That's normal, and it talks good things about you that you are aware of! A lot of people are okay with their design decisions and believe me, that's dangerous waters.
Think about this problem as a developer. If you need to solve insert here problem X, you probably look for a node package or some kind of framework, library, right? you don't write from scratch everything.
Well, then, why everybody tries to play designer from scratch? Because it's fun and rewarding, but also easy to make mistakes if you don't have some education in visual language.
I consider myself a creative person but interface design is hard! It requires mastery of a lot of skills at the same time and everything is in flux all the time. It's hard to communicate about.
What are folks' favorite "inspiration" sources? I use Dribbble but feel like there's something to be desired. Any great sources?
A really good source of inspiration, that very few people think about designs systems. AirBnB, Google Material, Atlassian, IBM, Spotify, {...}, you name it, already solved a huge amount of problems related to design, and the best part is that you have access to them! they are waiting for you to "hack them".
There is a book that I always recommend, A Primer of Visual Literacy, by Donis A. Dondis (La sintaxis de la imagen, in Spanish). The book is not the best about visual language, but is very easy to follow, and a really good introduction. Obviously there are books a lot better in that precise matter, but this one is a must-read for anyone doing anything visual. Trust me on this, there will be a before and after if you read and understand how human perception works, that would help you a lot in terms to take those decisions about colors, composition, and a lot more things that you probably never thought that matters in visual design. And more importantly, design is not only about making things look pretty, aesthetics it's only 10% of a design job.
All in all, whatever doubt you have, I'll be more than happy to show some light in this topic.
(Also, be smart, use components and libraries, and leave designers do their jobs ;)
At my 30s I found out that there was a developer inside a Political Science Graduated.
I've been COO an CMO for 4 years but I decided to persue my dream and become a Front-end developer:)
Location
Elche, Alicante, Spain
Education
Certificate of Higher Education for Web Applications Development & Degree in Political Science
That's normal, and it talks good things about you that you are aware of! A lot of people are okay with their design decisions and believe me, that's dangerous waters.
Think about this problem as a developer. If you need to solve insert here problem X, you probably look for a node package or some kind of framework, library, right? you don't write from scratch everything.
Well, then, why everybody tries to play designer from scratch? Because it's fun and rewarding, but also easy to make mistakes if you don't have some education in visual language.
I consider myself a creative person but interface design is hard! It requires mastery of a lot of skills at the same time and everything is in flux all the time. It's hard to communicate about.
What are folks' favorite "inspiration" sources? I use Dribbble but feel like there's something to be desired. Any great sources?
A really good source of inspiration, that very few people think about designs systems. AirBnB, Google Material, Atlassian, IBM, Spotify, {...}, you name it, already solved a huge amount of problems related to design, and the best part is that you have access to them! they are waiting for you to "hack them".
There is a book that I always recommend, A Primer of Visual Literacy, by Donis A. Dondis (La sintaxis de la imagen, in Spanish). The book is not the best about visual language, but is very easy to follow, and a really good introduction. Obviously there are books a lot better in that precise matter, but this one is a must-read for anyone doing anything visual. Trust me on this, there will be a before and after if you read and understand how human perception works, that would help you a lot in terms to take those decisions about colors, composition, and a lot more things that you probably never thought that matters in visual design. And more importantly, design is not only about making things look pretty, aesthetics it's only 10% of a design job.
All in all, whatever doubt you have, I'll be more than happy to show some light in this topic.
(Also, be smart, use components and libraries, and leave designers do their jobs ;)
You are right, why do we tend to overcomplicate things? hehehe