It started during lunch.
I was new to professional product design, so I needed a regular UI practice to up my skills in the fastest possible way. That’s when I stumbled upon the Daily UI Design Challenge. For one hour each day, I rose to the challenge.
I learned how to play with typography and line spacing. And I always designed on a grid.
Line spaced click state plus Questrial and Abril Fatface—lovely. Bootstrap 12-grid—perfecto.
I applied subtle drop shadows everywhere. Hint: It’s about the opacity and the color.
I even strayed from my normal, muted color palette to go bold.
Do emojis make a fitness app more bearable? Or does a fitness app make emojis more bearable?
And I found all the good photos on Unsplash:
Dreamy shot inspired this whole landing page. Photo courtesy of Humphrey Moleba.
In summary, here’s what I learned:
Start with a sketch. DailyUI provides a prompt for that day, but it’s left up to you to decide the direction. I usually started with three concepts and then chose my favorite to develop into high-fidelity.
Get inspired. Take the lovely landing page above. That photo inspired the whole design since I knew I wanted that photo to take up the whole screen, including peeking out when the menu was exposed.
Stick to two typefaces. It’s too much for any more than that. Think small-bathroom style here: two tiles are enough.
Post it on Dribbble. Even when it’s bad, just do it. Looking back over all the posted work makes my heart proud, and I can see takeaways from each and every exercise.