In August I decided to put aside at least 2–3 hours every week to work on my design skills, try out new techniques, plugins, prototyping tools and solve design challenges I’m interested in.

During this process I’d like to share every knowledge, so we can learn together along the way.

This article is a collection of my design work created in September 2017 combined with my favorite design inspirations.

September was way busier than August, since this is the time when most of my clients are back from holiday season.

On top of that this time of the year is when the new iPhone devices are introduced alongside with the new version of iOS, which usually have a long lasting effect on the design community for the upcoming year.

Parallel Chat — how I got featured in the Muzli Design publication and in the Sidebar.io newsletter

The Parallel Chat concept was created in August 2017 for the UpLabs Chat Challenge.

After receiving many questions about this concept and the way I created it, I decided to write a detailed Medium article of my workflow.

Within a few days the article got featured in the Muzli Design Inspirations publication and also in the Sidebar.io newsletter.

This was a huge deal for me, since I dreamed about being featured in the Sidebar.io newsletter since I started designing. :)

Hire me — Portfolio WIP

In September, I continued working on the my new portfolio site and this time I focused on the ‘Hire me’ (contact) page.

Originally, I just wanted to go with a simple email address and contact form, then I decided to provide a little bit more information about how I work. This way the potential client/visitor can get a better picture of how I approach a new project.

I also wanted to enable the potential client to immediately start a new project or schedule a consultation without much back-end-forth emailing. (I’m considering using Typeform and Calendly for these.)

Time Zone Messenger Extension

Recently, I’ve been scheduling a lot of international virtual meetings with my friends/family and clients via Facebook Messenger.

By now, calculating time zones became my second nature. 😂 However, I’ve missed not one or two meetings, because of the incorrect time calculations in different time zones.

I really like how you can now create Plans in Messenger and get notifications before the meeting, although it would be great to have a little help in terms of choosing time slots in different time zones.

In this concept, I created a simple and easy-to-use interface to help selecting an available time slot when both parties have free time in their calendars.

The sender would see his/her own calendar in the extension view and also the recipient’s calendar but due to privacy reasons a calendar event would only have a ‘Busy’ title and not the actual event title.

The extension would be also aware of the location and pick the appropriate time zone automatically (which can be also changed manually if needed).

During the design process I built on top of the Messenger Platform Design Kit.

You can also download the source files for this project.

You can read a more detailed article about the process and ideas behind this concept here.

Newsletter Landing Page

I finished September with some UI experimentations. This time I was focusing on landing page ideas for an upcoming project.

I wanted to try out different combinations of gradients and shapes to create a modern and unique look&feel.