007 - Interview with Jordan Hughes | Maker of Untitled UI Figma Kit

4:46hey welcome everybody to the realum live stream i'm josh and i am here with adam and we are co-hosting today's episode on our very first loomer limelight interview so this is where we bring on amazing designers from our community shine a spotlight on who they are what they're doing and learn some amazing things from them so how's it going adam you excited today i am very excited to to chat with jordan i can't wait um we've been a big fan of jordan for some time so yeah can't wait to uh get to get stuck into learning from him we were preparing for this stream and like

5:27jordan is such a legend he's just like sharing like so many things so we have so much time packed so all right so uh we already revealed our guest but today's episode is an absolute legend our guest uh no he's not only known in the web webflow world but also in the figment community uh he's a ux ui product designer known for some amazing projects such as good books which he successfully sold the untitled ui design system which was ranked number one on product hunt and gumroad he also made the untitled ui icons and currently he's working on himalayas it's an amazing remote job board so streaming in from melbourne

6:10australia ladies and gentlemen please welcome jordan hughes oh hang on here i got it

6:23hi guys how are you doing jordan i'm good i'm really sick to be here yeah i'm really excited about this yeah it's good to have you on this side of the stream and normally you're uh you're sharing it in the comments so really uh yeah from all sides of the world yeah yeah much to dance dismay yeah adams town adamstown australia yeah so jordan's a bit of a troll on our chat he always says that he's from different parts of the world what was that what was that random uh island that you said you were from uh i think pigtan islands it's like yeah that's right

7:04i was like i don't even know where that is hook line and sinker as well i think i think josh you read it out on air yeah yeah i had no clue i thought that was a real place but yeah anyway so today we're gonna have a chat with jordan we're gonna get to know his story how he got to where he is today and then near the end of the talk we are gonna talk about his experience building entitled ui onto the reloom library and how you guys can do something similar on the whole new brand new libraries feature that we launched last week so

7:39if you guys haven't gone on to that i recommend checking it out and reloom library it's been game changer it's been really cool some people are already creating like accessibility libraries and things like that so uh and then after that we're gonna wrap it up with q a so um this time we will be holding off some of the questions until the end so just be sure to add a giant queue in front of your question and then i'm able to search it and we can get to that at the end so all right so before we get ahead with the chat i want to brag a

8:11little bit on jordan and show off some of his work which is amazing so let's uh there's my notes again all right uh so yeah this is jordan's website so this is good books um i think this is yeah number one on product hunt and this is just an amazing collection of books i don't know jordan if you want to like talk about this real quick or adam you want to like comment on this but just amazing yeah so this is built in webflow right jordan uh yeah this is a project i did to kind of learn how to use webflow so all it is is just kind of scraping the internet

8:49for book recommendations from people i want book book recommendations from started as like an air table sheet and then people seem to find it interesting and useful so i built it into a site when you say yeah when you say that you using to learn is this like the first webflow project you you built uh the first real one like i find it easier to pick a project if i'm trying to learn at all like if i'm trying to learn like after effects or something i'll like apply to an actual project um but like i look back at this now and especially when i look at how i built it

9:23and it's just like a mess so i kind of wish client first existed back when i was learning because it would have made things a lot easier still beautiful yeah and then we're going to jump right into untitled ui again like i love the interactions this is like amazing so good so thank you i've i think like all workflow starts i went a little bit overboard like it's it's a pretty slow site but yeah it's part of the fun like i feel like that's has a little bit of a wow factor so it's important so good yeah so you guys can preview that in figma and then we have the untitled ui

10:01icons which is amazing i love your post on uh twitter it's always just different variations of the icon usage i'm really loving this animation of the website that's really awesome yeah that's it thank you and then finally uh this is your current project himalayas so yeah yeah you want to share it hey jordan i take it you like purple yeah i know it's become i we only really realized that after we you know like launched untold and everything and the icons it becomes a very prominent purple on my projects but himalayas um is the main project that i'm focused on the moment and it's nothing too exciting it's just a remote

10:48job board but we kind of looked around at other remote drop boards on the internet the ones that are doing really really really well and we're kind of shocked by how like how poor they were executed in terms of seo and design so we just wanted to have a cracker doing it better um it's really fun project to work on working on some really smart people my friends jack and harvey so it's great nice nice yeah so that's uh some of the work that jordan's done obviously really really amazing we haven't even like cracked open the whole figma ui kit uh for untitled ui but uh

11:23uh but yeah maybe uh oh first off let's welcome the uh the guest let's see who's all in the house here we got mike welcome sean is in the house liam adnan aaron good to see ya we have james dan good jordan from adam's dad welcome awesome guys all right so uh yeah let's just dive into it um jordan if you can share a bit of like your background like what like what was the mindset like what kind of student were you when you were in school were you kind of like the class clown were you just the avid designer um were you more into business like like

12:10yeah like what were you like when when you're growing up in school um good question i i kind of i look back at school and i didn't really know what i wanted to do like up until i was not many people know this but what happened i was like 18 i thought i was going to be a professional drummer as a career oh like a studio drama oh wow um but yeah i kind of took school i took a really pragmatic approach to school and just follow the curriculum and did the bare minimum and like my parents would call that lazy but i just think that's

12:41been efficient so i got decent grades but when i left school i didn't really know what i wanted to do i took like a couple of years off and i worked over in the uk for a bit as a teaching assistant right and decided yeah i did that for long enough that i realized i didn't want to do that i don't have the patience to deal with kids so came back to australia and then did a bachelor of business um in finance and accounting which is kind of like the new arts degree like it's the degree you do when you don't know what you want to

13:10do so yeah that was another three and a half years of procrastinating interesting yeah i guess the answer question like i wasn't really into design at all when i was in school like i dabbled in photoshop and stuff but never really took it seriously my school didn't really have much of a computer science or like design faculty or anything like that right i think that's why i would have i'll go ahead adam and i go josh i think i think that's one of the most amazing things about you jordan because you basically just started this whole design um you know career or like you started getting known back in like 2019 or maybe

13:46that's when you started like webflow um but the fact that you can pick things up like design and then apply that so quickly and that's like yeah really really cool so excited to kind of get get behind that adam europe thanks man yeah i was just wondering i was just wondering like how how did you go from like what did you do after school because i can totally relate um you know i think we're of similar age at school you don't really know what's out there you don't really know like that at the point that i was at school product design wasn't even really a thing i

14:21think product design became more of a thing after mobile um which was like around like 2008 2009 2010 and so like what did you do after school and like how did you make that decision um to go into teaching because yeah that's that's quite different to to where you've ended up uh look i was considering teaching as a career um my mom was a school teacher for like 30 or 40 years and most amazing woman ever so i had this opportunity to go work at a really like fancy prep school over in the uk like a um boarding school and it was half you know half work

