Alex's Camp
Welcome to Alex's Camp!
A newsletter at the intersection of the design’s interplay with product, business, and technology.
Each week I share my honest advice to grow a business, advance a career, and practical tips to help you amplify positive impact.
Become an Explorer and join dozens of paid subscribers.
In addition to being an amazing Product Designer, Alex has a rare ability to intersect the design’s interplay with product, business and technology. His blog provides universal advice helpful to grow a business, advance a career (applicable even if you are not a designer), and amplify positive impact and leadership.
Introducing Freelance Playbook
At the beginning of my freelancing career, I took any projects I could get – from simple logos to building fully-fledged websites. I worked 80 hours a week, mostly without weekends, to please my clients and deliver the best possible results.
Building your design career ladder
A product designer is indeed a very outstanding job title. The title "product designer" always sounds fantastic, regardless of the product — whether it's a new flagship from Apple or a small CRM for your local cafe. And at least half of us have no idea what product designers actually do.
Finding your niche as a product designer
Designers need to find better ways to position themselves to stand out from their endless copies. Finding a specific niche is the best strategy for doing this.
Alex's blog and advices helped me to get my first job in UX field, and now helping to switch my understanding of all design field too. I'm pretty sure i will get more insights from Alex that will turn everything upside down, and I really appreciate that.
The insight Alex provided into the design industry - detailed steps on how to enter the field, how to present my work in a portfolio, a list of resources - was extremely valuable and helped me broaden my knowledge of digital design.
Alex is such a great mentor! I like how he challenged me when it came to improving my designs. He's always there to help and very knowledgeable of the industry, which allowed me to get a lot of insider info on what I was getting myself into.
When to use radio buttons vs. drop-downs?
🔥 Campfire 33: Two important input controls are radio buttons and drop-down menus. Both can be used interchangeably when user input is required.
How to find a market?
Finding a market, deeply understanding their problems, and tailoring your pitch to provide a solution is one of the keys to success in any business.
Creating a scalable data table component in Figma
Campfire 32: Data is meaningless unless it can be visualized and acted upon. The success of future industries will be a combination of advanced data collection and improved user experience, and the data table will represent a large portion of this user experience.
How to choose and build a skill for freelancing?
The possibilities for freelancing are limitless. Any valuable service to an individual or business can be turned into a part-time or full-time freelancing gig.
Improving the readability of content cards
🔥 Campfire 31: Content cards are a popular way to organize content in app design. Cards allow users to browse high-level information while consuming samples before clicking on the card to get the full details.
Freelancing requires a mindset shift
Not everyone is going to need your services as a freelancer. It is the goal of your marketing and sales efforts to identify potential customers who have problems that you can resolve.
Recommended books for designers of all levels
🔥 Campfire 30: Regardless of your education, you must understand the fundamentals of the field. These books will provide you with that solid foundation, allowing you to think differently about design and inspire your next design project.
Core principles of freelancing
Why should clients work with you? Thousands of freelancers can do the work you do. Often, many of them can do the job better than you. Yet, the clients you work with are choosing you for their projects. Why?
Is it valuable to learn to code as a designer?
🔥 Campfire 29: Learning to code is invaluable if you want to be an outstanding designer. You start thinking about problem-solving in new and abstract ways.
The what, why, and how of freelancing
There are three ways to make money. Get a job, become a freelancer, or start a business. I'm sure you're familiar with the first. What separates two and three are how you sell and deliver the product.
First-time reader?
Alex's Camp is a weekly newsletter where I share honest advice on how to grow a business, advance a career, and practical tips to help you amplify positive impact.