Nobody did anything perfectly the first time
Our chat with designer Ramon Gilabert
If you’re into product design, animations, user interactions and want to know everything about Sketch Ramond is one of the people hearing from would be perfect.
We got in touch with Ramon Gilabert a few weeks ago and wanted to interrogate him and find out everything that’s going on in his world.
All designs shown are his and can be seen on his website
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What has got you to where you are today?
There’s been a lot of what I would personally describe as defining or turning moments in my life, but one of them is definitely when I got my first computer. I was 10, and right away I saw how powerful that black 256 MB of RAM IBM was. Not because of the machine itself, but rather, because of the new world it opened up to me — the internet.
I remember spending my afternoons typing “Most powerful computer” on Google, and going through the Apple website (I didn’t know what Apple was at the time), where I would max out a Mac Pro just to check the insane prices, while I would whisper to myself — you’ll have one of those one day. I also remember discovering a drag and drop website where, with no knowledge about what code, or even design were, I was able to build one informative site about Greenpeace. And I also vividly remember what got me into design. A forum of a strategy game where everybody had an amazing signature — and, curious as I was, and without knowing any word of English, I translated “how do you do one of those?” from Spanish, and started sending personal messages to everybody whose signature I liked. Eventually somebody got back to me — “Deviantart and Photoshop — that’s what you are looking for”.
Years later, after working for a couple of summers and saving up all the money I had earned, I had enough money to buy the thing I had bothered my parents so many times for — my first Apple computer, the one I had whispered upon to myself so many times. After a couple of weeks eagerly waiting, my computer arrived and, to be honest, that computer would end up showing me so much that I started to dive into JavaScript, Objective C and even one small tool called Sketch. It was the version 1 of the product, and nobody knew about it… I downloaded it, and, when I wasn’t learning from tutorials about code or doing simple websites for my family or
friends, I was designing and sketching any object I would have around my house — a white iPad , a car log in screen etc. by that time, I had already started college — an Electronics Engineering degree that I didn’t like from day 1 — but felt the need to finish. And probably, that disparity from my day in class, gave me the energy to learn and discover during the night, what I had once started with my old black IBM. Design, code, technology, the internet…
It was clear that technology was the thing that I wanted to do, but I was having a hard time getting started. So I began to search more, until I found a really expensive bootcamp in Chicago. I knew we didn’t have the money to do it, but something inside me made me ask my father, who said “I don’t know how, but you’ll actually go”. Turns out, my grandmother — a retired teacher who loved education, was willing to loan me the money. I couldn’t be more thankful.
Chicago was awesome, and it’s probably where I discovered that knowing myself around design got a reward, and not only that — but also, I discovered that a good idea — without good design — meant pretty much nothing. During the bootcamp and for my afternoon tasks, I decided to put a little extra effort into my projects, so I would design a nice interface in Sketch (2 at the time) before starting any design, and then, I would actually code it in Objective C.
That seemed to get people’s attention, to the point that after the bootcamp, I got several projects to work on. At that time, I was still going to university, it was my third year, but I couldn’t wait to stop, go home, work on my projects, maybe even my website, and most importantly, get a Dribbble invite to show people from everywhere in the world what I was capable of.
In order to do so, I designed and developed a custom website asking for an invite. In there, I showcased some of my most recent projects and, when it was done, I sent it to people I admired through Twitter. I still remember this message from CJ Melegrito saying, “hey — you wanted an invite right? Look at your email”.
After that turning point, I started to post a design every week — any cool idea I could’ve had during the week, I would do in Sketch, prepare a presentation and then, I’d post it to Dribbble explaining my thought process and some of the decisions I’d had taken. I started improving over the feedback people gave me — doing more of those projects until I reached a point where, coming back from a long weekend — I saw a message in the Junk folder saying that a company in Norway wanted to speak with me. I interviewed with them — they liked me, I liked them, and there I had it. My first job in tech.
After 2 years in Norway, I decided to go back to Catalonia. I had learned a ton, but I wanted to try to freelance and work for myself — I wanted to deal with my own clients, depend on me, find my work, and most importantly — be the reason of my failures, but also my successes. I came back to my small town without anything lined up, but I started to focus 100% on design — I started to do some courses about retouching, I started to dive into UX, and, most importantly, I started to learn about accessibility in design.
Even though during the first months of my freelance career I didn’t have clients, I was able to sustain myself through SketchCasts —a platform for anyone to get started into design. To be honest, it seemed like a rebound that I was continuing the legacy of Rafa — the initial creator and producer of SketchCasts, and one of the people I look up to — but I was up to the challenge. That was all I had to get myself started.
I sure was scared to quit my full time job to pursue what I wanted to do, but I like to think that when you look back at something, at the end of each path you take in life, it will end up making sense, no matter what that path is. The 1% I am now, from the 100% I want become.
What advice would you have for a young creative looking at starting using Sketch, what bits would you recommend to try out first?
Starting with Sketch, like any other tool, is not easy. I spent (and still do) countless hours going through articles and tutorials to master different techniques I didn’t even know the name of — and today, after around 3 years of doing so, I feel I know just 1% of what I want to know in the future — and that, just pushes me further.
Luckily for us, though, in the era of Medium, YouTube, Twitter or even Dribbble, it’s so easy to get started with anything new you did not know of.
The friction is getting weaker, and that’s a good thing. In my case, what I used to do was just draw random stuff I would see in my table — I remember drawing a 3D representation of an iPad, or a screen to log in to a hypothetic car app.
With Sketch, Figma, or even Photoshop, get started with anything you have in mind, everything works really. Take it, look at it, and then, start drawing with the simple tools first. Don’t mind advanced workflows, boolean operations, and all that talk you’ve heard is cool. Don’t try to understand why typography is the way it is just yet, just draw with vectors and simple shapes first, then we’ll care about the rest.
With code, just start typing one letter after the other. Ask questions to people you look up to, go through articles, questions on forums on the internet and, most importantly, understand what you want to accomplish, and where you are coming from.
Finally, don’t worry if it doesn’t look good at first. It will probably will look way different than that Nike design, or that perfect iPad on your table — but that’s ok.
Not me, nor anybody else did a design the first time and it looked good — in fact, pretty much nobody did anything the for the first time and it worked out well.
Humans need to practice, and practice makes craft — and, if you ask me, I believe that’s the beauty of our job. The progress on our work if we keep challenging ourselves is enormous, and we should appreciate that way more. We are here today, but we were far away from where we were last year — imagine where we’ll be in a year from now.
Are you working on any side projects that may be of interest?
I’ve started a couple of side projects during the weekends, other than my biggest project yet, which is to freelance and the understand that work–life balance I am so bad at.
My most recent side project is to do one fun and little UI exercise a day. I haven’t lasted long since I started, but I am still at it from time to time. I want to put something out there — just for the sake of it, for the sake of exploring and learning.
A couple of more side projects I did this year, which I had had in mind for a long time, were two products that came out of ideas that really matter to me — one called Revolution, which is a sports app that allow you to meet people from anywhere in the world with your common interests — and the one I am most proud of, called Gluten, which is an app to make the life of a celiac much easier, by monitoring meals and different statistics, as well as having a search right inside the app, to allow people to find out if something with a barcode has gluten or not. I haven’t coded those two last designs yet, and I am thinking on turning, at least one of them — into a product, but that’s a little ways down the road still.