15:02experience but also half just like taking a year off trying to figure out what i wanted to do and like being based in the uk you can travel a lot so um yeah i feel like it's pretty ridiculous looking back on it that we like lock people into picking a uni degree like when they're just out of school like nobody knows what i almost saw can i swear on this i don't know i just won't yeah you would ever do whatever you want yeah no one knows what the they're doing like when they're in high school like i look back at me at that age and i was just an

15:30idiot and then to try to like you know force people to choose what they want to do for a career yeah and like people get so strung up on that like once they do like a law degree they think they have to be a lawyer but i think like like you josh like you switch careers as well right and i think we all switch careers like many times and i think that's totally fine i think that kind of generalist approach is really important as long as you can like as long as you can like up skill and like learn new things then it's totally fine i think if you're not

15:59having a career you should just change like i probably won't be in design forever to be honest i'll probably like get super deep into something else and then pursue that and then end up deciding to switch was that kind of your approach when you're diving into education and in the uk like you just went super deep into that space and then you kind of like looked into everything and then you kind of concluded okay you know from what i've seen it's not for me move on to the next thing and then you just like do a deep dive into the next thing yeah exactly and like the same thing

16:29happened when i was at uni like i was studying majoring in finance and accounting and i hated it like i could not imagine myself doing that for another who doesn't love accounting i know yeah ironically it's like the only subject that failed at uni was accounting for business decisions a so yeah i just didn't want to do that um and then at the time i was i was working in um like high in cocktail bars in sydney so got into bar management and really loved that like i look back on that time um and i wanted to get out of that industry because i could see as well

17:07that wasn't like a long-term thing for me but i look back on that and like restaurant entrepreneurs and um you know career hospital people are like honestly the hardest working most resilient group i've ever met never worked with and it kind of like kind of carried with me because you look at you know how cushy tech can be sometimes and people complain a lot um yeah and that kind of really brings things into perspective when you have those kind of like shitty jobs earlier on in your career yeah yeah yeah for sure definitely like you get a good perspective on your like where you currently are in the industry you're

17:48currently working in because you know that it's very different outside of that um if you haven't experienced it yeah yeah yeah we've got a pretty good like product design is a pretty cushy job but what i find really interesting about you is that like you you started sort of taking the traditional path um and we can get into that like what the next steps were for you but you've managed to like carve out a pretty uncommon i guess lifestyle around your work um and i really find that i find that great because i think you have a lot of time and like one thing i'm really interested

18:26in is you you always have an empty calendar whenever i ask like hey when you're free you always you always have an empty calendar and i don't come across many people with empty calendars that do that produce a lot of work um so i mean i guess it makes sense why you produce a lot of work but yeah i'm also interested in like understanding i guess i guess this is this builds context around why you you are the way you are today because you have sort of gone deep into things and and have said no it's not for me i want to do this differently and like it just it just makes makes

19:00sense now as to why that happened but yeah i guess we can go into like once you have um sort of determined that you know accounting wasn't for you like how did you get into the tech world like what was that sort of step like uh yeah so like when i decided i wanted to get out of hospital i didn't really know what i wanted to do like i started to be like a little bit interested in the design back then just you know i picked up indesign and photoshop just to do you know menus and stuff for restaurants and like all about my team um

19:34and then i met my good friend abby who's in the chat now smartest person i've ever met in my life and he introduced me i was thinking about this last night actually he introduced me to tech and startups and my first job in startups there he is um and then i was trying to think back how i got into figment webflow and rv introduced me to both of those things rb gave me the book refactoring ui which like really opened my eyes to product design so um i met arby and then we were employees one and two at a really high growth fintech startup in sydney

20:08and that was a really great experience for me because you kind of get thrown in the deep end and you have to wear a lot of hats and i think i honestly think everyone while they're young should work in like high growth startups or at least like early stage startups because you know you have to wear a lot of hats and you have to upskill and there's not anyone to complain to and there's just so much more opportunity to like grow and progress in your career if that makes sense um we used to have this psychopath boss and he used to say you'll figure it out and he'd give us

20:38something possible to ask to do and then we'd have to like figure it out or like quit you know and i think that's really really good like it really builds resilience and it teaches you to like be resourceful with everything um okay so that was a really great experience so this is a spaceship is that right that's startup yeah yeah i don't want to call any names i don't know if i'm supposed to do that but you know we grow really we grew really fast we did like um 100 million assets and a 50 000 strong wait list in like three months before we even launched did the biggest series a in

21:08australia um and then from there we grew to like 60 people in the space of like two years but because you know i was like so early on there i was having to do a lot of like ops and like a little bit of finance stuff as well but then at the same time i started dabbling in like doing some of the marketing design and that type kind of stuff so it was a really great experience in like a really stressful two years but i definitely learned a lot and met a lot of like really smart people so i think it was really great for my career

21:37can you tell me about the environment of that working that the working culture at that startup because you know if you're really throwing in a deep end and like you haven't really had a lot of tech background like prior to that right like for for many people it could be just super intense they would just burn out you know talk about resilience oftentimes even for me like i've gone through really hard times to learn resilience but like did you get singed did like like what was that like was it encouraging was it a good balance of like stress and learning and support yeah i think a bit of

22:16stress is always really good like um [Music] you know it definitely was stressful and looking back on it like the culture was pretty toxic at times especially early on as we try to try to scull too quickly um you know you make those mistakes and i think while you're young you should work those kinds of environments where you have to learn and you have to upskill otherwise like what's the alternative right you like leave and another smart person joins a big four bank or like an accounting firm or something and then before you know it you're like 40 and you've been working the same job doing the same tasks every

22:50day that's my idea of like my personal health i didn't yeah i didn't want to get gravitate towards that right okay gosh yeah very cool so then okay you've you've did two years into that um you've learned a lot and then like how did you move on like what was the next step after that um so i'm like infamously bad at networking okay just because i'm probably a little bit introverted but i do see the valuing of it because i met like a lot of smart people at spaceship and um after doing like i was there for like just under three years i think about two and a half years and i

23:33read this book called refactoring ui by stephen adam from tailwind css and that really opened my eyes to like product design like i'd been interested in design after doing a little bit more marketing design stuff at spaceship just out of necessity because we didn't have one or whatever um so that really operates product design and i decided i wanted to do that as a career so i decided to just go early on in that and i just quit my job and i think that's important like once you make a decision to do something you just commit to it otherwise you just faff around for another couple of years

24:06um so i quit my job and then i was lucky enough that one of the original co-founders of spaceship was working at another startup and just because i built a good rapport with him he really took a chance at me like i his name is kaushik um greatest boss i've ever had and ever will have so he really took a another chance at me and hired me at this um cyber security startup and that was my first foray into like product design and um and you know it was a really great experience because they hadn't had a designer for i think like 18 months or two years before me oh wow as you can as

