💥Design Brief #89: Illustration with Sketch, Ethics in Web Design, Value Proposition, Experimentation and Design Critique

Don’t Let Fear of Feedback Undermine Your Technical Design

Some designers are reluctant to receive feedback on their work, especially, when it’s the most useful: early on in the process. They know feedback is supposed to be a positive thing, but they still avoid embracing it as an opportunity to make things better. Intercom structured their technical design process to encourage collaboration and to avoid the fear of feedback. What can you learn from their strategy? Read more

Component-based Illustration Using Sketch, Part 1: Principles, Styles & Characteristics

How to make a design system for illustration? First, you need to start with design principles that would lay the foundation of the design. You also need to specify basic colour schemes and create a set of components and templates. Then, you have to understand and choose the style and the characteristics. Check out the whole process. Read more

Using Ethics in Web Design

Every design decision is a decision made on behalf of other people – the people we often refer to as end-users. It’s designers’ responsibility to think carefully about how such decisions impact the person on the other end of the conversation. Ethics can help ensure the longevity of designs and help carve paths to a better future for everyone. How to achieve that? Read more

How to Present Your Design to Stakeholders

Communicating design to stakeholders is a unique challenge that designers have to learn on the job. Rather than sprint demos and design critiques, stakeholders want to see how your work ties in with the business goals and strategic directions. How to present design to non-designers and, more specifically, to stakeholders? Read more

How to Define a Value Proposition

Without a proper purpose, companies and entrepreneurs will have a difficult time understanding the problem that they’re trying to solve and will become one of those businesses that fail at launching a new product to the market. Value proposition design can help you create products and services that people actually want and need. Here is how to define one. Read more

Designing Design Tools

Mainstream digital graphic design tools seldom evolved since their creation, that is, more than 25 years ago. In recent years, a growing number of designers started questioning the resulting invisibility of design tools in the design process. This study tries to answer the following questions: How do designers work with design software? And how can we design novel design tools that support designer practices better? Read more

Experiment, Measure, Repeat

“Deliberate experimentation is more important than deliberate practice in a rapidly changing world.” At buildo, designers take experimentation and continuous improvement seriously: it’s their core value. In this post, they share how they do experiments internally. What can you learn from their experiences and advice? Read more

The Lies We Tell Ourselves as Designers

When giving someone feedback we all try to use euphemisms so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings. Oftentimes these soft words turn to lies that, on one hand, can help us avoid confrontational situations, but on the other hand, they might have a negative impact in the long run. This list includes some lies of this sort, their meaning, and possible outcomes, which will encourage you to embrace trust and honesty. Read more

Don’t Take Design Critique as an Insult

Receiving feedback is a natural part of the design process, and in every round of feedback, the design tends to get stronger and tighter. Design critique sessions help the team be on the same page about what is being designed, and also help the designer understand the needs of every team and department in their company. But how do you avoid taking feedback personally? Read more