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Ask HN: Young designer asking for a helping hand
I recently watched a video on youtube (I forget what it was) and the speaker who was a start up founder said that he has plenty of ideas that he is willing to share. This got me thinking I'm looking to learn and want to work on some real world ideas not rubbish calendar apps. Anyone on here got any ideas they been thinking about fleshing out? Would benefit everyone as I would love to learn how the real design industry works and how ideas get developed. Remember we were all young once!
Just created my blog (only one post) joshhornby.co.uk so you can get a tiny feel for my design eye.
- pmtarantino 14y agoEmail to contact?
- joshuahornby 14y agojoshua.hornby@me.com
- vitovito 14y agoYou need to find mentors in person. Working for a startup isn't going to teach you how the design industry works; it'll teach you what that one startup thinks a designer should do. I talked with a startup recently who thought they needed "a designer." It turned out they really needed like five different kinds of designers: an illustrator, a UI artist, a gameplay designer, a game systems designer, and a user experience or interaction designer. If you're interested in becoming a professional product designer, or in doing any sort of design work for startups, there are professional organizations which can help, indirectly. Your local IxDA, UXPA (nee UPA), and AIGA meetups will be good places to find professional designers (freelance, agency and in-house) whom you can ask to mentor you. There's probably also local technical "co-founders wanted", Hacker News, and technical freelancers meetups, where you can find local peers in need of design help. In all cases, talking with someone in person is going to produce better work and give you a better feel for the interpersonal relationships required than doing things over email or Skype.