Hey, these are questions for all of your established designers here: When you first started designing, how long did it take until you started producing good results? Did you find that it was a natural talent or that you had to work to get your designs better? How long did it take from the point of starting designing seriously to being a good designer? Thanks!
I'm no way a top designer, but I'm alright. I believe all designers have transitional pieces of work/projects through their careers which takes them too the next step, it's computer technology there isn't any natural talent in things such as photoshop, yes natural talent for design/eye for design, composition etc, but not learning the techniques, obviously people have the talent to learn quickly, but yeah.
I'd say its probably an even amount of both. You could be a better designer if you if had more skill on one side too though I guess?
That depends on what your definition of 'good results' is, but it took me a few years to get an acceptable quality. That's the thing with design, you're constantly getting better at it. Some of the things I've made a year ago seem horrible in comparison to what I'm making now and that pattern will repeat itself over time. I'm assuming that by designing seriously, you mean investing time and money. Still, it took me a few years because I've touched many aspects of web design like typography, photo editing, XHTML and CSS, etc. Design isn't something you can simply learn overnight by reading a book. Like all other art forms, you need to keep at it.
I haven't considered myself as designer yet, but natural talent can help a lot in design... Don't talk about tools like PS or anything else, but color combination, choosing art, having idea, all of them also require works and people with art background have more exp in that area... If we just started out, we need to work twice as hard as others to catch up with it, and the "good" will be different as you improve...
Yeah its taken about 5 years for me as well. it did not become natural at first, but i read a crap load of tutorials and then began to learn on my own and develop my own styles and etc... so it was not natural at all for me.