Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Marc Andrew

I just thought f**k it. Go for it!

Don’t you just hate those titles, like the one above that I just made you (with teeth gritted) read through? Yeah you possibly pondered for a nano-second, and then thought ‘Who writes this shit!’.

Yeah me too. But I just thought ‘F**k it. Go for it’.

Ok. Now before you chuckle, and start to choke on your frothy, caramel flavoured latte and then proceed to remark “Ooh big deal, 40K, I could make that in a week”, just hear me out…

Just over 18 months ago, I was a Rebel/Designer without a cause.

Now, I’d worked in the design industry for a tidy sum of years.

Starting out as a Graphic Designer, straight from college back in the days of Scalpels, spray-mount, the Power Macintosh 9500, and the Bitstream font library (Oh how I loved that BitStream CD). Yeah quite some time ago, and the days before Big Jonny started sketching out prototypes for an Aqua coloured translucent desktop computer (yup it was beige all the way). I remember my first copy of Adobe Illustrator, version 5 (and a bit) if I seem to remember, with Boticelli’s ‘The Birth of Venus’ adorning the splash screen on startup. “No Photoshop?” you may be asking. Nope, that came a little while later.

Anyway back to that Rebel/Designer without a cause bit I touched on.

So I’d been through the gamut of different projects over the years (small to well know brand names, and everything in between), but just started to lose my love for the game (that sounds like the lyrics to some obscure Boyz II Men track, but hey-ho), and it was only until I came across Sketch around 3 or so years ago, that I started to get my mojo back in some way.

But then I paused, and once again took stock. All my working life I’ve only known design (and a sprinkling of development along the way). It was a moment of clarity, where I thought ‘Why haven’t I given something else a try. A little side-project of some kind?’.

So by the Power of Grayskull I gave it a punt. Tried something very different to what I’d ever done in my working life before.

I started writing. Grabbed my ‘Murder She Wrote’ styled typewriter* from the cellar, and started typing away.

*In know way is the above statement endorsed by Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury), or does it have any semblance of truth to it.

And what do you know, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a lot.

I started small. A couple of guest posts here, and there, and then moved onto building a following here on Medium. Did a few articles for a couple of well known (printed on real paper) magazines, and built up a reasonably sized following.

For anyone thinking about going through with a plan similar to mine, just going with a book/guide (whatever you want to call it) straight out of the gates is probably not the wisest decision. Unless your name’s Brad Frost, or John Maeda and you’re already a household name so regardless of the book you’re presenting folks would eat it up (with sprinkles on) anyways.

So I thought ‘What’s the next logical step?’. Well I had a good knowledge of Sketch by that time, and my writing skills were not too shabby. I also wasn’t setting out to write these books to gain Rockstar (That title is so Millennium) status, and bags of cash, I was making a start down this Author road because I actually began to enjoy it.

On my side-project journey, I had chats with a few (well-known) publishing companies about bringing my books to both e-book and print editions, and yes I’m sure it would have helped increase the size of the coffers somewhat, but I’m one of those people that likes to take full control of my destiny (or like the Back to the Future line is that “density”?). The freedom to self-publish without being constrained even in the smallest of ways (“Erm our copywriter has just read over your book and he wants you to remove pages 200 to 300″). Nah. I’m too much of a free-spirit. Us Aquarians are built like that.

Had I done mountains of user research before I set out on my book journey of discovery? Not really. Even though I would highly recommend that going forward. Research the audience you’ll be pitching your product/service too. Whether that be a book you’re writing, an online resource you’re building or anything in between. Find out their pain points, and well, just research, research and research some more. Honestly.

Unicornfree with Amy Hoy: Creating And Selling Your Own Products

After a relatively short-time (2 months or so), I’d built up a decent-sized mailing list of folks that were keen to see what I was in the process of creating. Forget your 10k followers on Twitter, or those two thousand rabid followers that blow smoke up your ass on Dribbble (“That’s amazing”, “I love your work”, “Ooh it’s so Flat”), a healthy email list of subscribers is the Golden Goose. Believe me!

Now this has veered slightly to the teaching aspect of things, obviously due to the fact of the route I took, but it’s just something I felt confident with, and that I had the knowledge and skills to do something with it.

Like any side-project that you commit to you’ve got to have a passion for it, to gain enjoyment from it, or it will be either prone to failure, or you’ll just get bored of it before it’s even had chance to make an impact.

Just build something. Create a side project. Just go out and do it. Don’t be that person that years down the line says “Well I had this idea once…”. You’ll regret it. You really will. We only get one shot at this game called life.

Oh, and before you go, I have a new project that you might be interested in…

If you’re a UI Designer, and want a fresh take on finding resources, improving your skills, all with an awesome community behind you, why not join the kissmyUI ‘Early Bird’ Mailing List below…

How I made 40K from my little side-project. And you could too. was originally published in Prototyping: From UX to Front End on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How I made 40K from my little side-project. And you could too.

Cool stuff, every week

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