PRODUCT DISRUPT

My disruptive list of resources that made me a Product Designer

BLOGS

Reading is what keeps you sane. Most of my mornings are spent reading these blogs.
Invision Blog
Invision’s blog has been my best buddy in learning about product & design. ‘Inside Design’ is the coolest section that they have with global Design Teams.
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Google Design
Google’s design blog is mostly about their Design Team sharing their design process and resources around their very own design language – ’Material Design’.
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The nuSchool Blog
The best blog out there for Freelancers. The nuSchool educates about how to start and excel as a Freelancer in digital domain.
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Toptal Blog
Toptal is the best-known network of freelancers, they blog towards helping Designers & Developers alike to up their industry standards.
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Tubik Studio Blog
Tubik Studio is a digital agency in Ukraine. They craft beautiful client products and help others understand how they do it via their blog.
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Signal v. Noise
Jason Fried and a few others from Basecamp share their stories and company insights on building and running a community-loved product.
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DESIGNERS

Never a fan of conventional courses, these are the product people I believe in. Their work has kept me motivated, always.

Tobias van Schneider

A German award-winning Designer raised in Austria & currently living in New York City. Founder of Semplice. Former Lead Product Designer & Art Director at Spotify and serving on the AIGA Board of Directors in New York. I just love his emails. He has been a major influence on my design thinking.

Lorenzo Bocchi

Award-winning Art Director, Judge at CSSDA & DOTY “Special Kudos”. He merges Art Direction with Design, Front End Dev & Photography to bring his ideas to life. His story about how he became what he is today is a deeply inspiring one. You would be delighted by his humbleness.

Julie Zhuo

VP of Design at Facebook, Frequent Writer on Medium. Shares her brilliant insights on building digital products. Educates about unintuitive lessons on management. Major influence in guiding people take their key career decisions. Very often does Podcasts & AMAs.

Ahmet Sülek

Product Designer from Turkey. Founder of Panda Network. He’s a serial Maker. He and his Team at Panda have launched 24 products in just 2 years. He’s a Doer and is actively involved in designing and developing products. He’s super organized and rarely procrastinates.

Claudio Guglieri

Designer & Creative Director based in Redmond, Seattle. Design Director at Microsoft Groove and Movies & TV, former CD at Elephant working for Apple, and Design Director at Fi. He’s a regular design speaker and a casual writer. I just love how he plays around parallax.

Leo Leung

Former Senior Designer at Alibaba.com, now based in San Francisco. He believes Designer makes the world fresh, and Programmer makes it real. He’s best in the business when it comes to futuristic interaction design. His Dribbble shots are loved by millions, including me. And he’s such a respectful guy.

Gleb Kuznetsov

Design Director & Product Designer at Fantasy. He carries 15+ years of experience designing digital products, which clearly shows in his designs. Fantasy is known for their solid product design, he plays a vital role in directing the same. His interaction design is very modern & visionary.

Denis Shepovalov

The man behind Craftwork. He’s known for his beautifully crafted UI Kits and Frameworks. His designs are very versatile and adaptive, easily fits in any product domain. I’ve always looked up to him for inspiration while designing user interfaces.

Barthelemy Chalvet

Founder of Agenceme. Passionate User Interface and User Experience Designer. Most interested in innovation and solving problem with unique solution. He’s a very solid designer with great experience in identity and product design. I find his designs to be very neat and pixel-perfect.

EMAIL LISTS

Not all the emails are to be blindly deleted, I love receiving emails from these folks. These are precious and worth a read, everytime.
Nir Eyal’s Nir & Far blog newsletter
HABIT  •  BEHAVIOR  •  USER EXPERIENCE
Tobias van Schneider’s personal email list
LIFE STORIES  •  MOTIVATION  •  DESIGN THINKING
Eric Karjaluoto’s blog newsletter
CREATIVITY  •  LIFE STORIES  •  HUMAN NATURE
Paul Jarvis’ Sunday Dispatches
CREATIVITY  •  COMMERCE  •  WRITING
Matt Olpinski’s newsletter about Freelance Industry
FREELANCE  •  CLIENTS  •  LIFE HACKS
James Clear’s blog newsletter
PRODUCTIVITY  •  READING  •  HAPPINESS
Sacha Greif’s daily design picks via Sidebar
DESIGN  •  CURATION  •  INSPIRATION
Hack Design’s weekly design course newsletter
DESIGN COURSE  •  LEARNING  •  CAREER
Yalantis Design Agency’s blog newsletter
INDUSTRY  •  CASE STUDY  •  MOBILE

INSPIRATION

To exhale creativity, you first have to inhale some, that’s how it works. I check these sites daily to stay in the know.

RESOURCES

Always a believer of reusability and reverse engineering. Freebies and UI Kits sure help in speeding up my process.
UpLabs            UI8            Symu            Codrops            Pixel Buddha

TOOLS

The tools that you use should be comfortable, modern, progressive and should have a smooth learning curve. These are what I use.
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Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop has a solid learning curve to it and is very powerful of a tool for both UI & Graphics.
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Sketch

Arguably, the best tool for UI design. It’s very light, super-fast & community-powered.
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Principle

Most loved tool for quick prototyping & animation. Seamlessly integrates with Sketch.
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Google Suite

Drive is my best source of backup and maintenance. I’m a heavy user of all their services.
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Invision

The best tool out there for click-through prototypes, feedback and maintaining consistency in design.
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Zeplin

They got a lot to improve, but work pretty well for design to development handoffs.
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WordPress

Being the dominant CMS on the internet, WordPress is always evolving. I run my blog on it.
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Slack

A great and friendly tool for communication within the team. It has great set of integrations.
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MailChimp

It’s simple, flexible and does what it promises. I send my occasional emails through MailChimp.

I am Darshan Gajara

A Product Designer driven by passion for making products and helping others do the same, or even better.
I Think
I think about the World, our existence and everything in between. It’s such a vaguely lucid thing to dwell on.
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I Design
It’s not just about the visuals or just the experience, it’s truly a blend of both, I long to achieve that.
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I Tell Stories
Reading and Writing keeps you sane. I believe it’s the best way to communicate and grow as a person, together.
See Blog