Designed several cover images in Figma.
I thought this was a good way to get my juices flowing in the morning
Tried to set up several SSGs to start this blog
The humanity
Started making a mental list of things I want to achieve in these 100 days
Does it count if it’s exclusively mental?
In chronological order:
My mind is in a fog. I think yesterday’s escapades might have something to do with that.
Feeling insecure about myself and my way of being. The things I do and aspire to seem kind of lame. The way I think seems muddy and conventional. The way I express seems flat. Life feels like a never-ending crisis where I occassionally forget about that fact.
Yeah, for a few years now I’ve been feeling a disconnect between me and my unconscious (for lack of a better term). I keep investing in these ideas: ‘I wanna be a web developer’, ‘I wanna be some kind of designer’ - but something, somewhere feels slighted? Some part of me neglected, maybe. Like, these are fine aspirations, but maybe not the right ones for me (right now)?
Not sure. My strategy is to dive a little deeper into these dreams and see what I find. Maybe it will be some kind of rejection - of working on technology, or leading a sedentary sit-on-your-ass-the-whole-day-kind-of-life.
I would definitely like a better balancing of
It feels kind of dumb, to feel this much doubt and uncertainty. I’m not completely in the dark, but still, I feel like I’m missing a really important part of the picture. Like, the things that I really want to do (or need to be doing, or simply the things that are good for me) are being kept hidden. I suspect because I’m scared of what they might lead to - changes and challenges.
That’s how it feels sometimes. It can get very dramatic up here. But then, maybe that just makes for better blog posts :). But when I look at the list of things above - those are concrete things I could start doing quite easily, tomorrow. I think I’m gonna start by connecting with some ppl. Will keep you posted.
Posted some ‘hey all, here’s me, let’s connect!’-messages to some local telegram groups
Watched a few ‘things I wish I knew before becoming a designer’-videos
Researched a company I want to apply to
Worked on a CV design in Figma
Feels like a productive day. I’m a little disappointed I didn’t finish this CV design - but man, arranging words on a page can be hard!
Nothing much more to say, it seems. My head just wants to solve these layout-challenges - do I emphasize this heading with font size, font weight, background color or all of the above? I wanna keep it minimal but then I also wanna have a color shade between these other 2 colors, so I can… etc. thimgs b complex (tm)
Now that I think about it, in the next session I might take all the colors out and just focus on the arrangement and information hierarchy. Unfuck the cluster I kind of got myself into and work in greyscale for a while. I love it bright and saturated, but I also like it simple and doable :). And I can always add colors later. (Credit for my ex-co-worker Felix for telling me about this tactic and for Refactoring UI for introducing it to us (I keep mentioning this book, because it’s the only hands-on design book I’ve read. I’m not affiliated with them)
Read through the accessibility guidelines of Material Design 3.0
Listened to a couple of videos and TED talks about design
One of the talks was basically urging designers to have a conscience - or at least consider the long-term consequences of their designs.
Reminded me of one of life’s most flustering clusterfucks:
“We are doing things. That’s good. But are these the right things?”
“Is our well-being the paramount factor in our decisions? What if we can’t agree on how to operationalize well-being?”
“We are growing. Great. … Growing to do what - more of the same things?”
Today was one of those low-energy small-steps days: feeling sleepy and flat, so let’s just make a tiny progress in a project or two. Then I can go back to napping, again :)
So that’s what I did. Practiced some skim-reading, that was interesting. Learning that Material Design, and website-design in general, has many more things to teach me. But I felt today, that it’s time to build and implement again. I will learn as I go.
Feeling like I’m running behind. Backlog’s building up. Ideas that seemed fresh a week ago already becoming stale, buried by the flow of things. And a hunger for more creating, (more energy, more time).
Read about type (as in typeface): learned about how to choose the right type for the occasion, the OpenFont standard, types of numerals, and some basic vocabulary like cap height and tracking
Worked hard on my CV design: continued with the simplified grayscale version, tried out some different ways to group information, and added content to the Values-section. Made some screenshots of interesting CVs for inspiration
I emphasize that I worked hard, because it felt like that: spending lot of energy to little effect, fiddling with details without being clear about the message that I want to convey. This was hard work, not smart work.
