I’m very happy to discover Figma. In the past few years, I have spent a lot of time on Product development, wireframing, and simplifying user experiences, but I have yet to spend time on advanced prototyping software. I’ve used more of a combination of Balsamiq, Miro and the good old pen and paper.
Since I’m between jobs right now, it’s the best time to be learning some new skills I previously didn’t have the time or headspace to. With that in mind, I signed up for a seven day course with the Product Design Academy to design a landing page.
In all honesty, I have no confidence in my design skills. Well, more specifically whether I’m able to produce something aesthetically beautiful — but I’m definitely up for a challenge. Either ways, it will help me understand designers better, and pick up some skills in Figma which may come in handy.
The course is self-paced and I’m in the process of going through interviews so I’m not too sure if I will be completing it in a week, but I shall post my results and thinking here.
Day 1
Day 1 is an introduction to the course, to landing pages, and to Figma. The course has 3 videos and then provides us with some assets to help us get started. I made an assumption that I should stick with the assets provided. It also helped set some limits so I don’t try too hard with trying to find the perfect images.
Thoughts & Reflections:
- Figma is super user friendly and easy to set up and learn!
- Designing without content (content-led design) is not a piece of cake. I started with the images and design then added the copy/narrative. I think it would have been easier to come up with the narrative before the design.
- There’s probably a lot to be said about design trends and how it influenced how I set up the basic layout of the pages. There was a sense of “modern” vs “old school” as I started playing with the layouts.
- I went from stressing out about how ugly my pages looked, to then quickly putting a few ideas together, to then finalising 2 pages as my attempt for the day.
