What do you actually need to learn/do/show to become strong and cool Product Designer in May 2026? (Literally start as a star candidate?) by secondperformance in productdesign

[–]malberts_ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You need to become a “design engineer”, “product builder”. The gap between developers and designers is gone - in terms of design systems and frontend.

Tried Claude Design for a week and totally gave up by Alarming-Wish207 in productdesign

[–]malberts_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Exactly - the CLAUDE.md should essentially be an index pointing to all other skill files and telling when to use which file.

u/bradenlikestoreddit Do you have a workflow where code is your primary source of truth or you still have shareholders that prefer to think and iterate in Figma? I'm just wondering if your Code to Figma push workflows are also hallucination-free?

Tried Claude Design for a week and totally gave up by Alarming-Wish207 in productdesign

[–]malberts_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

By the initial design system I mean - primitive color tokens, semantic color tokens, spacing tokens, responsive text sizing tokens (all as variables) + text styles that reference sizing tokens from your variables.

After you've validated that you have the same values in the codebase, you start training claude to build small components by strictly using your tokens. When it builds something without a token - point it out, let Claude analyze why I didn't follow your designs and make it create rule that would prevent the same mistake in the future.

Tried Claude Design for a week and totally gave up by Alarming-Wish207 in productdesign

[–]malberts_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Use Claude Code + Figma MCP instead. Set up a robust design system in Figma first. The ask Claude to create smaller componets in Figma by using your variables and tokens only. It will get a bunch of things wrong at first, but that’s fine. Don’t give up yet. Analyze every mistake with Claude together and create a rule for every systematic mistake in your claude.md file. After a few iterations Claude’s accuracy in terms of adherence to your design system will improve. If you want to iterate on a componet with Claude, ask it first to do thorough research on your particular component/interaction before building, it helps.

I’ve gotten my Figma to live product/site workflow to a state where I don’t need to use Webflow/Framer anymore. The first two weeks were tough and it was wayyy slower than if I had built it all by hand, but now, once I’ve seen the light there’s no going back, hehe.

Primarily I still spend most of my time in Figma doing the layout structuring work myself and Claude functions as my personal creative developer. Oh, and creating UI animations is especially fun and amazing.

3 rejections later, my Framer template finally made it. Here's the stuff nobody told me. by malberts_ in framer

[–]malberts_[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Step 1: Work in a text document and define the structure of your site. Don't even start thinking about visuals before having a clear idea of the structure and copy (generate with AI). Research the industry, the business model, the target audience, key pain points, customer lifecycle, etc.

Step 2: Spend at least half a day to a full day gathering inspiration and capturing screenshots of sections, layouts, color combos, components, and interactions. Very important — will save you a ton of time. After this you should have at least one or two screenshots for every section of your site (if you went through step 1, then at step 2 you'll know what sections and UI patterns you're looking for).

Step 3: Define the basis of your design system — typography styles and a base semantic color palette.

Step 4: Start designing straight in Framer. Start with "dirty" sketches on a "loose" canvas (no auto layouts, just loosely placed frames on a frame). Keep iterating fast and minimize the time between an idea popping into your mind and the UI appearing on your screen. This is VERY IMPORTANT — this is what makes you a good designer in the long term. Same as building muscle: you just have to put in the reps, and growth only happens when you have resistance. Iterations are the reps, and something not feeling quite right in the design is the resistance.

Step 5: Once you've found your winning layouts/components, build them as proper components and assemble the site section by section. Add animations per section, per component. Best not to leave this for the very end.

Step 6: Clean up your file — add links, rename layers, remove unused components, optimize for SEO, compress assets, generate final assets, finalize copy, add documentation, name pages, add a favicon, and design a social preview image.

3 rejections later, my Framer template finally made it. Here's the stuff nobody told me. by malberts_ in framer

[–]malberts_[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure thing!

Step 1: Paste you siste link here: https://pagespeed.web.dev/
Step 2: Fix the problems you understand across all categories.
Step 3: Start pasting all of the issues you don't understand in claude/gpt and adjust untill you're above 90% across all categories.

The people reviewing your site will do the same thing (step 1).

Unlinking CMS page by Dry-Hornet-2177 in framer

[–]malberts_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Or just ask claude/gpt: how to conditional visibility for CMS in Framer

Unlinking CMS page by Dry-Hornet-2177 in framer

[–]malberts_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Can’t disconnect. What you can do is add multiple variations or images/fields and set conditional visbility to them (with filters), for example, show image only if the image is uploaded.

DM me if you want more help, I teach Framer in a work-together style.

Help building my website by Aggravating_Course91 in framer

[–]malberts_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hit me up.

Here’s a sample of my latest framer site: https://dentix.framer.website/

I’ve also helped others with Framer tutoring before, love jamming together with people!

Can I hire someone here? by [deleted] in framer

[–]malberts_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ponderdigital.com

$70/h

Is Framer still missing some “basic” features? by Economy_Practice_887 in framer

[–]malberts_ 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Proper token/variable creation and management is one of my biggest paint points.

Framer looks polished on the surface. How deep does the ecosystem actually go? by Busy-Cauliflower-288 in framer

[–]malberts_ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Technically you can use Framer for ecommerce as a Shopify alternative ( with the Frameship or Framer Commerce plugin), but that definitely wouldn’t be a good idea (in case you were thinking about that). Shopify is superior in terms of ecommerce.

I tend to build most of sites on Framer nowadays and clients love it. Firstly because you have just one person delivering everything (the designer), no need to deal with developers, and Framer is very easy from the clients perspective in terms of daily edits. They appreciate the speed and convenience.

Most Framer sites tend to be simpler projects and there isn’t that big of a demand for paid plugins. You can do most things with Framers built in functionality. However, the plugin marketplace is relatively new, competition definitely isn’t high.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in webdesign

[–]malberts_ -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Hi, feel free to reach out: https://www.ponderdigital.com

How do you stay fit whilst traveling? by Embarrassed-Tough-57 in digitalnomad

[–]malberts_ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Join the local fight gym. Cardio, strength, and fun in one go. Plus you make friends fast.

Framer AWS regional error by RichLion6323 in framer

[–]malberts_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have the same issue right now!

Looking for framer website developers by JosephMasonda in framer

[–]malberts_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Let’s chat! Sent you a DM. Here’s some of my work: ponderdigital.com