Working on a CV tends to bring out some deep-seated conflicts within me. This happens almost every time I do a redesign. I come back to some fundamental questions:
Do I focus on getting a job ASAP or getting better at designing? - Should I go with a template or invest some time in learning how to do a layout?
Should I follow “established conventions” or do things my way - like maybe be radically honest from the get-go?
And the kicker:
The answer is probably no. But something in me is stuck and doesn’t see an alternative. Hm hm hm.
Hyper-insecurity. A vibe of “my whole life has been a failure and I am nothing.” Skipping the ’Work Experience-section, because (feeling like) there’s no work experience worth talking about. Trying to fill in the resulting white space with something. Looking at the whole and only seeing a mess. Deciding to embrace the mess and be honest: mention depression in a section called My Story! Coming back the next day and feeling like that’s the most ridiculous and unnecessarily exhibitionistic thing in the world. Doubting the whole be-radically-honest-plan. Maybe I should rewrite everything? Maybe I should put depression in like the footer of the cover letter?
Feel ooof.
Researched a bunch of stuff around Material Design (implementation, use-cases, MD 2 vs 3)
Set up a Material Design framework within my Vue coding project
In my research I learned that MD 3 isn’t even baked into any of the Vue frameworks that are available. Looks like I’ll have to customize my the framework I’ve picked, or implement it from scratch.
Don’t know what to write. Feels like the same existential crisis I’ve been in since I did my coding bootcamp in 2020. What am I even doing? Setting up build-environments for hours at a time, failing to install npm packages, copying CSS-build-chains from example projects and crossing my fingers hoping they work. Man, after a day of doing such things, I definitely feel like I’ve taken a turn in the wrong direction.
It feels kind of soulless. I feel like there are things to unpack here, but I just spent a good 5 minutes staring at the wall and no coherent expression wants to come out.
I’m slightly proud I’ve made some solid progress on my weekly goals. And it feels good being on a streak, doing a few tiny steps every day. New challenges tomorrow.
Added pagination to this blog
Learned about slugs, SEO and Lighthouse benchmarking
Listened to some videos about permaculture design
Just a very steady day. I’m quite happy about the way I researched things - there was a good balance between being thorough and being done.
Not much more to say. Thinking about my weekly goals. Wanna send out an application tomorrow. Just to get things moving.
Learned a little more about fonts: how different fonts have different emotional effects, played this game and discussed with my partner, looked at these fonts made by womxn
Worked on my CV design: set the layout for a simple version, looked at the designs I’ve made so far, even liked some of them :), organized my ideas/cleaned up my Figma file
Set up my blog with Astro
omg it worked out of the box
Read about SSG and SSR (web paradigms)
And stored my newly found knowledge in Notion (aka filing away :)
Set up a basic layout and blog post template in Astro
Before God said ‘Let there be light!’, there was probably some Googling
Started writing down the things that I might do in these 100 days
A lot of techy stuff. It’s been 2 days of setup - researching SSGs, trying them out, doing some frustrates. But it’s done. I feel like I can work with Astro. I see some Figma designing and CSS styling in my future.
Worked on my CV
Talked to some ppls
Made some prototypes for off the dome
First of all, I got a tiny mountain of stuff done today, despite feeling low-ish. 💥 High five, 🐻 hug, and a little pat on the fanny for me! 🤦
My last post was like a week ago. I’ve changed the rules for this challenge - I don’t wanna be doing this on the weekends if I don’t want to.
But more interesting, I’ve had some kind of realization about design, what it means to me and what I want to be (not) doing with this challenge.
I’m a little wiser… or about to be. Everything is still pretty messy and fresh. I wrote some words, but it felt like I was skirting around the issue. What’s the issue, you ask?
Find out…
When I find out… ..
In the next… …
Episode :)
Oofed out.
🤔 One thing I learned
304 (cached) HTTP responses don’t show up in the cache section of Chrome devtools.
That gave me quite the bamboozle.
If you’re trying to inspect HTTP cache data, this is not the guide you want. The Size column of the Network Log has the information you’re looking for.
