I had written before about working on a pet project. This mostly stem from 2 things.
I wanted to test out Figma, since I was relatively newer to it and I wanted to implement a better solution for my team.
There’s this game I really enjoy ‘Extreme Landings by Rortos’, and even though I enjoy the game play I honestly think the graphics and the user interface is far from friendly. This becomes more obvious when you start using a phone with a notch (for me this was iPhone X).
Having said that I do encourage you to go download the game from the app store here.
Once you have played the game, hell even if you haven’t take a look at my version of it, obviously it’s just a concept and is made in figma.. Some screens will feel like swipe gesture based.. do that.. Have fun, here’s the link: tinyurl.com/mayday-concept
After the last time I decided to write I got side tracked.. To be fair to myself I had other important stuff to focus so the blog took a back seat.
I moved into a different apartment after traveling back from Pakistan. Set up a small studio for myself – picture below. Had a small Covid 19 scare from a friend after me and wifey had done the vaccination, so we went into a 10 day quarantine as well (100% healthy now, except all the fat is still there).
Studio at home: It’s not much, but good enough to help me focus on work as well as create some art.
Not sure if you know but I’ve been designing for the screens for a better part of my life and from all those years of designing websites, apps etc I’ve been doing User Experience Design from when it wasn’t even a thing. In any case.. In the recent years I had made my jump from designing in Photoshop to Sketch and boy was it awesome. But as the team I was a part of grew so did our requirements and one of them was a better place for collaboration, a better feedback system, a place for updated Design files, brand elements etc. While we’re at it, I’ve also transitioned away from Photoshop and Illustrator completely for personal work, I now use the Affinity Suite (Affinity Photo & Designer), though I hope they add support for RTL languages as well. For RTL I play around a bit with Vectornator.
Figma: With some screen visible for my test project (Mayday)
This brings me to Figma – Having heard of it before and dismissing it on the pretext that it was browser based (and hence wont be powerful enough) I had completely dropped the idea of trying it out (this is around the time it was launched) – But as some of my friends pointed out recently, Figma is definitely not worth ignoring anymore – infact it’s pretty powerful compared native apps as well (Sketch, Adobe XD etc).
I thought why not (its got a free account option), so I decided to make a concept flight simulation game (something I thought would make Figma run through its paces) – Was I wrong? So Wrong!So Very Wrong! I will someday link up the prototype when it’s completed (yep still working on it), but man it worked like a charm. Created a test account for my workplace as well to test the collaboration features and the project management side, not only was I pleased, I was super excited. I’ve ended up buying a plan for myself work as well (Don’t like to keep everything in drafts) and I Wanted to re do my portfolio website as well. My team has moved on Figma as well and collaboration and assets sharing more streamlined too.
In any case – It’s definately worth a try. I may write something completely Figma related one day, but for now.. this is it..
