Goodbyes are the worst.
Don’t worry we’re not saying goodbye to the challenge…. I know you were scared for a second! Our team is still working (like the tortoise — slow and steady) on our beautiful UIs. We have a few more to share with you here! But first, a moment of silence for the (also hopefully slow and steady) end of summer. This is a particularly sad occurrence, not just because I especially enjoy long sunny days and any excuse to sit by a pool, but also because our lovely intern is headed back to school for her final semester.
Yasmine. Yassy Yas Yasmine. I’ve had the absolute pleasure of seeing your face probably the most out of everyone we work with. And mostly from a birds eye view since your stubbornness prevents you from standing at your standing desk (except that one time), and I’m always standing (except that one time).
You may have seen us featured recently on AIGA Upstate New York’s Instagram when our fellow challenger, Theresa, took over their account for a week. (She’s pretty cool, right?)
Anyway, you all know from our original post, 100 Days of UI Challenge, that Yasmine started it all! She was the nice little kick in the butt that our team needed to get it’s groove back and we are very grateful to her! So this is a short little goodbye as she heads back to school, but not really goodbye because she’ll be joining us full time after graduation!
This post is for you, Yasmine. Enjoy it!
It seems like it’s about time that we show you some more of our designs from the last few challenges. But I have a bit of a confession first. Don’t tell anyone, but sometimes we forget about the challenge. I know, it’s shameful! We’re embarrassed to admit it. And maybe forget is the wrong word. Let me put it this way… sometimes we’re like “Nah, I worked over my allotted brainpower already today, I’m going to unwind instead by watching some really trashy TV, drinking some wine, and adding more totally realistic (completely ridiculous) photos to the Pinterest board for my future house” Or maybe that’s just me. But either way, sometimes even though we hustle we also like to take a break, or we hustle so hard that we crash. This was all a very long way of saying that we aren’t up to day 50 by now.
We do, however, have a new challenger to welcome! Hello Kevin, we’re so excited that you’re joining us:
Kevin Bruckner is currently a freelance UI/UX designer and Agile Champion. He studied Sports Communication with minors in Digital Video Production and Interactive Media at Marist College. Everyone knows him as the guy who wants to know more. He is an aspiring web developer, linguist, music producer, and everything in between. He is fascinated by all things tech, and we all support him in his lifelong dream of becoming a successful entrepreneur.
Kevin is awesome for jumping in so quickly and energetically. He’s already completed three of the challenges in the time it took us to write this blog post. Not only that, but he’s joined in discussing design trends and styles and suggested new practices for our team. We’re so excited to see his work and share it with you.
There are articles upon articles on design trends, a lot of which I’ve read. It’s interesting to see how those trends form and fall and adapt, but a lot of times, if you’re a full time designer for a company with any sort of brand standards, the newest trends aren’t an option to you in the pieces you create. This challenge is a place for us to learn and practice our craft, and also a space to develop our own style or try out some of the trends we see. By the end of these 100 challenges, I hope to have developed more of my own visual language that forms a connection across my designs.
This challenge is a place for us to learn and practice our craft, and also a space to develop our own style or try out some of the trends we see.
We’re all at different stages with this challenge, but looking at each designer’s work, we’re beginning to build collections that highlight our strengths, interests, and visual signatures. Even though Kevin is just starting out, his more muted and natural color choices distinguish his designs from Yasmine’s. Adaoha’s signature seems to be circles and rounded shapes, where as I tend toward sharper corners and rectangles.
Theresa seems to focus on mobile interfaces and uses pastel tones, with the most notable exception being the ever important Mets colors — Dodgers blue and Giants orange for anyone who doesn’t know the extensive history of New York baseball teams (she’ll gladly fill you in on ALL the details anytime).
As we continue with these challenges our signatures may change or grow, but it’s profound that even as we’re still all between 3 and 15 designs and frequently have sneak peaks of each others work, our styles are this distinguishable.
Do you have a signature style? Is there a trend we should all try out? Comment on this post or share with us on twitter with the hashtag #designPOK100
As always, our challenge submissions are all fictional and represent only our own, awesome views!