24:41you can imagine it was absolute chaos so that's that's when i really get interested in like all right i think let's take this back to like first principles right and like try to start systemizing this and like slowly turning the ship around you know page by page yeah and what i mean by turning the ship around like every page in the app looked like it was from a different different application so there was no consistency there was no system um it was just like layers of features on layers of features so that was a really great experience for me and again it was like super stressful like i had no right to get to

25:14get that job so i understand that's pretty privileged um and i had no idea what i was doing and i think that's totally fine like i want to pre-face this whole chat with like i don't really know what i'm doing you just kind of figure it out day to day um and then arby came and joined me at that job as well so he left spaceship and then we got to work together again so you know we've been working together for like are we can you tell on the chat how long it's been um so that kind of you know shows that meeting really smart people

25:45in your career and actually like sticking with them really pays off in the long term because you know we we both decided to leave upgrade and go full time on himalayas so it's all worked out pretty well for us okay really cool and when it went about like when was this jordan like when did you start working um at a guy like when did you become a designer um quote unquote um it would have been would have been like the end of 2019 so around like november i think yeah i think that's what's great what's crazy to me is that like 2019 was like three years ago

26:26and the like the the quality of your work now doesn't feel like you've just been designing for three years like seriously so i'm really curious as to like what like what do you think like what are some ways to like quickly get good at design like or get good at i guess anything like what what are some principles or some traits that you think um have helped you uh get really get really good at things in in a short amount of time well adam i'm glad you asked that this is one of the things we spoke about before for context for everyone in the chat um

27:02so when i was at um spaceship i read two really formative books um and i always recommend those to people as well and one of them was called deep work by this guy named cal newport actually all of kyle's books are like really great for career progression and this was really like big turning point in my career because coming into this startup environment as like a layman with like a layman perspective i kind of saw how like as we grew how distracting it was working in like an office environment and like everyone has this obsession with meetings and i think like the ability to work deeply on like one

27:40problem and like focus without being interrupted by a million people and slack and everything is like the most important skill you can learn in like your career it doesn't matter what you're doing like if you're like a chef or if you're doing product design or an accountant or something if you can't like sit alone at your desk for like an hour at a time then you need to get out of that environment because you're not going to get any like real work done um that that was really eye working for me and that's one of the reasons i gravitated so much towards like remote work because it forces people to work

28:12in more of an async fashion and to actually think about what they want to talk about and like plan meetings like nothing would tell me more than i'd go to a meeting there'd be no agenda i'd i just raised my hand and said can i leave i've got actual work to do you guys are just procrastinating because you know people will waste your time if you let them so you've got to like really draw a line somewhere for sure and that took me a long time to learn but once you kind of pick up and understand that and then you see how like how valuable having uninterrupted time

28:40to work right then i implemented like a no meeting policy no core policy uh this kind of is a meeting so i guess you guys win adam tricked me [Laughter] so you know like it's not you know it's not so strict you know if i if i want to have a meeting obviously you can have one ever i think it's yeah worth doing or valuable so like all occasions have a chat with adam and dan and just to plan stuff which is great but generally speaking like probably mean like team meetings like large meetings right like oh yeah yeah yeah i saw this i saw this firsthand like as a

29:13as a startup or any company grows you this meeting culture seeps in where it's just like you hire more and more people that nobody wants to take responsibility for what needs to be done so everyone just has all these meetings to plan and procrastinate and like yeah you know there's probably a lot of people listening that think you know meetings are really valuable for collaboration and that's fine like you can have those opinions just know that they're wrong like not everyone needs to work that way and i only ask you people you people if you wanna like book a meeting with someone like don't waste their time please like

29:45have an agenda make it as concise as possible right and then follow up with like some consistent you know action points of like what to do because yeah there's more there's more to life than just like sitting in meetings all day like i want to have more time to finish my work and clock off at 3pm yeah i love that i love the emphasis on deep work and like the the the wasted time that that is in meetings like people were literally just killing time in meetings um and it's something that we we try to do like in our team like just prioritize deep work and like

30:20prioritize if it's like if we're sharing information like never share that in a meeting like just record a loom video or like write a notion doc and share that yeah um like i've noticed you guys do a lot of loom videos that's great yeah lou's been great for async uh communication uh but then like once you go like once you have like too many looms back and forth it's like a sign that okay you probably should just like uh have a meeting and just like talk about it and collaborate so i think i think there's like i think definitely meetings still have their place it's just prioritizing like

30:58the right time to have a meeting and prioritizing deep work makes a lot of sense that is something i actually realized about both like you know uh coordinating with realum and meetings and i think i don't know whether it's an australia thing or whatever it's just you guys something in the water but uh you guys are really effective in conveying information and doing it very concisely and effectively and it's like okay we're very you're very intentional with your time and and it's like it cuts out so much like fat and it's it's awesome and that's why you guys can produce so much which is which is great so i love that

31:42yeah another thing jordan that like we've spoken about um before as well that i think's like a big a big factor to like why like why you're you've become so good i guess at what you do in such a short amount of time he's like like you mentioned best practices can you talk upon that like looking at what like the best companies sort of do and like there's a reason why they're doing it that's like a best practice and how like can you elaborate on that that whole train of thought because i know you've yeah you have some opinions on that yeah um i wanted to change him before me and

32:17stuff he put me on full tilt i was gonna get to that um so i will preface this with like i don't really know i've said this before i don't really know what i'm doing and i don't think anyone does in product design but you just kind of take one problem at a time and that's why i think that's why i really like product design because it's just problem solving it's like all right this is what the user needs to do and you've got to help them do that like as efficiently as possible and when i read refactoring ui that was like a real eye-opener to me

32:45for me because i kind of realized that like design isn't that hard there's like a few simple rules you can follow um and then you know whatever design problem or ux problem or product problem you like you've come across there's been a hundred people way smarter than me that have already solved this like for most things there's like a best practice way of doing it so i really enjoyed that because you know like every time i come across a design problem like all right how do i lay out like this form like in this design all these buttons like how should button hierarchy work i'll just spend like instead of

33:16just jumping straight in like trying to design something i'll just like spend 15 minutes researching you know what i like the ux best practices to do this or what are some other really smart companies that have really fantastic design like how do they approach this problem and then once i kind of wrap my head around like all right this is the best way to do it and then just do it that way and then move on like don't try to reinvent the wheel every time and this is something i saw i spoke to adam about this as well like this is something i saw coming into

33:44product design as like a dumb bar manager like there's a lot of i don't know if it's like an ego thing or um you know people trying to be overly creative but product design is very like a lot of the time it's very systematic and like rules and for good reason right yeah i saw so many like there's people as users you kind of become familiar with like ways of doing things and as soon as like a designer changes that for like some arbitrary reason then it's confusing you have to like relearn that pattern if that makes sense i'd say so many like senior designers who will just come in and

34:21like just design the most cooked stuff and then as soon as you try to say oh like you know air table do this way like i feel like this is more intuitive then that you know put these barriers and they wouldn't want to change or like consider another way of doing it so i think it's good to like think about these things from first principles and like go back and look at actually what the best practices are rather than you know i wouldn't say that i'm a good designer at all like honestly okay now you're making everyone i know but like if you think about it

