Darshan Gajara
@WeirdoWizard
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Head of Design at Hygraph • Maker of @ProductDisrupt • Tweets about design & side-projects
Berlin ⇄ Mumbai
Joined July 2011
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Pinned Tweet
🚀 Introducing
@ProductDisrupt
2.0
A curated list of resources to learn product design from the internet. Think of it as a guide to your DIY design education.
✨ Fresh new design
📁 16 resource categories
📲 Improved navigation
RT & upvote on PH 💙
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Wife bought a new iPhone and both our families instantly assumed that I gifted it to her.
She's a working woman folks, she can afford her own gadgets.
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2K
I don't own an iPhone.
I don't use dark mode.
I don't have a fancy desk setup.
I don't buy expensive gadgets.
I'm still a Designer.
Don't fall prey to stereotypes. You do you.
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1K
I spend unreasonable time on the internet looking for the best design resources, so you don't have to.
Here are the top free icon packs I've curated over 5+ years ↓
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Sex is cool but have you tried spending all night working on your portfolio website?
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Most designers are unhappy with their work because their taste is usually greater than their skills.
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A friend of mine got laid off from a FANG last week but he's going to receive eight months of salary in severance. You read that right – EIGHT months.
To be honest, that's the kind of sabbatical most people can only dream of.
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This is hands down the most beautiful time zone converter I've ever seen.
→ ←
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Hybrid work is going to the office to socialize and staying home to get the work done.
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Little big update – I got promoted to Head of Design at GraphCMS. Enjoying the new challenge of building a design team.
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Hire for curiosity, skills can be learned and taught.
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College festivals are the hidden Y Combinator for Indian designers.
So many designers I know got into design because they happened to design posters or websites for their college festivals.
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How are 25 year olds providing design advisory? Bro, first you need to design to provide advice.
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I'm moving to Berlin 🇩🇪 to join
@contentful
as a Product Designer from Dec'19.
3 yrs ago I set out on a goal to find a job overseas. It hasn't been easy - faced many rejections & made many sacrifices.
At last, consistency won ✨
More here 👇
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I'm stoked to share that I've joined
@GraphCMS
as their first product designer. It's a small team of passionate folks building a great product with a mission to provide content management for everyone. The last few months have been tough but the future looks exciting ✨
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Joining a high-growth startup early in your career is a great way to accelerate your personal & career growth at least by a few years.
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Airbnb in the mountains for the next few days. Mighty impressed by the details this host put into building this house.
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Having a CEO that cares deeply about design is a huge motivation to produce great design work at any company.
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I turned 27 today 🎈
Here are the 27 things I've learned from life...
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A lot has happened in the last week.
💍 My wife
@poojadav
joined me in Berlin
🏡 We moved into a new apartment
🥳 I turned 28
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Moved to Berlin exactly 4 years ago. Strangely, it's still the only place that feels like home. Grateful that I get to live here.
Also, a few days ago I received the permanent residency title. What a way to bring up the anniversary ✦
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I've been laid off before, it's terrible. Let this be a reminder to love your work and not your job.
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When I joined
@hygraph
as the first designer, one of my jobs was to build a design system.
I'd only built component lib. in Sketch until then. So this was going to be a new & exciting challenge for me.
Here's the approach & resources I used to build our first design system ↓
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I've been a little hesitant in sharing this earlier. I lost my job last month and now looking for new product design opportunities in Berlin. Trying to stay positive and keeping myself busy.
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Typography is the no. 1 skill a visual designer should master.
Try changing my mind about it.
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Bangalore will be the highlight of my India visit this time. Lovely city, energetic startup scene and the warmest people.
I'm tempted to make BLR trip a ritual in my yearly India visit.
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30 Nov 2020
@poojadav
💍
@WeirdoWizard
Last few days have been very eventful. Photos coming soon...
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You aren't hired for the tools you can use, you're hired for the craft. So please do yourself a favor by removing those tool percentage charts from your resume and portfolio.
