In our latest Timeout video, product designer Jonathan Moreira shares how design has impacted his life—beyond work and making a living. He also shares how Dribbble has impacted his career and how he uses Dribbble to find inspiration.
What does design mean to you?
My name is Jonathan and I’m a Product Designer living in San Francisco. Design, to me it’s about having an idea and making it become more tangible—and I feel like that’s the process actually between those two parts. So it could be anything, could be drawing on a paper. It could be using to Sketch directly to express something or it could even be like talking and saying something—like you have an idea and you express it. And I feel like all this process is to actually create something that is actually tangible from the actual idea itself.
What impact has Dribbble had on you?
Dribbble had a huge impact on my career. It basically made me be able to come here to the US, to work here, to live in San Francisco. So it’s been really huge and I went through a lot of life changes. I use to live in Switzerland, which is great, but back there, the opportunities in the tech space are much less important. So I feel like here was more interesting, professionally and Dribbble helped me to do that.
Where do you find your inspiration?
I mainly find inspirations on Dribbble. Over the years, I’ve been creating buckets. They’ve been very useful. And it’s mainly based on different categories. So some of them it’s more about product design some others it’s more about mobile design or web design or composition, colors. It’s been very useful if, let’s say I’m working on a project and then some inspiration for a very specific thing—I can just go back to those different buckets.
How would you describe your work?
It’s mostly Product Design. Inside that, I do quite a lot of prototyping. I also do design directly, like designing mocks. But I’ve been trying a lot to get those mocks to feel more tangible, probably, like more real. I think it’s a great way to test the actual designs themselves. So, I would say that I’m really focused on that. And I’ve been also sometimes doing more marketing related work where it’s more visual—helping them to sell a product or an idea, but mainly product designed-focused.
What role does design play in your life?
I’m trying to improve myself. Sometimes there are parts that I feel I could improve, I could get better at something and I’m trying to get there, to improve those parts. It could be in terms of health or learning something new and I feel like it’s still in a way, designing, but not in a conscious way. On a day-to-day basis just simply seeing something that is designed in a very nice way—it’s very inspiring. Just saying like a real object like, “wow that looks really good.” And so I feel like in terms of inspiration design in that case, has also been very impactful.
Follow Jonathan on Dribbble and see his inspiration Buckets.
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