Little Thoughts
A tiny fun place where I will regularly be posting my thoughts on design, life, and boring updates. I promise it will be fun to read!!
A first attempt at putting all the thoughts in my head somewhere other than a Notes app.
Okay. So… I started a blog. Which is a sentence I genuinely did not expect to type.
I’ve been thinking about starting one for way too long. And by “thinking,” I mean coming up with the idea, getting excited about it, imagining what the first post would look like, probably picking a font…
…and then doing absolutely nothing. Very productive. Very on brand. But I kept coming back to it.
I like Instagram. I like making things. I like putting together a piece of work and obsessing over some tiny detail that absolutely nobody else will notice.
But sometimes I have thoughts that don’t really belong in a carousel. Or a reel. Or a caption that needs to be short enough for someone to actually read.
Sometimes I just want to talk. So… here we are.
I think I always assumed that if I started writing, I needed to have something important to say. Something worth it. Something insightful. Something that sounds like I have my entire life figured out.
You know the type. “10 Things I Learned as a Designer That Will Change Your Life.”
Meanwhile, I’m opening Illustrator and thinking: why is this shape doing that.
I’m still learning. I’m still figuring out how to make things that actually look like the thing I imagined in my head. I’m still learning how to trust my ideas. And I’m still learning that staring at a blank artboard for an hour does not technically count as working.
So I figured… maybe I don’t need to pretend I have everything figured out. Maybe I can just write about figuring it out.
I’m a graphic designer. Or at least, that’s what I say when someone asks what I do and I don’t want to give them the unnecessarily long version.
I love branding. I love typography. I can spend an unreasonable amount of time looking at packaging in a supermarket. I save things on Pinterest “for inspiration” and then save approximately seventeen more things before I actually start designing.
And creativity? That one is complicated. That’s for another post.
I want somewhere to document the process. Not just the polished version. The actual version.
The version where the portfolio project looks beautiful but there were seventeen rejected concepts behind it. The version where you post something and immediately wonder whether it was a terrible idea. The version where you learn something new and suddenly realize how much you didn’t know before. The version where you change your mind. A lot.
Because I think there’s something interesting about the messy middle of becoming a designer.
We see so much finished work online. Perfect logos. Perfect websites. Perfect mockups. Perfect portfolios. And then you look at your own work and wonder why yours doesn’t look like that.
But you don’t see the hours behind theirs. You don’t see the terrible first draft. You don’t see the 19th version. You don’t see the designer sitting there thinking: is this actually good or have I just looked at it for too long?
I want to talk about that part.
Definitely design. Branding, typography, packaging, creative experiments, things I’m learning, things I’m currently obsessed with, and probably a few things I have absolutely no business being this excited about.
There will probably be creative rants. There will probably be things I’ve learned the hard way. There might be breakdowns of projects. There might be resources I genuinely love.
And there will almost certainly be moments where I say: “Okay, hear me out…” You’ve been warned.
But I don’t want this to be only about design. Because the person designing the thing is part of the process too. It’s all tangled together. And honestly, I think that’s pretty interesting.
And weirdly, I like that. I don’t want to decide exactly what this has to be before I’ve even started.
Maybe I’ll write every week. Maybe I’ll write whenever I have something worth saying. Maybe I’ll disappear for a month because life happens. Maybe this becomes something completely different from what I’m imagining right now. That’s okay.
There’s something nice about starting something without knowing exactly where it’s going. Especially when you’re used to wanting everything to look finished before anyone gets to see it.
So this is me trying something different. Starting before it’s perfect. Figuring it out as I go. Sharing the messy middle instead of only showing the finished product.
And honestly? That feels pretty exciting.
If you’re still here, welcome. You have officially witnessed the first post. Which means you are now legally obligated to pretend I know what I’m doing. Just kidding. Mostly.
I’m really excited to have a little corner of the internet where I can write, think, experiment, overthink, share things I love, and occasionally complain about typography.
Maybe you’ll find something useful here. Maybe you’ll find something relatable. Maybe you’ll just enjoy watching me figure things out in real time.
Either way — I’m glad you’re here. Let’s see where this goes.
Yours truly,
Designer Next Door
Menu