Issue 92

Usability guides for unhirable designers

Hello, dear readers! 👋

In this issue, among other things:

• 10 trends in packaging design

• How AI works. Non technical explanation

• Why is it important to show the real history of the project in the portfolio

• How to make an avatar stub with the user's initials

• Practical tips on using QR codes

• What makes an album the greatest of all time?

• …and much more!

Enjoy reading!

🗞 News and articles

90% of designers are unhirable?

Matej Latin wrote about why designers present their projects as a consistent linear story in which design begins at point "A" and, according to a standard process, succeeds at point "B".

Author explained why it's not worth doing this, how such cases affect hiring, and also explained why the design process is actually chaotic and unique, and why it's important to talk about it.

The main thoughts from the article:

• Often, the design process cannot be linear. As a rule, it does not have a clear beginning and end, and the individual stages are mixed together

• Up to 80% of designers embellish their projects because they think that's what hiring managers want to see.

• Mature design companies are looking for designers who can creatively solve problems

• Processes based on the Double Diamond principle and similar models are an ideal that designers strive for, but rarely achieve. An experienced hiring specialist immediately understands that such a case is a fake

• Good designers adapt to challenges in order to find the right solution. The bad ones do the same thing in every project, avoiding risk and uncertainty

• The ability to tell a story is one of the key skills that designers need

• Tell the story of the project as if you were telling it to your friend, not a colleague

• The history of the project can be presented linearly if you saturate it with details and context

How AI Works

Nir Zicherman explained in clear non-technical language how large language models (LLM) work.

Using simple examples with food, he showed how the vector space is arranged, with which the AI classifies data, learns, and also finds patterns and gives answers.

Pentawards Trends Report 2023–2024

The organizers of the prestigious Pentawards global packaging design competition have released a PDF report on ten trends. Among other things, embossed packages without labels, retractable elements, "coloring" the package at the expense of the contents themselves and other techniques are relevant.

To receive the report, you need to fill out the form.

⚡️ Briefly

13 QR-Code Usability Guidelines. Tanner Kohler from NNGroup shared practical tips for effective use of QR codes and showed real world examples. In addition, he talked about how QR codes can be used by scammers.