Designed cards for day 2 and 3
I’m not telling how much time that took
Designed the landing page for mobile
Made my boi Astro get all my blog posts (which are markdown files) and display them on a single page
I feel slightly, uhm, dissatisfied with the design for the landing page. I tell myself it’s a rough sketch. It lives in Figma. I’m slightly proud of my component setup, using some atomic design principles. It’s really cool to see changes made to an individual part (like this piece of text) ripple down and spread to all posts in the prototype. I’m gonna start implementing this in CSS tomorrow. I gave up the idea that the design has to be perfect before building it. And it feels so freeing (thank you, Refactoring UI) Iteration, baby. Itration, bab. Filtration, bb. Get rid of the ideas that are stopping You (I feel like I should be saying this through a megaphone, but not in a good way). Kind of curious to see where this will go.
Designed card for day 4
This time it was a 1-pomodor-sprint. I wanna keep it loose like this
Research: looked into CSS frameworks Windi and Uno
Today was a low energy day due to sleep deprivation. That’s not totally a bad thing. I felt too tired to stress, too slow to rush like usual. It’s nice to have a day where I work in a chill way towards some realistic goals. In fact, I got as many todo-items checked off today as ever - mostly setting up my dev ennvironment, plugin by plugin. My girlfriend said you’re doing tiny important steps. 💚
For context: as I write this, the blog is still not online. Well, it technically is, but I haven’t announced it yet. It looks, well, not very good. It’s barely a webpage, but still - I’m almost ready to give it the old shoutout. I just wanna make it look coherent and a little prettier. I’ve got my designs in Figma, they just have to be implemented. So I was researching CSS frameworks/engines/preprocessors today.
Think I’m gonna go with Tailwind for now, just because the integration with Astro is easier as of the time of writing. I’m done with set up, researching frameworks, debugging plugins.
That’s kind of it. A part of me would have liked to have gone ahead and styled this blog, like I had intended to do today. Come to think of it, I kind of veered off of that goal. Not sure why I felt that this was the day to set up my IDE. But the great thing about being thoroughly sleep-deprived - I feel too tired to be disappointed.
Off to the depths of my comfort zone: eating a sandwich and watching Ross’s Game Dungeon
Read about making things accessible for ppl with anxiety
Implemented (reinvented) my Figma designs
Studied the markup of a blog of someone who cares about accessibility: Vasilis van Gemert
Read up on some of the basic semantic markup elements like <article>. Also <time>
Tidied up my Notion project page for this blog
It’s been a day. A day at the computer. A day of thousand little lessons. I must have changed course a dozen times today - realizing that what I want to do takes much more effort and care than I had thought (like converting dates in JavaScript).
In the end, I’m pretty happy with the result - the page looks presentable and all that’s left for this iteration is to change the favicon and maybe buy a domain.
But man, it’s been a long day. I got this strange feeling that comes when I spend the whole day inside, making things happen on a screen. I’ve been working on this thing in isolation for a few days now. I wanna get this baby out and let it go.
Had some sweet roasted veggies tho.
Styled my footer. Don’t laugh
Designed a favicon
Feelin under the weather today. I might have pushed my body a little hard with the long days and uninterrupted staring at the screen. We are a pomodoro household, but I’ve been happily ignoring my timers, gritting my teeth and wanting this thing to be done today. Probably not the healthiest approach. Wish I could do it more low and slow, sometimes.
Adding things to my 100dod bucketlist. I don’t even know what design means to me. Have I mentioned that before? Part of this is going to be figuring this out. I hope it gets philosophical. I feel like I’ve got at least one post about the meaning of the word ‘design’ in me. uuu, also - affordances.
thought about how we are supposed to write dates in the English-speaking world and how far removed that is from how we speak
I wrote this on August 7 - not 7th. Or how about the absurd amount of commas in Sunday, August 7, 2022
techy: fiddled around with a lot of CSS on both a macro and a micro scale
I’m starting to develop an appreciation for some of the trials and tribulations involved in styling a website
wrote some microcopy for the footer
Interesting how many different tones you can put into 5 or 6 words
This is like the third day (3 day) where I’m thinking ‘ok, I’m gonna announce this thing tomorrow’. (I have worked on this blog for a week but haven’t announced it yet.) But I can see now, even tho I’m doing progress, and I’ve ticked off several items from my list of essentials for launch today, I’ve also added several more. I think it’s good enough tho (and as I write this, something profoundly disagrees). It is tho. It’s gonna get published tomorrow, on a fresh monday.
