Design advice from our community!
Hey Buddies! We’re in Bangkok this month and cooking up some fun events for you all.
I’m also Grace Ling, Founder of Design Buddies, and I run this newsletter. Actually, I run two newsletters: this one and Grace Pace.
For this one (Design Buddies), I’m focused on sharing advice from our community, updates on Design Buddies, events, jobs shared on Design Buddies (new), and more.
On Grace Pace, I’m sharing about founder life, world traveling/digital nomading, and building Design Buddies in public. If you’d like to also keep up on Grace Pace, you’re welcome to subscribe here and it’s free! My latest newsletter is on Day in my life as a digital nomad in Bali + more building in public with Design Buddies
What’s the best design advice you’ve received?
We asked our Buddies on Discord and here’s what we got -
“Never sell design — instead, focus on selling the transformation you can help your best, most ideal clients make that design can contribute towards.” - Christopher Reed
“There are no “wrong” design decisions, only random ones. That being said, your gut isn’t random. Trust your gut. Also grids are overrated.” - Zach Shea
“Learn some psychology. It will help you." - My Father Psychology helped me understand a bit more about human behavior. Most of design work is to convey some sort of message or evoke an emotion. I think understanding human behavior is really important for that.” - Yash
“Great design is often what you don’t do rather than what you do.”"- Cello
“How can we design something better, not different? Something to keep in mind that sometimes changing a design is just a lateral move, and to think about whether the change actually enhances the experience.” - Kelly Jin
“Design for the user, not for yourself." This reminds me that the goal is always to create an experience that is intuitive, accessible, and enjoyable for the end user, rather than focusing too much on personal preferences or aesthetics. It's important to empathize with users, understand their needs, and prioritize functionality and usability, making sure that the design serves its purpose effectively.” -Ashwana Murali
“‘Don't try to be original. Just try to be good.’ Paul Rand It's a great piece of advice because a lot of young designers focus too much on "breaking the rules" without truly understanding why those rules exist in the first place.” - Sara
“Every thing should be reason based any color, alignment, padding, font styling should be reason based nothing arbitrary.” - Nishant
“I am pretty new to this but one piece of advice I got from someone more experienced is trust yourself. For my bootcamp, we had to create our portfolio website. I had a ton of text on there to explain my process. He said it is better to do more showing than telling, let the images tell the story. Text should be limited and be to the point. I had used ChatGPT to expand everything because that is what I figured my instructors would want.” -bingbangboom
Events
We’re hosting a big design holiday party in Bangkok on Wed Nov 20, 18:00!
RSVP (free): https://lu.ma/bangkok-party
We actually sold out 2 weeks before but are holding a few spots you. Do email me if you’d like to get off the waitlist grace@designbuddies.community
We had a LinkedIn live on how to master linkedin, build your personal brand, and digital nomad with Casey Rickey! Catch the recording here~
I also recently hosted a workshop about content creation for entrepreneurs with Wander Women Hub, a wonderful community I met in Bali! Here’s the recording! You can watch on LinkedIn or YouTube~
🐰 About Design Buddies/UXGO
Design Buddies/UXGO is a community where you level up your design career. Land jobs, improve your design skills, and make friends. We have resources, events, design challenges, job boards, fun perks, and more.
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