Sorry I'm following up super late, but I've been trying to make this transition for the last year or so with no luck. Was there a specific way you structured your pitch to gaming? It seems incredibly difficult with few positions open and nobody really moving around :/

I've been working on a way to say this for a while, but I think you nailed it! Icon design is incredibly important, especially for site accessibility (thinking about the fact that a huge percentage of the world won't be viewing your work on a @2x screen).

To offer a differing opinion, I actually find 'Snap to Pixel Grid' to be very cumbersome and detrimental to effective icon design. Our design system optimizes at @2x (large majority of our users on mobile devices) to ensure that our @1x optimization remains intact, as opposed to the other way around, where over-optimization was very apparent. Our system uses a 2dp stoke, with a 1dp detailing line. For cases where curves are present, we take that 2dp stroke and narrow it to 1.875dp (shaving off .125dp on each side) in order to keep optical weight the same, as well as open up narrow areas for better visual clarity. With 'Snap to Pixel Grid' on, this completely destroys our optimization, as it pulls those points back to the grid, thereby tinting unnecessary pixels.

Just my two cents on the subject, but I'm interested as to the use of it in icon design. Again, great writeup!

It looks like they changed it quick!

The Adobe crew came down and gave us some hands on with Comet last week. A lot of folks were very impressed with what they saw, and I think this will be a tremendous improvement in workflow overall (hopefully it'll phase out Sketch in our workplace).

I would argue that depth is critical for product design. From the interviews I've sat in on for product designers, our overall management, but also team, responds better to people who have done the research and applied that knowledge to a well-designed (read: straightforward and functional for the user) prototype than those who show breadth of work for the sake of numbers.

Just my 2c.

Recruited through LinkedIn

I can advocate the opposite. I did four years of college (two at a JC, two at a university for History, go figure!) That's where I landed my first job as a graphic designer and by the end of college, I was recruited by a major tech company as a UX designer. I'm only 2 years out of college at 24, and feel I owe everything to my time at school.

I learned everything on sites like this, browsing dribbble and behance, reading articles and doodling for fun to sharpen my design skills. But for everything else, college was invaluable. It gave me a chance to practice my passion while still enjoying being a young adult (read: no crazy bills to pay), taught me the responsibilities of setting schedules and balancing work with play, allowed me the freedom of being on my own and making my own decisions, gave me a chance to start organizing my finances, and the classroom expanded my knowledge far more than learning on my own could've. All said and done, you can be smart about how you go to school, come out relatively debt-free, land a great job, and come away with experiences you would otherwise miss out on if you skipped straight to the workforce. But it is definitely personal preference.