My free tutorial section is growing fast!
When I started my YouTube channel in April of 2020, I didn’t know what kind of videos I’ll be making exactly. One type, that caught on the most among my subscribers was design tutorials.
I got so many requests in the recent weeks, that I decided to mix things up and do tutorials on more than one type of work.
In this post I’ll cover three recent ones that I think you’ll find interesting.
They all bring something to the table to help you boost your skills to another level. Each one enables you to progress fast and grow as a designer. …
UI Trends 2077
From touch through VR, AR, all the way to direct neural connections. See the future of User Interfaces.
As a designer, when playing a video game that has user interfaces inside of it, I can’t help but to think about how they’re made and how they fit the lore and time of the game. So whenever a game has a computer in it, that you can interact with, I sit down and play around with it.
Hello, 2077!
Cyberpunk 2077 has inspired me to take a look at the interfaces in the year 2077, and what I think would be the directions UI’s will take. But before we start going theoretical, here’s a super brief analysis of the in-game UI’s. …
UI Trends 2020–2021
Another year, another UI trend is becoming increasingly popular among designers. Do you know it yet?
Last year I unintentionally started the craze around Neumorphism, but as I predicted then, it didn’t really take over the design scene. In that very first article, I also mentioned all the potential accessibility problems this style faces, which hopefully helped all the other articles raising accessibility issues that year :-)
Sure — there were some apps and products done in this style, but most notable, widespread uses were in some Samsung ads and in the MKBHD intro video. …
Design tools are ultra powerful now, yet they seem to highlight the nightmarish features of collaboration the most.
Yes, this is going to be one of those controversial articles, and if you’re a Figma superfan, you likely want to start throwing rocks at me right now. Am I right? But please hold off for a while, and hear me out.
Collaboration is…
Starting my design career in the late ’90s, collaboration simply meant someone sitting behind your shoulder at a clunky grey PC, and pointing at the screen.
“Move that here!” and then “No, that’s too far…”
The basics.
The design world is getting faster and faster every year. Why? There are a couple of reasons. One is that the recent design tool revolution made our workflows much easier and faster. The last few years were also the advent of design systems, or even design libraries and components. We also have a lot of existing knowledge of what works well, so in many cases, we can use these safe patterns to come up with design solutions much faster.
Square 7
Is made of many non-successful nights (and days)
As far as I remember I was a “writing person”. Calling myself a writer was for years prevented by impostor syndrome. In 2001 I ran a nationwide poetry group, with our own website, forums, meetups and print publications. I wrote a book, and thenI wrote another more popular book.
My English Lit teacher back in Marion, Iowa said that I was “lazy, but with potential”. I wonder if that’s what they always assume — after all, all lazy people have potential to be productive. It’s just that most of them never change.
I joined Medium on August 15th 2019. It took me a very long time to write my first story, select a publication and then click submit. …
The design industry landscape is changing — we need to change with it to stay relevant and thrive.
2020 is now behind us. Good! It’s been a bad year on many levels, but it was also transformative. And looking beyond the bad, we can learn from this and improve both ourselves and our work in 2021.
Working from home matured from a trend of a couple of forward-thinking employers to a necessity and drastically changed the way we communicate and work on projects as a team.
It’s mostly good, but not without some caveats.
How to grow in 2021
Based on both my personal experience, and asking around larger companies HR and CEOs (who run large design teams) I came to a conclusion that being a pyramid-shaped designer is not going to be enough anymore. The narrow-field designers who often don’t do any actual design, are definitely not in-demand right now, but it’s nothing new. …
Square 6
My year in review.
I’m a doer. I hate long meetings that tend to be a way to run away from your “desk” for a moment and procrastinate. In 2020 that time wasting practice has moved largely to zoom.
But because I value my time, I pushed all the unnecessary meetings away. Yes, that’s right: I only had SEVEN zoom calls in 2020. (And a handful of Skypes / Hangouts).
99% of meetings could be replaced by an email with five bullet points.
Finish 2020 strong with these free tutorials!
2020 is nearly over — whew! But I wanted to remind you, that you can still follow some of these tutorials, explore new ideas and grow as a designer.
I strongly believe, that using only pre-made components is not the best way to get better. You can get a lot of inspiration from different techniques, like 3d, glassmorphism, neumorphism and even good old skeuomorphism.
Yes — I’m suggesting you try a wooden shelf UI in 2020 and it’s not a joke :) Just don’t offer it to a client, but try it nevertheless.
And next year we’ll also play around with some voxels — it’s easy and super fun, and the app to make them is free! …
Square 5
We can try (and fail) to change the world.
Ethics are having a comeback. Many designers say, that making ethical products is going to be their goal. I know a designer who refuses to work for Big-Pharma™ companies, because of his ethics.
People quit Google (remember “Don’t be evil”?) and Facebook because of their unethical practices all the time. But there’s more designers and developers to take their place.
Movements like “Design for the good of humanity” are sprouting all around, and while they can work on a small scale, they’ll never reach any notoriety.
Humans are incompatible with humanity.
This is just how we’re built — as humans. If ethical practices would be enough to make a market share for a product, we’d be doing them even without believing in them. …