34:52the designer says that i know but i i totally get it i totally get what you're saying i think with product design it is very much that maybe with web design it's a bit more creative in a way um but like with with put i agree with what you're saying jordan um yeah i'm the same like we if you look at like what we've done with the realm library we've just looked at google drive and we've said let's do that that's good ux people understand that google solved the whole story in folders situation yeah let's just do that like and the thing is like you know that

35:28google's invested tens of million dollars into like ux research to figure that out like exactly don't try to like think that you're so smart that you're gonna like do it better than that exactly just do it it's an ego thing it's an it definitely i think it is an ego thing it's having humility and just like realizing that like you don't have all the answers and there's better there's best practices out there yeah i can totally be great with that how do you guys like um you know kind of change your mindset to that right because i think especially for designers creatives they want to kind of like leave their stamp

36:03or their mark on like making it extra pretty or just just tweaking it that much nicer on top of what what's already good um how did you guys learn that lesson to be humble and like get the ego out and go more for like effective and practical design like did you have to learn a lot of those lessons did you have to kind of go through that already that's a good question um i think of a lot like a lot of it like i really struggle with brand design i found like i'm just not that creative when it comes to that kind of stuff so that's something i've been

36:37trying to work on so they got to the point where like i can look at earlier on when i was trying to learn like in like 2020 and stuff i would look at the work that i was producing and then compare it to like you know what world-class work look like and you can kind of see like if you look at it subjectively it's like all right this is like way more polished i've got to dial it back a bit until i'm more confident with this kind of stuff if that makes sense so you know it's kind of like trying to remove as adam said like having a little bit more

37:07humility and like removing the ego from your work and realizing all right not quite at that level where i can like finesse this to the point where it looks as nice as stripe so i'm just going to bring it back and like keep things simple until i can kind of progress to that point and that's what like one of the reasons i started doing these like daily experiments as well was because they're a platform for me to explore different ideas and like try more interesting stuff but still using the same base components from undated ui okay um yeah so i kind of like you know it's

37:35half marketing but it's also half of me trying to hone my craft as well on like practice daily nice nice so i guess that's like a good segue to like untitled ui like it's like how did you get started with untitled gy like what what was like sort of the idea that came to mind um how did you decide that okay i want to do this um so when i i mentioned earlier like i left spaceship to work in my first like design job at upgard and they didn't have like any kind of system in place so i looked around the internet you know as i do just trying to figure

38:12out like what what's the best way to approach this problem and i looked at like something like the larger company design systems and how they approach it and you know learn storybook and that kind of stuff and then you know just by the nature of trying to learn as much as possible i looked into like the ones that were for sale to see if i could use a base and i was kind of you know similarly to like himalayas like i was blown away by like how low the bar was in terms of quality for the like the best selling you are kids so i kind of like started building it

38:44for myself like oh this is what i would want to use as like a starter kit and then it kind of you know just grew from there and then um we actually the first iteration of untitled was like the himalayas design system so the component library that we used for him layers and then it just kind of grew on from that and decided to sell it and you know i i will say like i was really blown away by how well it was received like i'm i'm still surprised how well it went um so that's really great like sometimes you just don't really know but i think a good way to think about side

39:16projects is like look at other projects that are already obviously really successful and try to look for opportunities where like you know that you could do a little bit better or like at least have a decent crack at it because you know it's great to go for like moonshot ideas and like raise tips and money and stuff if you want to do that but there aren't really many original ideas these days so i really like approaching you know side project ideas that this already exists it's a really great idea i think i could do it like at least 2x better than what's already in the market

39:50if that makes sense right yeah plus plus scratcher and it's right because like you needed something like this so exactly yeah yeah yeah yeah and like that it has to be something you're interested in as well otherwise you'll just burn out and lose interest in it yeah right have to i i know this the answer to this question but you i know you've had projects where you sort of just got over it right is that sort of something that like you constantly think about like okay i just really need to be like interested in and do this like i can i can see myself doing this sort of

40:25like long term is that like a part of part of your decisions yeah and like this this is pretty pragmatic as well but you also have to consider like whether it's financially viable to do it long term like good books was a little bit of both so i it was a huge amount of effort to like put that together but as soon as i launched it and it was like well received and everything i kind of like instantly lost interest in it and part of it was because it was interesting you know i was kind of sick of like doing the research and keeping on top of

40:56everything and you know building the site but while it made a little bit of money it was it wasn't financially viable enough for me to like do it full time um so you kind of have to like you know separate yourself from that and try to think through is this know when to call it quits i guess i should say it's like all right i don't think this is worth my time to invest into this because it did take up a lot of my time so i'm going to focus on other projects instead gotcha so when you build untitled dui were you still working full-time at

41:30somewhere else or and and you did this on this yeah yeah actually that's a really good question because um i get a lot of people ask ask this as well like because i left up guard and then it's you know untitled ui launched and then himalayas i was working himalayas full time as well himalayas had already launched but that was purely coincidence like i was working on untitled you know in my spare time and mostly in the mornings before i started my full-time job wow and i think that's really important for people to do is like to validate ideas like why are you working full-time because you're still

42:04learning in your job but then if you you know there's there's kind of two ways you can approach it like if you have some spare time in your life if you're like fortunate enough to have some spare hours to work on side projects i think a trap a lot of designers fall into is you know they'll become a senior designer and they think that they have to contract you know take on lucrative side contracts or like freelance work as an except in their career and like i dabbled in that i had a few like really shitty freelance clients in a row and i just decided it wasn't for me and

42:37i think that's totally fine like freelance work isn't for everyone i just thought i just felt like i had multiple bosses and it was really stressful you know and i i made the decision like that time and that stress is better invested in building side projects that could potentially like supplement my income without having to trade my time for it so yeah if you're interested in like building side projects like just actually just start doing it on the side and then if it looks like it's going to become financially viable or you want to take a break from work then you can like leave your job at that point but don't just

43:10like throw everything in and then quit your job because then you have a limited runway and it's just not the most practical way to do it because you know a lot of time it doesn't work out right i'm really hearing that you value time a lot and and like when you take on new projects or like let's say you're trying on something new or taking on freelancing or whatnot like how do you kind of approach things when you're like uh let's say yeah you're gonna build untitled ui like how do you know how much time to give it before you let it go and drop it or continue on like is

43:44there a way you kind of gauge it or is that just kind of like gut feel because um yeah you seem to really approach things with like all or nothing i'm gonna like a lot x amount of months or whatever time for this do every give it all i got and then if it doesn't work out then i'll just move on so how do you kind of like discern that um i like to see things through to completion so i didn't expect untitled uh to take so long to build but okay you know it kind of just got out of hand and then i was like all right

