c/designer-life

Had a day last week where every single font pairing I tried just clicked on the first attempt

Client came back with zero revisions for the first time in 6 months and I honestly didn't know how to react - has anyone else had one of those freak days where the design gods just smile on you?

Took me 4 years to realize I was spacing my grid lines wrong...

I was over at a friend's studio downtown last week and saw their proof boards. Everything looked so balanced. I asked what grid system they used and they said the standard 8px one. Got home, checked my files, and I had been spacing things at 10px intervals this whole time. No wonder my layouts always felt a bit off and I was constantly nudging things. Has anyone else had a moment where they found out they were using the wrong base unit for years?

Tried using a grid system without any gutters on a client project last week and it actually looked cleaner

I was working on a landing page for a local coffee shop in Austin and decided to just throw out all my usual spacing rules to see what happened, and the result looked way more modern with everything touching edge to edge has anyone else experimented with breaking their own design rules like that?

Had a perfect Tuesday last month that made me question every other work day of my life

Pulled an all-nighter because I thought design software auto-saved - it did not

I was working on a big layout for a local bakery's menu in Tucson and I just assumed the program was backing up my work every few minutes. Around 2am my laptop decided to update Windows and reboot. I thought no big deal, I'll just open it back up. When I loaded the file it was blank. Like completely empty. Turns out I had never actually turned on the auto-save feature in the settings. I had been designing for like 5 hours with zero saves. The worst part is I had noticed that little warning symbol before but figured it was just a glitch. Has anyone else lost a ton of work because of some default setting they didn't check?

I finally gave that color palette generator a real shot and it actually saved me 3 hours

I was super skeptical about those automatic palette tools because my last few tries gave me ugly combos. But last week I had a client in Denver who wanted a nature theme and I was stuck on greens. After 10 minutes of tweaking the input image it popped out this perfect set of 5 colors that matched exactly what they wanted. Has anyone else found a tool that actually works for picking colors or is it still mostly luck?

My old Wacom tablet finally gave out mid-session yesterday

I've been using the same Intuos 3 since 2011. It was beat up, the surface was worn smooth, but it worked. Yesterday I'm in the middle of tracing a logo and the pen just stops responding. No cursor movement, no pressure sensitivity, nothing. I spent the next hour digging through drawers for my backup mouse and finishing the job with a trackpad. Has anyone else had an old tool just die at the worst possible time?

Overheard a Dribbble designer say "mood boards are a waste of time"

I was grabbing coffee near Soho last week and heard a senior guy say mood boards are useless for real projects. But I've been using one for my last 3 client briefs and it actually caught two major color conflicts before I even started layouts. Has anyone else found a solid alternative or do you just skip them too?

I stopped using smart guides for alignment and it saved me hours this week

Used to drag objects around until the magenta lines popped up, but after missing a deadline on a 40 page brochure I switched to using the align panel and typing exact values. Has anyone else found a better way to keep spacing consistent across multiple artboards?

Vent: Talked to a junior designer at a coffee shop and they said AI is 'just another tool like Photoshop'

Last Tuesday at a cafe in Portland, a kid straight out of school told me AI generates their mood boards in 30 seconds and I asked them if they even know why certain colors work together, has anyone else had that sinking feeling watching the next generation skip the fundamentals?

Debate: Did that $80 font pack actually improve my designs or was it a waste?

I dropped $80 on a premium font bundle last month thinking it would elevate my work, but I'm torn - the condensed sans-serif saved me hours on a client project, yet my wife says she can't tell the difference from free fonts. Anyone else feel like fancy typefaces are a total gamble on whether they pay off?

Need a cash buyer for my fixer-upper

Can anyone recommend a good company that buys houses as-is? I'm a designer and just don't have time to renovate my old place before selling. I just want a fair cash offer.