Renew your vows

I love the premise of Fabricio Teixeira's website 'Lessons of Design'. After almost 20 years of being a designer, like wedding vows, he’s reflected about what he finds compelling about being a product designer (or 'product of design'), with the hope that by writing down what he’s learned, he will inspire other designers.

He’s got many great insights; here's the top 10 that resonated most with me:

• You're never bad at something, you're just new to it.
• Whenever there is an argument between two ideas, find the third idea.
• Find the ideas that scare you. Invite them over. Give them a try. At a minimum, even if they don’t work, you will be less scared to try them next time.
• Simplify by finding elements in your design that are serving a similar purpose. Either pull them apart, group them closer together, or merge them into one.
• Simplicity is repeatedly saying no to almost everything.
• You don't—ever—have to be rude when you say no. At work, and in life.
• Create space for the eyes to pause.
• Usability is not everything. Remember about usefulness.
• Choose consistency over intensity. Consistency compounds. Consistency makes things last.
• Give credit even where credit isn’t due. Credit is a designer’s currency.

There's many more great insights, you can read all of them here: Lessons.design.

Is it time to renew your vows as a designer and reflect on what you've learnt?

Khroma colour tool

I’ve been playing with a free colour tool that helps you design with colours you love. First, it asks you to set your colour preferences by choosing 50 swatches from a range of options, and then it generates an unlimited number of colour combinations based on your preferences.

For me, it was pretty bang on – I immediately saved a few palettes for future use (and added it to my Designer’s Toolkit for future reference). Pretty cool!

Check out khroma.co