44:13i have this philosophy where if you're going to do something like do it properly there's no point i mentioned earlier that like i wanted to make entire life you are like two times better than anything else that existed and i think if you gonna do a side project you have to do it properly like i've seen so many projects launch because you know people get sick of working on it and then it doesn't make a splash because it's not as good as the competition and then they wonder why it's not taking off like they expected it to and then they lose interest in it and then you just wasted

44:43all your time so you know if i start something i'll just kind of systematically just chip away in it even if it takes like twice as long than i expected right yeah maybe it's a bit of like suncoast fallacy but i like to see things due to the end and like at the same time i'm not going to release it unless i'm confident that like it's ready otherwise i'm just risking it failing if that makes sense um and you know i i know like if if i'm working on something again i start to realize that this isn't gonna work then that's totally fine as well like i've had those

45:17projects but i try to make that decision as early as possible so i don't invest too much time into it gotcha uh this is a nice plug for you to kind of sell uh untitled ui for those who haven't used it like what makes it two times better than all the other ones like because there there's so many there are tons of like ui kits on figma like what what are like the uh what are the things that make it separated from all the others um well it's funny ask that because since i launched it some other ones have launched and i think some of them are

45:49great like um there's one that i really love called dizzy design um by this guy named yeon apologies if i'm pronouncing his name wrong this french design i believe and i think competition's great but when i was building untitled i kind of looked at what existed in the market and they're all just like that they're either like built really poorly in figma like when i was learning figma when i was getting to product design i wanted to learn like best practices like making sure i you know organize my the file really well and using auto layout and using variants as efficiently as possible so when i looked at like the existing

46:30ones in the market they weren't really like well organized and they also lacked in scale as well you know like scale is important but it also has to be like quality at the same time and once you have those two together it's really hard to compete against um and because you know it took so long to build it also creates like a bit of like a emote around your side purchase as well because it's such a huge monumental amount of work for someone to like compete against like if someone wants to build a ui kit at this scale like it will take it will be like

46:59several months commitment like at least um i forgot the question what was the question oh like what what makes it uh a lot i'm looking at this and you know every every component library purple against the purple gotta be the purple yeah it's 100 purple but i mean like yeah there's a lot of button variations here and uh yeah like i do i do appreciate that i've probably gone overboard with it and like i feel really awkward selling it because um i i recognize that i still have a lot of work to do on it i just need to like allocate the time yeah but i think with all things like with the

47:40good book books project for example i just tend to go overboard on things and like try to pile in as much as much as possible but my intention for this was like for people to use it as a base for their own like design system or like company design system and then go through and like review everything like all right i don't need this many button variants i'll delete them all um and i'll keep like these couple or i don't need this entire component so i'll just delete it and then that becomes like a head start for them if that makes sense and i probably haven't

48:10communicated that well enough in my marketing and messaging but that was my intention because i was building this um you know for us to use at himalayas and i wanted to like give us a really good head start yeah and it was what i was trying to build it at up guard as well but you know things are a little bit sidetracked there jordan you have really high standards like really high standards for you for your work and i can just tell like even you saying that you already know there's like room for improvement um it just comes out i know when we were collaborating on the

48:45webflow components um like you just you just took it to like another level of like quality um and yeah this is something i've observed and it comes through like look at that your the quality really does come through yeah this quantity but like you've really thought about this and like i've used the untitled ui a lot and like there's barely any errors on it i don't know how how you've managed to like not even have many typos you know it's just like yeah you have a good high standard of quality of work and like a good eye for detail um and yeah i couldn't recommend this

49:23kit uh enough it's been a huge inspiration for the rhythm library components as well oh thanks man yeah all right enough enough like totally not on top of you it's making me uncomfortable [Laughter] with that that's my protections and stuff like i still find errors in the kit which like amazes me because like i've tried to go through with a fine tooth comb and that's kind of gotta dig into it this is so nice to see look but yeah you go ahead some parts of it i'll look back and cringe a little bit but i think that's part of like involvement as a designer like you kind of kind of keep growing if

50:00you don't look back at like your designs from a year ago like then you're not really evolving um but on the perfections and stuff i know adam and i have talked about this before because adam and dan have this this really great like duality where i think dan's like the let's just ship it let's go like let's keep the business move and keep the momentum up and then adam is the guy battling with you know the same demons that i have with like everything has to be perfect let's slow it down but i'll i'll die on this hill like i feel like if you're gonna stand out at

50:29anything you do it doesn't matter if you like doing design or something else like you need to just aim to be the best at it not the best in the world like you're not gonna be the best in the world at anything but just the best to your ability and i think that mindset that like lifelong learning mindset is really important because it helps you focus and stay motivated and as long as you're improving like a little bit each day that really compounds over time and then before you know it you're like world class at whatever you do not saying i'm a world class i think i'm not

50:58a great designer but i'm trying to improve each day and i think that's all that matters because the alternative is you get stagnant and then you become one of those senior designers that doesn't want to learn how auto layout works in my figma you know what i mean you're really hating on this senior designer they that you worked with yeah i will forever dunk on them yeah don't know you started on instagram designers they're all right um man we have so much it's like 45 minutes in uh i wonder if oh jeez we like kind of crack at it at the q a or uh anything else we want to cover

51:34i do want others to kind of ask and have the opportunity i do want to mention one thing when i was um talking about deep work that booked by keller newport another really formative book for me was atomic habits and i sound like everyone on twitter right now but it is on everybody yeah it is a really good book and that's why it's on everyone's list because um you know it's it's a really like pragmatic approach to like building habitual behavior and i think when you combine that with like the ability to work deeply on a problem and like focus and remove distractions from your life

52:11like that's the ultimate superpower like they become like a force multiplier so you know if you're struggling with either of those things just read those two books and like try to reread them like once a year or something because i honestly like i have people message me on twitter occasionally asking like oh do you know any design courses or anything i can do i was like i don't have any design courses that i can recommend but um definitely read those two books like in in succession and you said refactoring ui that was like the introduction into like product design design systems things like that right yeah absolutely because you know i was i

52:46was looking at um how i could improve you know when i was like dabbling in marketing design and like working on the spaceship website a little bit yeah i wanted to know how i improve it and like coming from like the outside i didn't really know all those principles and stuff so that was a really good because it is actually written for developers i learned later on it was written by a designer developer duo adam and steve from taylor and css but their intention for it was like to teach developers how to learn design and be better at design and i think just because it was written that way

53:19it's a really great like introduction to like being better at ui design yeah i find with um like design books what are your thoughts on design books like refactoring ui is very practical it's like here's what you should do here's what you shouldn't do but what are your thoughts on design books um i haven't really checked out too many to be honest um i've started checking out a few more and i think like a lot of the time they just regurgitate a lot of the same content but you know if you're just starting out in design or you're trying to improve i think you should try to absorb

