Though I admit I’m just a novice graphic designer, but I would like to share some of the tips that I learn as a designer (both in graphic and web):

1.) Flexibility: A good designer always makes himself flexible on all kinds of trends, styles and tools used in designing. I always encounter some graphic designers claiming they are good yet when asked to do a design using a softwares they are not familiar with(e.g. GIMP, Paint.NET, etc.) they barely make a clean design (”If I was using Photoshop, those design would be better”). Being flexible is one way in making it as a graphic designer.

2.) Attention To Details: A good designer should be attentive of his design down to the smallest detail. Most the of the time, the very smallest details is would differentiate a good design to a great design.

3.) Clean and Organized: Even if your designing in shapes or in fractals, there should always be organization between elements while the design is not finalize. A good organizational practice is by proper labelling of elements(for graphics the layers, for web the alt-tags and the image names).

That would be it for now. I will post more tips as I go along.