture, etc). While it's easy to discredit simple forms of signatures such as text or avatars, professionals make a lot of money transforming them into ps text layer styles and logos.

 

I see your point, when I used to make signatures I made them for entertainment purposes. I didn't particularly look at them in a way to express my feelings and emotions.

In the industry, they don't call them signatures, i think that's just a online community construct. They should be called photo-manipulations as that is really the appropriate term to use.

Just to be clear, i would hate to be seen as a designer just for financial gains. I actually love what I do and the financial gains are great, otherwise if I didn't love what I do, I wouldn't be where I am today.

 

Signatures are difficult to define, though it refers to the community rather than a form of art. The actual content of a signature could be anything (vector, smudge, airbrush, text, c4d, abstract, etc).

Yes signatures are pretty much just made for entertainment purposes though it's quite conducive to development. I feel if I was making art for clients it would reduce my scope of creativity. However, I respect freelancers and the professional realm because it's the next stage.

 

very nice