Every time I have thought of starting a business, I discouraged myself by thinking of the criticism I am likely to receive. I have feared rejection of my designs that I invest my heart, mind, and soul into. Imagine spending several days on a layout only to find out that people do not find it user-friendly or useful.
This fear has kept me from sharing my designs until I discovered Dribbble and since then, there is no looking back. I was invited by a fellow designer that I had studied with. I didn’t know about the platform back then and thought of it as another sales platform.
I was proven wrong, and soon Dribbble became an integral part of my day! In this article, I share how spending an hour on the platform every day has helped me professionally.
A Platform for Inspiration
It is common for designers to go short of ideas and creativity, like people of any other profession. Being a designer does not mean that our minds are always filled with innovative concepts or that we still have ideas.
More than often, I struggle in finding the right color combination, effective font style, and appropriate shape size and so. At Dribbble, various designers post their work which means that there are endless design inspirations.
When in doubt, I log into my Dribbble account and look for similar concepts. I am always confused about bright colors. Using yellows and oranges can be tricky, but Dribbble gives me the confidence to experiment with them because several designers have successfully used them.
Spending some time on Dribbble every day helps in keep designs at the back of my mind at all times. If you sit with me, you’ll often hear me say ‘Oh yeah. I saw something similar on Dribbble, and it looked great’.
A Confidence-Boosting and Feedback Tool
Dribbble has helped me become a confident designer by providing a platform of both; young and experienced designers. After looking at some brilliant designs on the software, I wondered if I am at the right place. My work was nowhere close to the design shared on the platform.
However, there were various young designers as well who shared their work and received feedback from other designers. I observed that their work was improving. I knew that if I could not share my work here where nothing was at stake, how will I become a successful designer who would have to make sales pitches to companies?
Whenever I am working on an important project or a difficult one, I share my raw designs on Dribbble. Either I am looking for color and font suggestions or need a second opinion on the entire outlook. And oh boy, the productive criticism and advice has helped me tremendously.
Maybe I was thinking of skipping the text, and suddenly a witty comment gives me a tagline I can’t ignore. Perhaps I wasn’t sure about a layout, but the number of likes gave me a thumbs up.
A Platform to Connect with Industry Experts
Dribbble allows you to connect with all kinds of designers. It has designers who have just started designing, those who have some years of experience and those who are a benchmark for the industry. This means that you get to learn from the best in the business.
When scrolling through Dribbble, I identify various mistakes that I make in my designing. I follow a lot of experienced designers, and I observe the color combinations they usually use and ones which they have never used, their favorite fonts, specific layout styles, and other designing aspects.
Since life gets busy sometimes and I cannot invest my time in proper courses, Gribble serves as a learning platform where I unconsciously develop an understanding of various ideas and methods of designing. It serves as an insight to the industry trends.
A Guideline to Update My Skills
Looking at the work of other designers makes me realize that I have a long way to go and need to learn so many things. One of the good things about technology is that it keeps getting better. While scrolling through the designs, I identified different concepts that looked wonderful and that I must learn to improve my work.
It also helps determine the shortcomings of my work in the absence of different skills. Spending time on Dribbble serves as a constant reminder that I should not settle with my existing skills and helps in specifying and shortlisting abilities that I needed to learn.
Also, the work posted by other designers show the results of learning different technologies and helps me decide which ones would be beneficial for my area of interest. This helps me in saving time and efforts otherwise spent on irrelevant learning.
A Portfolio of My Work
Gribble serves as a portfolio of my work and helps recruiters and companies to have a look at my skills and approach me when needed. Instead of sharing my work on different platforms, the software allows me to share it on the most relevant space.
It displays my areas of interest and expertise and makes it easier for recruiters to find me. My work speaks for itself, in all honesty, and the engagement on the posts helps non-technical people as well to asses my abilities and potential in the designing arena.
Dribbble is a beautiful learning platform for new designers as it provides a space to interact with the work of other designers. It exposes you to extraordinary work as well as that of amateurs and helps learn from thousands of designs.
To make the most of the software, you must engage with other designers and give honest feedback on their work. I ensure that I spend at least an hour on Gribble every day, even if it’s just scrolling through the application. However, you will need an invite from an existing member to join the platform.
