Forem: Tosin Hunter Odebiyi

Designers Block. Beaten.

Tosin Hunter Odebiyi — Fri, 20 May 2022 22:23:40 +0000

As a designer, every day tends to be different, it's a whole new pool of emotions and a different set of conditions, and that means your level of inspiration might not be what it was the day before. so before i bore you any further, here are 5 tips that help me with designers block.

1. Workspace

As a designer, your workspace is gonna have a huge impact on your state of mind, being comfortable and in the zone is what i personally believe to be my first step in beating designers block. Now you definitely don't have to break bank to achieve this, you don't even need a monitor for it to feel comfortable, it could just be your laptop in the middle, a notepad and a stack of sticky notes to quickly put down ideas. And like i said, unless you're breaking bank this should suffice. "if not, throw in a potted plant or a mug... and a coaster, because why on earth would you put your mug directly on your desk💀"

2. Music

Music, this one's a lot more complicated than we think, some people prefer absolute silence when they're working,and some people just can't do without it at all, unless there's something playing in the background, or even blaring through their headphones. if you'd prefer total silence, then it's better you just skip this part and scroll on down "Y'know, unless you just enjoyyy reading these articles"

Music is always one of the most important aspects of my everyday life, and it's no different when trying to beat designers block.
The kind of music however, depends on my mood. "I mean it's music, it always depends on my mood" ...Which for me is the deciding factor on whether it motivates you, or distracts you.
Some days i feel like listening to Kendrick, or Jaden while i toss my self into that zen mode, most days I'm stuck with lo-fi because who just doesn't love lo-fi music. but that's up to you, all you need to know is, the kind of music you listen to can sharpen your focus, improve your mood, or just ruin all that for you through out your design session. At the end of this article you'll find a couple links to playlists i believe you'd find quite useful. "hopefully"

3. Visual Content Platforms (VCPs)

VCPs. Now these are almost always my saving grace when it comes to beating designers block, you get to take a look into the awesome world of design and see what other designers are up to. As the name implies, Visual Content Platforms like Pinterest, behance and dribbble are all about one thing, visual content, literally. The only difference between them is that behance and dribble are more design oriented, designed to show off designs, not recipes or outfits, which i guess you could do too. "Y'know, If you ever slapped your designs onto a mock t-shirt". So Whenever you're having difficulties thinking up something from scratch, you could always just throw any of these bad boys into your search bar and get some inspiration, looking at other amazing designs just might be the spark you needed to get going on your own.

4. Twitter

This one probably has some people going seriously?? But the truth is twitter has the tools needed to distract you from just about anything, especially if you've got an active following, and a decent percentage of your mutuals are in the same field as you. Believe me UI/UX designers on twitter are never without a crazy thought to share. It's an interesting community capable of distracting you with their own design problems that you forget about yours, just enough to either get sucked into a new project entirely, or be given an idea on how to fix problems of your own. Either way, design block ...Beaten(In MK announcers voice).

5. Task Switching

Now this might not always be an option, even though it should be. but UI/UX related tasks shouldn't be the only objectives on your to-do list, You can beat designers block by taking design out of the picture, Here's an instance. 30 minutes prior to writing this oh so informal article, I was actually at my neat workspace, just like I'd suggested, listening to music, just like I'd suggested going through Pinterest for landing page ideas, you guessed it, just like I'd suggested. but sometimes you just don't want to design. so i closed my Figma tab and switched to dev.to and got started on what you're reading right now. The point is, to always have something else you can channel your frustrations into, it doesn't have to be writing, but you'll definitely need to find your own pastime. so have at it, and get engrossed in something else you love.

I hope this article helped in one way or the other, and i'd certainly love to hear your own ideas on how to deal with whatever "block" you're facing in your field of work.

As promised here's the links to a couple low-fidelity playlist, and some 9ja vibe pacers

No one's a beginner forever, but everyone's always a learner.

As usual @iamodebiyi
✌🏽✨

10 Plugins You’d Love to Have as a Noob in 2022

Tosin Hunter Odebiyi — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 23:31:14 +0000

Starting off as a beginner in just about anything, feels like you honestly don't know what you're doing, but the truth is after some serious dedication and consistency, you start to get a handle on things. So in no particular order, here's a list of some of my favourite figma plugins as a noob.

1. Unsplash

If you've worked as a webdev or a photographer before, or you just needed free photos for, whatever it is you were doing 👀, then an Unsplash plugin definitely shouldn't be strange. As a UI/UX designer, you're definitely gonna be needing a lot of stock images, and having Unsplash in your plugin library definitely doesn't hurt.

