In this blog-post I want to give you some advice on becoming a self-taught designer. As an agency owner and designer myself, I didn't take any course to learn this skill, I did not go to any bootcamp. Youtube and Google were my friends for many many months, and still are.
Even now how do you think I took up on Webflow or Figma and Sketch? As a self taught you have to have this mind set ready to keep on learning and to stop waiting for a teacher or someone else to give you the answer, and rather search for it yourself.
So my first and top advice is to do a day's worth of research before deciding to change your career and learn how to become a UX/UI designer
You have plenty of videos here on YouTube and I will also link some below in the description. You need to understand what you will do, your job description, how much money you will make, and also how long it will take you to get to a certain level.
You have videos like 'A day in a life', 'Why I quit my job as a designer', 'Preparing for an interview and so on'. Believe me this step will save you a ton of time.
But not in case you decide to not follow this path, but in case you do, because then you will know pretty much where to start and what to do in order to succeed.
Nothing amazing is going to happen over night. So try to organise your time and maintain the pace for at least 4-6 months.
If you work full time, set aside a few hours a week during the weekend or after work, but stick to it religiously. To maintain focus and motivation, listen to a few design podcasts every day, or subscribe to a few youtube channels and watch them during lunch hours and you will see that after a couple of weeks, it will be part of your routine and you will enjoy it.
I propose Figma because it is user friendly enough, you can access it from both OS and Windows and a lot of companies use it these days. Focus on this one and start with beginners tutorials and try to create a few small things in Figma like buttons, input fields, some profile cards and move your way up from here.
Next one is that once you master this one software, start to work on your portfolio.
Either you join platforms like 99design and work for pennies at the beginning to just start creating some designs or you simply try to replicate a few designs from Dribbble, the sooner you start the better. Believe me you learn more as you practice, try to recreate designs that you like, look at small details like how they combine colours what fonts they use what is the spacing between paragraphs and other elements and so on.
Final advice is to apply for entry level job as soon as you complete your first version of the portfolio.
This will not be your best work, however it doesn't matter, you go to interviews you get feedback and you go back to the drawing board, that's how it works. Also whilst you apply for jobs, also sign up to as many platforms as possible and try to get a few freelance projects, or if you have some small businesses around you try offering their services to them, try to build some connections.
If you are consistent, enjoy what you do and also want to improve all the time, you will either get a job or have success with your freelance path. Either way it will be good for you.