Apart from that, I don’t know, I’m feeling morose. The work progresses, but it also consumes. I want some sunlight on my face.
Read an article about designing websites for people with anxiety
Looked over some posters outlining the UK Home Office’s guidelines about designing for people with different abilities
Read some things that really struck a chord with me in this article about UX leaders asking ‘where did we go wrong?’. More on that below
Researched frameworks that would allow me to implement Material Design in the Vue JavaScript framework
Ok, I’ve been feeling morose today. Or maybe just sad. (Morose sounds cooler tho.) So what I did is to just do a little progress on my projects, tick off some boxes, without expecting any Herculean working-hours from myself. Did the sadness go away? No. Did I check off some boxes? Heck, yeah. I finally announced this blog, for one 😌.
I can’t really say why I’ve been feeling sad, but it seems like a big sort of feeling. A mood? Something being digested, maybe. A friend left me a voice message talking about how doing computer work leaves him feeling soulless and zombified - that struck a chord. I watched a Youtube video talking about Travis Bickle’s lack of purpose - that struck another chord.
And then I read this article that just… ehm… well, I’m kind of figuring this all out as I’m writing.
In short, it kind of opened a new perspective of looking at UX for me. It resonated deeply and touched on issues that I’ve had from the very start.
Let me share the quotes that spoke to me:
The implicit promise of UX for many of us was a burgeoning philosophy of management by inquiry and insight, in which new creative explorations would lead to new questions about human behavior, which in turn would drive the definition of new product and value opportunities.
The culture of UX also seemed to necessitate a degree of respect, compassion, and simple humility toward the people who use what we make, and the ways in which their lives and experiences may shape their behavior to look very different from our own.
I think this summary brings out some of the core of what fascinates and inspires me about UX.
The disgruntlement seems to go up the longer someone has been in the field: The more seasoned and experienced a UX person is, the more likely they are to be asking whether realizing user-centered values is even possible under capitalism.
(Again, here’s the full article.)
And this idea just hit the heart of the matter and really touched the heart of my discomfort with doing design (or any sort of work) in the context of working for a for-profit company.
I’m kind of excited to learn that some ppl in the UX community are sharing this discomfort and asking these fundamental questions.
But I also feel very muddy and, hm, overwhelmed and stuck because I don’t see a way out of the system, or out of this discomfort. Do I really wanna be spending x hours a day helping some company sell a product? Do I wanna interview ppl so I can get a better understanding of their behavior, so that someone (maybe even me) can find a better ‘value opportunity’?
When I think about such things, after about 10 minutes I often feel the urge to leave my design/programming/technology-related ambitions and go live in a cave.
Talk about finding my niche!
Made a few sketches for my new CV in Figma
Made some grey color palettes 😌
Not sure if I have anything to say. Feelin tired, maybe I didn’t sleep all too well.
I’m having a naughty kind of fun with my CV. Writing it in a ‘normal’, ”standard”, '''expected''' way kind of stresses me out. But I’ve found an antidote: Being honest. Like, advertising-that-I-am-a-mess-kind-of-honest. And then all of the pressure of presenting myself falls away, and I can start making something interesting.
Not sure if I’ll actually send any of these drafts, but they definitely help with getting me past the blockage. After I get my juices flowing, I can always trim down the crazy. Or at least how much I show of it :).
Wrapped into this is the question of what kind of work and work relationships… do I want… are possible… are desirable… are realistic… are healthy? etc. etc. I feel split between ‘I love you as a colleague, but don’t call me after 6’ and ‘y’all my peeps, let’s do thimgs together, why not also after work?’
Have I mentioned that I’m looking for a job? 😋