Dive Club 🤿

This week's Deep Dive features early-career designer, Perry Wang. Previously at Google and now working at Discord. This Deep Dive is a masterclass for junior designers looking to jumpstart their career. We cover a lot👇

Designers Dan Mall, Grace Walker, Adrien Griveau, Yuan Wang, and Luis Ouriach share their insights on: organizing variables and thinking strategically in design systems, pricing strategies for first-year freelancers, best practices for design systems teams, improving design portfolios and case studies, and collaboration with engineers.

Learn from Adrien Griveau, the founding designer at Linear, about collaboration with engineering, traits sought in design candidates, customer feedback, design systems, QA process, prioritizing craft and quality, improving skills, and the impact of Linear on design.

Former team member at Maven, Yuan Wang, discusses energy and confidence in leadership, organizing portfolio websites, and strategies for presenting work to stakeholders. They also explore coaching designers, quieting the inner critic, counseling and burnout in design, growth and changes in communication skills, and the value of skill development and patience.

Experienced freelancer Grace Walker shares lessons learned in the first year of freelancing, including strategies for pricing, balancing project work, and her tool stack. She discusses starting freelancing, landing first clients, and the significance of showcasing work and testimonials. The podcast also covers freelancing tools, efficient communication, improving efficiency in Webflow with CSS frameworks, showcasing client work in a portfolio, scaling and team assembly.

Dan Mall, an experienced designer with expertise in design systems and Figma variables, shares his take on the future of design systems, the challenges of scalability, the potential of AI in design tooling, and advice for creating a design system for small teams. He also discusses the relevance and interpretation of atomic design and how to avoid overextending design systems.

Anthony Hobday, a self-taught interface designer, shares tips for improving visual design skills. He discusses matching design to concept, mastering color, enhancing website design, and improving typography. The podcast emphasizes the significance of following rules while also breaking them to create compelling designs.

Grace Ling, engineer turned designer and founder of the biggest design community online, talks about standing out in today's job market, including tactics to fast-track learning, breaking into new companies, and practicals for designers. Topics include challenges faced by UX Designers, using LinkedIn for connection and inspiration, the value of feedback and learning in the age of social media, networking and making connections, landing a role at EA, and finding design through internships and online communities.

If you're looking to level up how you use variables in Figma then this episode is for you ✌️ Luis goes deep into strategies based on team size, provides naming guidance, and even breaks down how he thinks about structuring libraries with variables in Figma. Lastly, Luis shares a behind-the-scenes of his journey as a designer advocate and even gives a unique prediction for how AI will take shape inside of Figma.Don't forget to follow Luis on Twitter and check out his awesome files in the Figma community

Steph Golik, an early design leader at Cruise, discusses how designers can transition to entrepreneurship and raise venture funding. Highlights include the advantages of designers in entrepreneurship, the role of design in startups, their journey to becoming a founder, investing in selling for fundraising and customers, their background in transportation architecture, de-risking their startup Huddle, and a new course for designers wanting to start their own companies.