2. UI Faces

It can be pretty distracting, having to leave your design flow just to look for images to use as avatars in your design, and there's always the risk of a copy right infringement, even skipping out on attribution could cause some unprecedented drama. UI Faces changes all that by giving you exactly what you need, while helping you maintain your work flow and eliminating the risk of someone suing you for using their face💀.

3. Dark Mode Magic

Now, I've got to say, Dark Mode Magic has definitely been one of the most helpful plugins to me as a 'Noob'. as simple as its task may seem, the result always has me smiling like I'd just created my first "Hello World" program all over again🎊. It's practical, and it lets you see your design from two completely different perspectives, sometimes helping you see a couple design flaws from either the dark or light mode variant of your design.

4. uiGradients

With uiGradients, the hassle of dealing with the color wheel and trying to get the perfect blend, just isn't your problem anymore. All you've got to do with uiGradients is either Click on a frame, text, or a group and select a gradient from the plugin to apply it to your selection, and if you're having a hard time choosing a gradient that works for you, you could always use a color palette to make your decisions regarding your color scheme a bit easier, my personal favorite would be colorhunt.co, but you could check out a couple alternatives here. Hopefully it helps.

5. Lorem ipsum

Lorem ipsum is a pretty common necessity in the world of design.
Lorem ipsum is commonly referred to as dummy text or placeholder text, and what that is, is simply text that you could use to fill up all the text fields on your design, and this gives your design a more practical effect, and makes it look functional, saving you the stress of having to come up with an actual write up (which might not always be your responsibility as a UI/UX designer). All you've got to do is select all the text layers you want to generate 'Lorem ipsum' for then click 'Generate', it'll generate 'Lorem ipsum' for each layer uniquely.

6. Blobs

I consider Blobs to be one of the most useful plugins for both beginners and experts in Figma. sometimes to create an aesthetically pleasing background for an art-board or frame of whatever my design might be about, all I've had to do to at least get a head start on my design, is just sparsely place a couple blobs here and there with a couple drop shadow effects and maybe a blurred layer to get a background i can work with, sometimes it would look so good you just might keep it as the background for your project.

7. Image Palette

One of the most difficult aspects of being a 'Noob' in the world of design definitely has to be color schemes. Colors play such a significant role in your designs, that it's almost unfair to every other important factor that you need to take into consideration. Colors can attract and repel viewers from your design, but 'Image Palette' helps you out with that, especially if you're working with pictures, that way there's a blend and a somewhat professional look to the tones and contrasts of the color scheme of your design and if you can find other color palettes such as colorhunt.co to help you fine tune your choice of colors, then you should be just fine.

8. Material Design Icons

Material Design Icons is an amazing plugin that gives you the flexibility of accessing the entire MDI library locally, which is Powered by Google and Icons8. The Material Design Icons library has got 34,000+ icons. That's 6,800+ free icons from Google and 28,000+ free icons from Icons8, that's a lot of icons at your fingertips. I guess you could say this affords you the benefit of not having to leave your workspace just to look for a few icons.

9. Pexels

The truth is, as much as a lot of us love Unsplash, from personal experience, you don't always get what you're looking for, at least not without a subscription, which as a 'Noob' isn't exactly something everyone is ready to commit to 🤷🏽‍♂️. So Having a backup or an alternative or even a preference over Unsplash, definitely doesn't hurt. Pexels definitely delivers, on all promises of a free stock photo and video sharing community, high quality photos and videos? Images are free for both personal and commercial use? and as a 'noob' subscription plans aren't being thrown in my face? I think I've heard enough. Sign. Me. Up!.
Of Course you should probably read👀 the do's and don'ts on their website just so you're clear on the guidelines. Pretty sure no 'noob' is trying to hear about court cases right now or ever 😵.

10. Brandfetch

Brandfetch is an essential for designing mockup designs that revolve around already existing companies and organizations.
Brandfetch stays steady providing you with instant access to any company’s brand assets. ranging from millions of logos, colors, fonts, and more. A real gunner to have around in your arsenal, I mean, library🤦🏽‍♂️.

I hope this was helpful to you in one way or another. I'd love to know what you're favorite plugins are on figma, and if you've got any suggestions for me, I'd love to hear them as well.

No one's a Noob forever, but everyone's always a learner.

All socials @iamodebiyi.
✌🏽✨