53:55as much information as you can and like do it and read as many of these books as you can and you know from what i've seen how when ui is still like the original and the best and like everything else is just derivative of that but you know when you're looking at other resources or doing other courses also knowing when to like filter through it like same with like instagram like instagram reels i see some like horrible advice in there and you know i'm still pretty new to this industry but i i can have that filled around like that's like this account is actually actually like

54:27setting people back in design yeah um yeah so knowing when to like filter content and if you're doing a course and you're realizing that it's like not actually good advice then just ditch it and just try to find better learning resources the first resource i ever used like it's sort of similar to refactoring ui in its practicality was the ios guidelines that apple used to put out like they used to put out like guidelines for how to like build apps and i remember that was like my first one of the first things that i actually looked at i think it's actually a great uh like it's a great tool to

55:01still use like looking at particularly for product design looking at like material design uh guidelines for that google's created um or any of the ios stuff i think refactoring ui is like a version of that type of content around like design and product design and yeah i still look over over um refactoring ui sometimes like it's yeah it's got some good advice definitely like a resource to check out but i in terms of design books i've i've personally found that i get way more value on like non-design books like books like books books like you know deep work or like um habits right like mindsets and like yeah minds yeah

55:47exactly like mindset stuff or like even business like stuff um rather than or psychology rather than like design specifically yeah i think that yes if you can train your mind into creating those like like business books have have an edge to having those habits and those being like very productive um like with your time and all that stuff so i think if you combine that with the creative side then it's it's a great combination yeah totally yeah like the design stuff you can learn but building good habits and like managing your time efficiently that's the real hard stuff because motivation is pretty fleeting at least for me like

56:32i really wake up and i'm like i can't wait to like design posts for twitter today you know what i mean but if you build those that habit and those habits in that system then it becomes as easy it's like all right do this then i can do this and then i can go to golf or something can you walk us through that like because yeah i know i know adam and i we we have an affinity to like kind of bring him in like a sports sports mentality into design like like very disciplined um very yeah systematic you just like just do it like forget about the feelings

57:02just like put in the work right so um yeah any tips on like how you approach it or how do you slowly develop that like over time i think that's a really good way to approach it just like do the work like um and that takes a little bit of time and discipline as well like i really like to just you know it probably makes a little more sense when you read atomic habits for anyone listening um there's a the most famous quote for the book is like oh you don't rise to the level of your goals or your aspirations and which one is quote you fought a level with your

57:34system so if you don't have those systems in place there's gonna be days where you're like you're not super motivated it's like work out or like eat really well so then you rely on your motivation and you only have like a final resource of motivation and like discipline each day so when i was like trying to learn design for example or like work on untitled um cal newport has this um this approach to it where he's like a focused i can't remember what it's called it's like you batch a time and then you just yeah yeah like just bashing that time and like kind of segment your day but also

58:14like being really intentional about like what you're doing and this is something i've been lapsing a little bit lately and it's like you know bashing out all right the first two hours of the day i'm just going to focus on like my ui design skills because like i want to improve on that and then like during that time putting your phone away and like actually focusing on doing that and trying to push yourself also another important part of that is like pushing yourself to like the limit of your abilities like trying new stuff and like learning otherwise you're just recycling the same stuff over and over again

58:45and then you know the rest of it is just trying to form other habits in like your work day so like um i used to try i tried to implement this when i was working full-time as like i block out time on my calendar it's like don't interrupt me i don't want meetings in this time this is my time to actually do work and that kind of ties into deep work philosophy as well and then just you know if you're trying to get better at design or whatever you're doing like just doing that day in and day out and just grinding on it and like eventually you're gonna get good at it

59:15because it just compounds over time and then when you compound that over like a couple of years you just unstoppable because like nobody else can consistently do that every day unless they have that kind of system and those habits in place when's the time for you to do deep work is it like a is it in the morning or is it like whenever or is it at night or like yeah um i try to just get well i try to reserve those kinds of sessions for like the really important that i need to do which usually isn't very exciting so i'll try to get it done like first thing

59:47in the morning just get it out of the way and then in the afternoon i'll reserve that time for like less intensive like admin work or you know messing around with like a design or something like that um it kind of depends on what i have going on as well but you know and like i was like it sounds like i'm taking this really militant approach to like work and everything but if i had one day like on i went to hobart on the weekend and when we got back on tuesday i was so hungover that wednesday was pretty much a write-off and that's fine like that

1:00:18stuff happens and um if i'm not feeling it like one day or if i'm just really struggling to like focus and get work done then that's totally fine like you can miss a day here and there you just kind of use that time to work them like less importance you gotta you gotta stick to it i'm not your god like you can have days off yeah i think it's important like we're human beings we're not robots and especially creative in the creative space you have to give yourself that time to recover if you're not feeling it because you need you need to be in a right head

1:00:57space to like to flow into the creative space right yeah exactly yeah yeah okay guys it's like so close to the end of the hour so let's just like jump into all these questions uh sorry guys we've been really uh selfish with uh our own personal questions but all right uh let's see here okay sean i have zero formal education and computers are designed do you think it's important to have that to get into a successful tech career uh no i feel like anyone can do whatever they want um i think there's a lot of like gaslighting and design and like tech and development or anything any energy and

1:01:40everyone makes it out it's harder than it really is but if you just like want to do something like you can learn those skills online you know what i mean you don't have to go to uni or any of that kind of stuff in fact i won't get into that but i think it's a waste of time most of the time gotcha um mateo says jordan i relate to what you said about having struggled with networking in the past being more on the introverted side do you think this has limited your career opportunities hmm interesting um it's kind of hard to know because i don't know like a parallel universe i

1:02:13mean probably but you know those kinds of people that love networking and go to those events they're not the kind of people i want to work with as well like all that get work done yeah exactly um like there is a time and place for like networking but i'd rather network by like you know creating projects and like making useful stuff for people um i feel like that's has a much higher impact than like you know traditional networking where you like cold message people on linkedin and all that kind of stuff yeah but if you instead like create like a tool or something that people find really useful then they

1:02:49know who you are from that gotcha yeah because you have you have quite the the twitter following so like your network is quite big right you know you say you don't have big twitter following but to the average person you you've built up like people know of of you and of your work so it just shows that like your angle has been like do the work and let the work speak for itself sort of thing rather than like yeah exactly yeah above it yeah i think that's a good way to think about it gareth says do you have any specific exercises methods for practicing ui design that

1:03:25worked well for you when you started designing uh that's a really good question those habits and things like that yeah i mean i i'll say it again like i don't think i'm a great designer but i what i found really helped to me was like actually picking out a real project and then that comes with itself like a million little problems and then you just solve them like one by one and it kind of can be hard when you're starting out design to like know what to work on and everything so just yeah i mean if you have an idea for a project in mind then

1:04:00that's a great way to learn and like look at how other people approach the same problems and just learn incrementally like that um i mean you can do you could try to take a similar approach with like my daily post as well and try to do a post every day like there's that 100 day ui challenge that could be a good um thing for people to do but yeah i don't really know that wasn't a very good answer yeah has that helped you dan um has that helped you like sort of um like practice like doing that like daily because you do the daily thing right

