New vs OldA lot of things about a person can change over time. People develop new interests in what they do as they progress though life. It’s interesting to watch as it unfolds, and to compare the before with the after.

Take a look at your old work

Being aware of your changing styles, can help shape the style of your future. Knowing where you came from, and where you currently are, is important to figure out where you would like to go. And it can be good for inspiration in general.

When I think back to where I was a year ago, I can’t believe how little I actually knew about graphics, and web design. At the time I felt my design skills were considerably good. Which may or may not be true, but knowing what I know now, I would say that I knew nothing back then.

Even in the past week I have learned so much, and if I could gain that much knowledge in one week, I would say that I don’t even know anything now if there is THAT much to learn. I do think my abilities as a designer are 20 times better than a year ago, but I have been exposed to an endless supply of amazing designs, tutorials and resources for everything, it really puts in perspective how incredibly much there is I need to learn.

Compare Your Old And New Designs Side-by-Side

Do a side by side comparison of some older work and some more newer work and look at what changed and what maybe didn’t change that much. See what things you might want to do differently, or combine the old and the new somehow. You can learn a lot just from comparing older work with more recent work.

Here are some work samples of mine from over the years. It should be interesting to see the progression of my design. Click the images to view full size. And don’t laugh at my earlier work! Okay you can laugh if you want…

First web site design I ever made. It was for a web publishing class I had in college. Designed sometime around 2003-2004. First web design ever
The design of the first website I owned jredwilly.com. Made around June 2006. jredwilly.com Design
Original theme design of Tweeaks.com that I made around February 2008. Tweeaks Design
My new portfolio design that I created last week, September 2009. Tweeaks Design Portfolio

Designs You Once Thought Were Awesome

May not really be all that awesome at all…
You can definitely tell when I got into the Web 2.0 style. The first two are… well put it this way, at the time I made them, I was so proud of what I created. That thought that first design was awesome, partly because of how much better it was compared to the rest of my class.
Now I think it’s crap, and am embarrassed to even be showing it here.

Taking what you used to know and what you know now will influence what you will know in the future. The experiences you have play a major role in how you see things in life. You may have more knowledge, and better skills now, but the way you see things now is based on your progression in design, and everything you know now will effect how you are in the future, too.

I’m sure you have something you made way back, that you were so proud of, and would go around showing it to all of your friends, and then later on could finally see why no one thought it was quite as cool as you did, cause it was crap.

So what can you come up with by comparing your old and new work?

Get automatic updates! Subscribe to Our RSS Feed or Get Email Updates sent straight to your inbox!