Two designers designing

We’re very fortunate to be designers in tech today. We could spend hours just thinking about problems and spend just as much time coming up with a thousand and one solutions.

There are times when we fire up Sketch and spend days just iterating; where designs for layout 1 is as valid of a solution as the designs for layout 6. And we convince ourselves a file named photo_submission-v6.5-cd-final.sketch is really the final one (but we all know it isn’t ever).

There are also the times when, well, time is not on our side. Here, we design something quick-quick (or QQ as we like to refer to it) as temporary solutions — to get things done. We vow to get back to it later (we don’t) until we ultimately accept that they become core features of the site. And that’s fine.

We designers have a hard time with time. Sometimes you can be especially inspired and come up with solutions fast enough. Other times, you’ve done everything and nothing for the task at hand, but managed to kill a font and redesign the logo along the way (true story, ask Kirill about it).

Fortunately, these “explorations” (or rabbit holes as we like to refer to it) aren’t ever really lost as some of the designs become solutions for a future problem. Unfortunately, no one ever gets to see the amount of work and thought we put into each feature.

Early Dribbble wanted us to share more WIPs and rebound others, to challenge, learn from each other and give constructive criticism. Lately, we’ve made it a place for final solutions: a portfolio of some sort showcasing the quality of each product team. I know, Kirill and I are guilty of it.

So we’re hoping to do things differently now with this “Design Blog” to make up for all the times we slacked on sharing our work or explaining the reasons behind why we do things a certain way. There’s just so much we can share that we believe the design community would like to see (or not). It might be time we share that raw side of our design process, and none of that polished stuff you can find on our Dribbble. (Follow us on Dribbble!)

Anyways, we plan on updating this blog regularly; it’s one of our new year’s resolutions. Hope you enjoy 🙃.

P.S. Don’t expect to find the usual essays you’ve come to expect from designers writing on Medium. This post will probably be the only formal thing you’ll see here.