1:04:35does that are you finding that you're getting some reps in and you're improving through that because i'd imagine you would be right yeah i mean i i definitely prefer the work that i produce later on but um contrary to what my twitter looks like i don't do these daily like i batch them together and i'll do like yeah systems yeah there you go yeah systems baby um but it definitely does help like like anything like it just comes in reps like you're not gonna get really good at something so like some of the stuff the more recent stuff that i'm doing i can kind of see you kind of have these

1:05:10like little leaps and you like your skills where you're like oh that actually looks really nice and that was really easy for me to do and um it can be kind of hard to work sometimes between those leaps because it feels like you're not getting anywhere but you are learning like all the time gotcha guys we're just going we're going to go a little over time because we got a lot of good questions and if you guys want to leave thanks for joining us but stick around uh okay we got this this interesting man here dan how many sides good to see you man uh how many side projects do you think

1:05:44people can do at once or is it one at a time what's your personal take on it ah that's a good question depend it kind of depends how bandwidth constraint you are like if you if you work on a project that doesn't require much time like untitled ui then you can kind of you have capacity to like work on other projects um yeah i really like i really like picking projects though that don't require my time but that's my number one focus of late is like separating my time from my income like i don't want to work on a project that i have to like you know keep working like good books

1:06:18for example like that took up a lot of my time right and for not a whole lot of like rewards so yeah i think yeah it kind of just comes like contextually whether you can take on more work or not like if you're working full time you can probably only manage one

1:06:37let's see mateo taking the high quality work approach for larger side projects that you will that that you know will take a long time to build like you untitled ui do you validate the concept or product before pouring all your time into it yeah that's a good question good question yeah that is a good question um so i reckon the whole like minimal vial pro viable product mvp and like lean startup approach that was really popular um in startups is like complete like it might have worked 10 years ago and so for anyone that doesn't know what that is it's like all right let's get like the smallest

1:07:15minimal viable product that we can done and then release the market and then test with users and everything this goes against like every instagram ux guru it's advice but i honestly feel like if you if you're going to do something like i'm taught you why for example so i'm ranting a little bit here but it was already validated like i knew that i needed this problem that's enough validation for me these solutions already exist in the market and they're obviously really successful that's like validation again and there are thousands of like figma designers and like design system builders and people that use ui kits around the world not just in figma but

1:07:52for other platforms as well so picking picking unoriginal ideas like that really helps because you know that it's already like a good idea right if you're gonna go for something like that's you know more of like an untested idea yeah then yeah i probably can't really speak to that because yeah i haven't really done that before i would say the lean the lean startup is for validating like fresh ideas that you want to try to validate right like to see if it works but yeah yeah like like yourself if it's already validated then yeah and on that point like with the mvp approach i should elaborate on a little

1:08:26bit like if if you're doing an idea that that has already been validated like it's already a successful product in the market it's already like companies doing it then if you do an mvp approach it's not going to be successful because you'll have to launch yeah already done customers aren't stupid like we have this internet now where you can like look up competitors and they'll compare your product to someone else's they won't be impressed with yours and they'll never consider you ever again and you only have one shot at doing that so you know yeah that's a good point yeah so that's a good point like the

1:09:00competition like if like if it's not a relatively new idea and there's like a lot of competition then it's like way harder yeah exactly you go for like i want to make this like two times better than what's already out there and therefore i'm going to spend more time in perfecting it but like when it's like literally like speed to market we take a very mvp approach to the reload library component library thing because there's nothing like that out there so we just want to get it out there and learn and shape it i think it i i am like a believer in like the lean startup but i think it i

1:09:33agree that like for your approach it's not necessary i think it's for for each project but i really like hearing your perspective on it's super refreshing because you know lean startups just being like ingrained in me so like when when i hear your perspective i'm like yeah it actually does make a lot of sense like what you're saying and there's other ways yeah the stakes are a lot lower with like projects that i work on as well because they're a lot smaller like i don't have to hire heaps of people um yeah i don't know they better know what i'm talking about but that's just my

1:10:05that's what i've observed it totally makes sense man i see so many so many like startups launched and then they don't make a big enough splash and they wonder why it's not successful right yeah yeah that's a good point and there's a lot a lot of startups out there and they just fizzle out after a few years okay aaron asks your daily twitter posts using your own products seemed like an insanely effective marketing tactic how has that helped you build momentum with untitled um it's a really good question i saw the other day someone is someone else's started doing that which is cool like like another ua kit um

1:10:41but i i think they're like the only long-term this is something i learned from arby like the only good long-term sustainable like growth tactic is seo like the majority of traffic to untitled ui.com comes from seo and people get so hung up on like twitter and instagram and like i think they're great like it's a good marketing tactic to kind of show how untitled you are can be used but yeah don't don't think that that's like driving a huge amount of traffic because it's not like most of the posts barely make a splash and social media has such a short like half-life then i'll get like

1:11:17likes on one of my twitter posts and then the next day it's no traffic at all from that post and yeah i think a lot of like i think a lot of like instagram designers with like a hundred thousand followers are starting to realize that when they start launching products and they wonder why it's like not converting to sales as much because yeah they're not really investing into like seo is like the foundations of their growth um yeah so that's like i think i think it's good to do and everything but long term it's not sustainable like it's probably not worth my time doing but i've committed to it

1:11:50now so i'm just gonna do like at least a year of it and just see how it goes gotcha all right last question adam you want to take this one you seem to be good at tons of things for example your promo videos gifts and tweets are always well created these areas you're focused on learning like after effects marketing techniques etc uh it's really good question so um early earlier in my career i read another book well there's two actually there's another calendar book called so but they can't ignore you and uh range by david epstein and these two books are about how a generalist approach in your career is

1:12:34going to be like way better long term and um i feel like a lot of people like get too hung up on like their title and then don't want to learn like a ui designer be like i don't need to learn after effects or anything like that but then when i was like building untitled or you know working on like marketing design stuff that spaceship i was like you kind of realize this would be really handy to know how to do so i'm just going to learn it and it sucks but like you just got to put the hours in and like learn it and i learned like

1:13:00just enough to be able to like produce those videos and then move on and that becomes like a really valuable asset in like my toolkit so when i wanted to do the video from entitled i kind of had those skills in my back pocket and i didn't have to you know pay a video editor or whatever they're called an animator like 15 grand to do the video um and those kinds of like that wide range of skills is like what sets your part in your career as well because as you start to bundle them together like once you learn seo or like marketing stuff as well even

1:13:32though it might not directly relate to your job at the moment it's going to come in handy like eventually yeah 100 have you read any of charlie munger's stuff like that the charlie manga um almanac because he talks about like being a generalist and how that's actually makes you a better at like your specific skill that you are trying to get good at because you have like multiple perspectives on like the problem you're trying to solve it's yeah it's very very good we should have another stream just on like books i like business good books there you go part two yeah yeah that's awesome uh do you still play drums

