Keeping a visual design portfolio with updated work is a never-ending project for most designers. Our portfolio is as important as our educational background, if not even more. A portfolio is a presentation card.

I work in design for many years, and as I specialize in product design and UX processes, I consider my visuals as important as the way I write about them. It’s important to communicate the research, analyzing, planning, work, and skills behind the design process.

Communicating the way we work is a moral obligation, and it helps to build respect and empathy for the design profession…

We all make mistakes. Making mistakes is all right. They are good when you can learn from them. In so many ways, mistakes are supposed to be life lessons. And they are.

So what is this post about? This post is a list of common mistakes any product designer might make. Also, it is a list of mistakes I made in my career. I hope this is useful for any person involved in product design. Please use this list as a guide to learn.

All right?✌️ Let’s start.

1. You will fail if you think you don’t have anything else to…

…or 10 things I learned which added priceless value to my life

👉 Throughout my working life experience, I worked in quite a few different jobs that for whatever the reason I don’t show on my product designer curriculum vitae. Most of them added value to my life and made me understand better the world in a way it would probably be impossible otherwise.

Among my hidden list of jobs you can find positions such as translator (in court, in jail…), waiter, debt collector —yep debt collector—, cleaner, voice actor, streets salesman, shoe shop floor assistant, wine shop clerk, delivery…

In the last years, I have been thinking about product design and how it differentiates from other design-related disciplines. One of the thoughts that always come to my mind is related to the importance of context.

Product design is a holistic discipline. It demands skills in various subjects including technology, design, or business. Context is important when designing solutions for user flows, usability or user experiences. Context is knowledge basically the knowledge you need to design proper experiences.

Context in relation to product design is about having a clear vision during the working process. In other words, gathering the necessary…

If you plan to choose design as a career path then go for it. Just to be clear, I am not trying to convince you to pursue design as a profession, it all depends on what you like to do and what your interests are. But choosing design as your field of study is –today– a very good decision.

Design is fun, but it is not easy. Today there are lots of opportunities in design –more than when I went to college– but, be aware, the path will be tough with savage competition.

Keep this in mind, if you are…

This post is to introduce an experiment I have named Profounnnd which I recently did to create random ‘useless’ inspirational quotes with Ajax. Click here to see it working

The experiment uses Google Fonts and CSS transitions to play with colors and typography. Ajax is at the heart of this personal project to create and mix the different parts of each sentence and randomise the styles. What is Ajax? Search on Google and you will find the following, ‘Ajax is not a single technology, but a group of technologies. HTML and CSS can be used in combination to mark up…

November 5, 2013

Hace unas semanas lance un post mostrando algunas de mis favoritas combinaciones de tipos — Typekit. Por esa razón he querido hacer lo mismo con las tipografías disponibles gratis en Google Fonts.

Mucho se ha dicho de la indiscutible calidad de los tipos que se pueden obtener en Typekit y en otras plataformas de pago como por ejemplo H&FJ. Desde mi punto de vista Google Fonts funcionan bastante bien cuando se utilizan las fuentes de una manera apropiada. Si cabe decir que no todas las fuentes del catalogo son de muy buena calidad, pero hay más de…

August 7, 2013

He querido aquí combinar unas cuantas tipografías de Typekit simplemente como una manera de practicar con la selección que ofrecen en este servicio de pago.

Más que nada esto es un experimento y quiero compartirlo. La entrada al post esta también en proceso de experimentación y añadiré más texto según voy analizando lo que he hecho con estas combinaciones. La razón de este post es también contestar al post anterior en el que miraba a las combinaciones de letras dentro de una misma página web. He aquí un ejercicio más en tipografía.

Pares de tipografías para combinar — Typekit