The art of learning: Broadening your design foundations
Musings and advice on the crucial role of self-education in a designer’s career—by the Readymag design team.
The most fruitful and renowned designers are skilled at typography, color theory, composition, animation, and other professional disciplines, but they also observe the world, constantly absorbing knowledge from diverse fields. In this article, the Readymag design team shares their thoughts on learning beyond the obvious and how such self-education forms better design decisions and broadens career perspectives.
Here’s who’s speaking:
Curiosity as a lifelong practice
Learning doesn’t end when you leave a formal school: it goes through every project you take on, every conversation you have, and every bit of culture you experience. When designers mix formal training with their curiosity and exploration, they grow both technical skills and a sharp sense of cultural awareness. That combination helps them look beyond the surface of a visual challenge to see the bigger picture: the story their design tells, the role it plays in society, and the way it affects people. In practice, this means designers can navigate complex projects, walk clients through their ideas, and create work that resonates on many levels.
All ways of learning count: you may thrive in courses and formal schools, while someone else gets more from reading a lot or just absorbs the most by surrounding themselves with images and visuals. No matter the path, design education is an ongoing effort to keep pace with a constantly changing world, build bridges between past and present, and translate cultural ideas into visual form.
History, math, and philosophy for seeing the big picture
Alexander Moskovskiy, head of design, stresses that even abstract and seemingly non-design disciplines have practical value. “Mathematics isn’t only about numbers. It teaches pattern recognition, structural thinking, and switching between levels of abstraction, and generally thinking through them. In design, these skills translate into the ability to organize information into a hierarchy, predict user behavior, or create systems that scale. The ability to work with text, as many have written about before me, is also 100% a design skill.”
Designer as Writer, an editorial by Stas Aki
Asking “why am I designing this?” and “what impact does it have?” helps give designers purpose and integrity in their careers. Philosophy sharpens critical thinking: it trains you to question your own ideas and explore multiple perspectives before coming up with a solution. It also gives you a kind of belief in what you do.
Design is always communication: even the absence of design communicates something. The richer your understanding of people and the world is, the more effective your communication will be.—Alexander Moskovskiy, head of design at Readymag
“I think it’s very important to explore different areas of knowledge that intersect with the humanities: understanding cognitive biases in our perception, learning how to argue and reason about causes, effects, and correlations, and seeing how much our context shapes everything.”
Alexandra Golubeva, a product designer, also brings a historical perspective to the conversation. “Any field of knowledge helps designers, simply because it broadens their horizons and helps them find connections where at first glance they may not exist. I learn something new from the humanities constantly. If you know history, you can explain why the design in this era was exactly like this, what influenced it, what people were in what moods, and with what technologies this design could hypothetically be made.”
If you’re interested in art history, then a massive body of references from the past is open to you.—Alexandra Golubeva, product designer at Readymag
Philosophy helps you ask the right questions in your work, and sociology explores people’s problems that need to be solved.” In Alexandra’s experience, staying curious about the culture around us often sparks unexpected connections and inspires innovative solutions.
Maria Chupina, a communication designer at Readymag, reflects on the flexibility of the design field.
The entry threshold to design is relatively low, and it’s up to each designer how deep and in which direction they want to explore.—Maria Chupina, communication designer at Readymag
Some design projects are playful and can be nailed with curiosity, mainly relying on communication skills and a willingness to experiment. Others are more demanding, requiring a solid understanding of business processes, data analysis abilities, or engineering knowledge.
Maria Chupina also uses history to back up her solutions. “Knowing political history, art and technology history, or the evolution of typography helps designers understand context and give adequate and appropriate output.”
For example, typography history tells us that Helvetica was designed in 1957 in Switzerland as a clean, neutral, and highly readable sans-serif typeface that could work for everything from signage to corporate branding without imposing a style of its own. Its orderly design reflected post-war Swiss ideals of efficiency and clarity.
Now, Helvetica is used in city transport systems and airports across the United States and in the Madrid Metro, plus government agencies in the U.S. and Canada. Understanding how Helvetica’s proportions, spacing, and shapes communicate neutrality and make it readable in different contexts, a designer can decide to use it, for instance, for signage or to imitate the vibe of state documents.
The Ulm design school framework for all-round studies
Denis Deviatko, communication designer at Readymag, points to the Ulm Design School as a model for holistic design education. Founded in Germany in 1953, Ulm emphasized that design should integrate a comprehensive understanding of society and technology. “Besides design disciplines, every designer should understand economics, psychology, philosophy, politics, and sociology,” he explains.
A vivid example of why political awareness matters and why designers need to see and filter the surrounding context is the lives of Inge Scholl, the future co-founder of the Ulm School of Design, and her younger siblings. At their young age, they were part of the Hitler Youth in Ulm, but with the start of World War II, they found the strength to fight against fascism. After the war, Inge and her co-founders set out to root design education in the values of social responsibility and moral awareness. It was to some extent a reaction to the war itself: its cruelty motivated the trio to teach society humanist ideals through design and beauty, and thus politics and journalism became part of the school’s holistic curriculum.
Designing a campaign for a non-profit requires understanding the target audience’s psychology and sociocultural environment. A commercial project, on the other hand, demands awareness of market trends, competitors, channels, and budgets. Denis Deviatko points out that the broader your knowledge, the more precise and effective your design decisions become.
“Ulm’s integrated approach reminds us that a designer’s work is never purely visual—it is always embedded in real-world problems.”—Denis Deviatko, сommunication designer at Readymag
Life as a classroom without formal studies
Francisco Pires, a communication designer, doesn’t support the idea that digging into additional disciplines is necessary to be a successful designer.
“Influences come from everywhere, not from textbooks or courses, but in the process of work.”—Francisco Pires, communication designer at Readymag
“Real-world projects naturally immerse designers in new topics. Designing a wine label introduces them to the vinemaking process; a floral boutique brief teaches them about botany and flower arrangement. Cinema, music, politics, food, and sports all shape visual language and cultural awareness.”
Francisco Pires suggests building your own reference library through interviews, documentaries, and content from platforms, magazines, and social channels. “These resources often give insights that go beyond what formal courses can offer,” he notes. He also emphasizes developing practical skills within design itself: programming, 3D modeling, photography, and painting, which boost technical fluency and let designers bring more ambitious ideas to life. While college courses can provide these opportunities, self-directed learning works just as well if you approach it with curiosity.
Practical ways to cultivate broad knowledge
Design intersects with nearly every aspect of human life. It’s the discipline where curiosity and observation are more valuable than any single course or degree. However, curiosity alone isn’t enough, and young designers need actionable ways to explore the world. Here’s a list of curated resources to help grow knowledge, confidence, and awareness.
Books: The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman; Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek; Universal Principles of UX by Irene Pereyra; and The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst.
Online and print resources: Nowness, Apartamento, MacGuffin, SSENSE, 032c, Purple, Numero, Document, Mousse, Self Service, Sneeze, Tush, Novembre Global, Interview, Record, Tools, Sleek, Autre, Archivio, M Le Magazine, The Plant, Trax, Dazed, Vice, ADDPMP.
Cultural experiences: Museums, art and science exhibitions, cinema, concerts, theater, culinary experiences, sports events.
Daily practices: Watching interviews, documentaries, discussing with peers, collage making, and reflective journaling.