I swear, I can design..I’m not just a code monkey.
I recently went on an interview for an opening I actually thought I was a good fit for. I was wrong and deep down I knew that. I realized that I had nothing in my portfolio or examples to show which indicated that I had such a skill set and I was politely told that they didn’t see me as a good match.
The fact is, I learned that I was rusty in design. I didn’t have anything to show for design work..nothing current (bad, bad mistake) and even though my career path moved me into development, I still could have been comping out web site ideas or just visual elements even if I might not use them and as a result, I got rusty in design.
So what does one do when they get rusty like this? You get back to basics and you get back to designing. It’s not easy…you’re rusty, after all. But it is like riding a bike
My suggestion is to just design whatever. Buttons, interfaces, web sites, eyecandy, whatever. There’s no harm and it’s not like you’re wasting time or money in doing so. In the end, even if you design something new every day and half of it is crap, there’s still that 50% that probably isn’t. Portfolio work, friends.
Another idea is to look up some of those web sites you thought were just dag-nasty and redesign them. You know the ones I’m talking about: the local coffee shop or day spa site that looks like it’s straight out of 1999 or your worst Flash nightmare. Take that site and redesign it.
Consider pro-bono work. Not a ton, mind you..but some. Of course, freelance when you can…the benefits of freelancing will only help you grow, not only from a technical aspect, but from a business aspect as well. There’s something great in knowing that you can comp out a web site with 5 pages, basic navigation and dummy content over the course of X hours.
Of course the best thing you can do is to just avoid getting rusty, period. Apply the a fore mentioned ideas to your current situation and go with it. Yes, you may create some real garbage and you may feel, upon occasion, that you’re just designing for the sake of designing. But you’re not. You are designing with a purpose..the purpose is to stay fresh, grown and keep your portfolio up to date.
Get out there and design, people.