I didn't start with interfaces. I started with paint. Actual paint, on actual canvas, in an actual art class where the teacher kept telling me I was holding the brush wrong. I was twelve, and I was already arguing about composition.
The art background gave me something I didn't appreciate until much later: the ability to see. Not just look, see. Negative space. Visual weight. How your eye moves across a composition. These aren't things you learn from a CSS tutorial.
from canvas to screen
The transition wasn't deliberate. I didn't wake up one morning and decide to become a designer. I was just a kid who liked making things look good, and the internet was right there. My first "design" was editing a WordPress theme. I changed the header color and felt like a god.
Then Figma happened. Or rather, I discovered that there were tools specifically made for designing interfaces, not just editing photos in Photoshop and hoping for the best. That changed everything.
early figma experiments
the wordpress phase
the interface obsession
My first real UI project was redesigning a dashboard for a friend's side project. The existing design was... functional. Grey boxes, blue links, Times New Roman. The kind of interface that makes you feel like you're filing taxes.
“Interfaces are the only art form where the audience doesn't just look at your work, they live inside it.
I spent three weeks on it. Three weeks on something that could have taken three days. But I was learning something crucial: the difference between making something look good and making something feel right. They're not the same thing.
2px shadows and other obsessions
There's a specific moment in every designer's journey where you start noticing things normal people don't. The 1px border that's slightly too dark. The padding that's 12px when it should be 16px. The font weight that's 400 when the heading above it is 500 and the inconsistency creates this subtle visual tension.
Normal people think you're insane. Other designers nod knowingly.
box-shadow: 0 1px 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.06),
0 1px 2px rgba(0,0,0,0.04);
/* vs what I changed it to */
box-shadow: 0 2px 8px rgba(0,0,0,0.04),
0 0 0 1px rgba(0,0,0,0.02);The second shadow is objectively better. Softer spread, more natural depth, that barely-visible border for definition. The difference is 2 pixels and about 0.02 opacity. Nobody else noticed. I noticed. That's the disease.
spot the difference (you can't)
design as problem-solving
Here's the thing nobody tells you about design: it's not about making things pretty. That's decoration. Design is about solving problems so elegantly that people don't even realize there was a problem.
“Good design is invisible. Great design is when someone uses your product and thinks they're just smart.
I've designed six product interfaces now. Each one taught me something different. Adsclaw taught me that complex workflows need to feel simple. IndiaCorpus taught me that dense data needs breathing room. PinSuite taught me that the best interface is the one you don't think about.
not just screens
I redesigned my home interior because the living room was bothering me. The couch was too close to the wall, the lighting was flat, and there was this one corner that just felt dead. I spent a weekend with graph paper and a tape measure and now the whole space flows.
Design isn't a skill I turn on when I open Figma and turn off when I close it. It's how I see everything. Menus, rooms, conversations, systems. The art background trained my eye, interfaces trained my thinking, and now I can't stop applying both to everything I encounter.
where this is going
I don't know. Honestly. I know I'll keep designing. I know I'll keep building. I know the art thing will keep showing up in unexpected ways, because it always does. Maybe I'll design physical products next. Maybe I'll go back to canvas. Maybe both.
The one thing I know for sure: I'll never be able to pick just one thing. And I've stopped trying.