Obv not what he's implying.

Great web design as usual

This thread is hilarious XD

My tiny college does this, in small part. We had to go find a local client to do work for. Whether the work was paid or free was up to the student. Got my first 2 clients this way :) Was awesome.

Don't get your hopes up ;)

edit: I'm being playful btw.

If you're a junior or are taking the self-taught path in one of the various disciplines of design, organizations like those listed — and in your local area — are a much better use of your time and energy. Both in terms of real world impact on the work you do, but also in terms of getting real, practical, hands on experience with working on and dealing with real world problems.

Well said Reece. I wholeheartedly agree. One thing to note is that it's also more difficult for juniors to genuinely appreciate the value of this advice — which is thrown around a lot, for good reason — without having experienced value from both sides of this spectrum (e.g. surface level design to solving real problems)

The real question to pose, perhaps: How might we get juniors to trust in this way of thinking, without having experienced its benefits. It's been my experience anyway, that I only truly began to see the value in having "real, practical, hands on experience with working on and dealing with real world problems" much later in my career. Well past my junior years.

Then again ... blindly following advice isn't great. Especially when it goes against innocuous redesigns that will inevitably be phased out as the designer in question becomes more experienced.

Good :)

Imo this works in large part because clients and (many) potential employers are not critical in regards to your point about the product's goals. So, although "worth close to nothing", it's still effective in the goal of impressing the masses. That's how I see it anyway.

On another note I have seen pretty good totally-new-feature-addition type redesigns. I agree with your comment more regarding purely visual (and minor functional) style redesigns.

I do think however you can make an interesting case redesigning a product you use very, very frequently, addressing a problem you personally have. As long as the work is prefaced with that, then I think these types of redesign are a harmless and still a good (and fun) exercise to improve ones' craft.

I've been using Figma for my clickable prototypes. And before that, back in the day, I preferred Marvel App (https://marvelapp.com) for prototypes. Found it was a lot faster, less clunky.

Ouuu. Thanks Mattan. Seems great so far!