1:14:14uh i wish so i live in an apartment i don't know if you can see in here in melbourne um it's a little hard here i did have a an electric kit for a while when i was in sydney but it's just not the same my dream is to like move out somewhere where i can have like a shed and an actual like full dream acoustic setup nice but no no i gave up in that dream gonna know when to like call your side projects yeah it's that's great i am also a drummer so i'll i can oh appreciate it yeah yeah you got good rhythm

1:14:47um [Music] all right um i think jordan i'd like to know like what your plan is for like may i know you don't i feel like you're not the type of guy that plans too far ahead but like what's the plan for i guess the next i don't know six to 12 months for like untitled ui like the webflow components like what what are you planning on doing and where are you planning on spending your time um i don't really know i mean i'll i'll definitely build out the webflow component library a little more because um the webflow component library is great but it does take a lot longer than

1:15:22like me components like you can whip those out really quickly as adam would know um so that will take some time and then i have another project that i've started dabbling in kind of related to untitled ui so probably spending a lot of my time on that as well and then with himalayas we have um like job seeker profiles that are coming out really soon so we're working on that at the moment which i'm really excited about so if you haven't signed up you can sign up to like the waitlist for that as well and get like your first name username yeah but i mean i don't really know i

1:15:54kind of just take it day by day and if something is looking like it's worth pursuing further then i'll just like go down that rabbit hole a little bit more awesome very interesting okay one last thing uh for those who want to kind of create components um on the relume library can you share kind of like lessons you've learned even just your process of doing that and putting up the whole entitled ui onto the the new libraries feature yeah um so adam was a really huge help like i can't thank adam enough for his help with building the library like he did a lot of the heavy lifting and

1:16:29when i built the last webflow project i did was actually untitled ui.com and that was um i think i finished that like around the same time that client versus release so i had to kind of learn client first as part of this as well which is really great like it instantly made sense to me and i wish i had it i wish it existed early on like the f and sweet guys are doing amazing things um if you haven't i'm sure i assume everyone that's watching this uses f and suite because they use really in but um yeah it was really great i think like if someone else is building a component

1:17:00library we spoke about this a little bit the other day i think the most important thing is like quality over quantity so if you go and like think of a community these days it's all just rubbish like it's so hard to find like good assets in there and i would hate to see that happen to like anyone else's component library um and then i was really blown away by like when i was exploring really all your uncommon components like really advanced stuff like filters and like interesting stuff like that like the untitled url library is pretty boring just by design like it was kind of designed that way to be neutral and like

1:17:36really simple components so i think if someone wanted to do like a component library and william that if you did some really interesting like whack crazy components that are hard to build that would straight away stand out like that would be a really great addition good point nice yeah i i i definitely agree with that the uncommon components have been pretty popular um and it's like just goes to show like you go quality over quantity for sure like for sure and i think there's just there's going to be some more community component libraries coming i think that are gonna like take that approach of like the the

1:18:15the uncommon components i know a few creators that are talking about or like building it right now so very excited to see how others go about creating their own component libraries yeah i'm excited about it so when i first discovered really i didn't really to be honest i didn't really understand like the whole unstyled component setup and i didn't know how to use client first or anything but then once i started like playing around with it it kind of like you know i had this light bulb moment was like this is going to be so valuable for people building websites and like ironically if i'm building like a

1:18:50webflow site for a personal project i don't even use figma i like i'll set up like type styles and everything and like use it to create assets and icons but generally i'll just design and build in straining web flow so like oh nice but if some if if i if i have like a huge library of like pre-boot layouts it would just like speed up my process so much yeah so i'm really excited to see what and even better if everyone's using the exact same like naming conventions and and the same style system yeah i honestly reckon that's like the future webflow like when people start

1:19:20using component libraries like this yeah like i've i've seen a few comments around like um you know people saying oh everyone's using client first how can you differentiate it's like why is that necessarily a bad thing if we're all using client first it just means we'll speak in the same language i mean we can all just help each other out which means we can all use each other's components on each other's uh uh projects and like it's a network it's like a currency we're all training and we're all speaking the same language it's great for collaboration um so that's a good thing um so yeah yeah

1:19:51definitely great even if you're an agency you're working with other agencies across the world and you're speaking that same naming convention and same design language then it just opens up way more collaborations for you so yeah yeah like with the with the roster like we have guys like all over the world that like they're all using client first and so you can jump into that and sort of like pick it up if like if if like we we need to like extend on it um and it's just it is a game changer like everyone's speaking the same language um or the same system um yeah what were you going to say jordan

1:20:30oh on the same lines like i think one of the most undervalued parts of climb first that i've noticed is like it future-proof proves it so if like another designer if you're working at a company for example and you're going to leave eventually another designer christa long has to inherit your mess and if it's like yeah we're already using client first it's really easy to understand which is one of the things i struggled with when i built up guard site i didn't have client first like i didn't use client first to build that and that was always in the back of my mind it's like oh it's gonna be really hard for

1:20:59someone else to figure out and i don't know how to make this easy for them yeah so just trying to be considerate of like other people to use your work yeah totally like i came from the construction world and engineering and we all have you know like universal standards codes and stuff like that and so just you know you're bringing in laborers from all around the world or whatever and just having again that same set of standards it's just way better and that's yeah like tony said it's like say musicians all use the same 12 notes so there's like infinite possibilities infinite ways to collaborate and to build more amazing

1:21:36stuff and at the end of the day that's what it's all about so yeah all right guys well thank you uh we're gonna wrap it up this is the longest stream we've had uh jordan thank you so much for your generosity just contributing to the whole community thank you for your time thanks for sharing your story um maybe yeah yeah thanks for coming on man anything you want to summarize what are we getting uh just learn how to focus and like work deeply it's like more invaluable more valuable than any design school you can learn but yeah i i do want to say like i really appreciate you guys obviously in

1:22:12these i know how much work's involved in like putting this this stuff together and i'm really yeah i'm really stoked about you guys of the community nice thank you man it's always fun it's awesome to have you on yes all right uh so real quick here um sorry jordan i'm just gonna keep you on for a little bit some quick announcements uh reach out to us on slack if you'd like to share your work in the future like your process so we can feature you on future streams next week we are gonna have a live build demo by the one only adam so that's gonna be really fun uh

1:22:50we're gonna we're you know uh choosing between two famous websites uh right now we're kind of debating so we might put that on twitter and you guys can vote um and then the rumble is at the end of the month we're looking to represent agencies so this month if you guys want to challenge any agencies and you're an agency dm me on twitter it's gonna be really fun so all right that's it so thanks so much for your time again jordan thanks for hanging out with us um have a great week and we'll see you next time bye see you guys [Music]

1:23:44you