So let's
Animate this beautiful mountain sunset header in Figma - a tutorial.
I bet you’ve seen stuff like that all over the place. Here's the twist!
And sure - those are pretty fun to make, but there’s a deeper issue here.
Avoid The Red Pill
They are preventing you from actually achieving design success. Here’s why:
The design as a process is a structured approach full of a lot of moving parts. Each element builds on top of the previous one.
This is why I talk so much about design fundamentals. Learning design is not about FOMO and jumping to a flashy, fancy new thing every time you see it.
It’s a long process of starting at the very bottom and building up solid foundations.
You can go ahead and play around with fancy animations AFTER you get all the other stuff right.
They won’t be useful as devs will have to code them from scratch anyway, but I understand the idea of doing something just for fun.
Just do it in the right order, as otherwise you just won’t grow.
And I’m here to help you grow
Community Says
• ned_ray: Thank you for this! No amount of fancy interaction can hide a poorly designed product. That's why the fundamentals are very important (alignment, spacing, visual hierarchy, etc)... I agree that interactions can make a product more fun to use, but with just the fundamentals you can enhance a product's value which is what we as designers should be focused on....
• Michal Malewicz: Of course! And I know how fun those animations are to make. But we need to only get to them after the fundamentals and that's my point here - many juniors just skip the basics because they consider them boring and go straight to fancy tutorials. This is why the overall quality of design is in decline :(
• jsadir_30: First—learning and utilizing design fundamentals/principles is a must. Then, the animation part comes as the final touch for the design. And those supafast videos might be entertaining and all, but they can serve as a distraction for those that are looking for quick hacks/results. Don’t get me wrong, I think the point of the supafast bit-sized videos can enhance the learning experience for designers, but only if we do the hard work first.
• Michal Malewicz: Exactly! When you have a solid foundation you can play around with all the animations you want, but sadly many do it instead of the fundamentals.
• kithub_ng: Good day, mentor! Based on your wonderful pure honest and insightful responses, I have a question today again! As a junior designer where are the best platforms to start applying for jobs? I trust my abilities now and I know I’m well ready to take a big step after doing volunteer work and projects.
• malewiczhype: Being active on LinkedIn can be a great idea for more serious jobs. Especially if you have some real-world experience from volunteering.
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