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Just kidding. We don't need any more of these threads, do we? 😅
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Sometimes I really feel bad for the designers at Apple as they're never allowed to share their work on the internet. The design community could gain so much from their behind-the-scenes.
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After eight long months, my wife finally received a spouse visa.
@poojadav
will soon rejoin me in Berlin ❤️✌
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How old were you when you realised that you wanted to become a designer?
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Burnout doesn't come from overwork. It comes from a lack of direction and unfulfilling work.
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2nd night in Bali and someone broke into our
@Airbnb
at 2:30 noon in broad daylight. We got into a fistfight while the guy tried to escape and managed to save our stuff, except for the power bank.
Pretty gutted about it. Turns out Bali isn't that safe after all.
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Nobody cares if you made your product with code or no-code as long as it helps them solve their problem.
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Only my 2nd day in SF and I see a guy shooting 20+ rounds on the other guy in a car. I'm at Pier 39 (pretty crowded tourist place on weekends), it's around 7 pm, I hear gunshots behind my back and jump to the ground.
They injured 2 people in the firing. This place is a mess.
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AI is replacing graphic design jobs.
This is disheartening but also inevitable. My two cents on this topic ↓
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Working at a startup is losing your peace to make money early on and later spending that money to buy back the peace.
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Those who add custom emojis to Slack are the unsung heroes of the company culture.
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I had to struggle really hard to get to Europe. So I can take great pride in the fact that I recently helped one of my direct reports to move to Berlin from India.
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Who are your favorite designers/makers that consistently teach you something new through their articles, emails, videos, etc?
Here are mine,
@pjrvs
@vanschneider
@newincreative
@jimantonopoulos
@theChrisDo
@ransegall
@pablostanley
@charliprangley
@jasondoesstuff
Thanks 😇
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Who here has ever taken a 3-6 months sabbatical from work?
There are a few questions I would like to ask you about your thought process & experience.
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Blame it on Bollywood for fantasizing about Switzerland but Austria is just as pretty if not more…and cheaper than the Swiss.
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Seven years of sharing work on the internet and I've responded to every single email asking for help or advice. I feel very nice about it and would like to keep this going 😇
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You fear it because you haven't started working on it.
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✦ Announcing
@ProductDisrupt
Talent Network ✦
A new initiative to help match designers looking for a job with hiring companies.
↳
Here's how it works ↓
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What companies do you think are driven by design?
Hint: Think about products where business decisions are directly impacted by design.
@Airbnb
@linear
@figma
@webflow
@getstarkco
come to my mind.
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Celebrated my 30th on Sep 30 somewhere lakeside in Germany with the loved ones.
I don't have 30 lessons for you, just this one — Realize that you only have one life, don't try to spend it on artificial terms, live it on yours.
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I was on the Chef 👨🍳 duty in the office yesterday. And I made Dal-Fry 🇮🇳
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When I was studying engineering, my family believed I could repair every home appliance. Now that I work as a designer, my family believes I can design every home appliance.
Either my family believes very strongly in me or they're just obsessed with their home appliances.
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So the PM listened to the designer, thank God!
#WearAMask
Designer at Twitter: What if we made a LIKE animation that suggests to wear a mask every time someone tweets with
#COVID
?
PM: That sounds cool but doesn't help with the revenue. Let's just make one for
#AppleEvent
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Friends, if I offered portfolio reviews and mentoring to crack a product design interview, would you sign up?
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I'm writing an ebook on cracking a product design interview. I'm also going to bundle it with resume and email templates with a system to track progress in Notion.
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Hello, I'm a designer. I mostly draw rectangles & circles on my computer. On a good day, I also get to play with triangles.
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As a designer, you aren't expected to come up with the best solution all by yourself but to convert an idea into a conversation. To facilitate your team to participate and translate it into the best solution together.
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Stoked to share that
@Hygraphcom
is a Series B company now ✦
We've raised another $30M from
@OnePeakPartners
to continue building the next generation of content management.
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Unusual for me to stay in the luxury hotels like this...but I can get used to the view.
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I've not watched a single
#AppleEvent
in my lifetime – only tiny clips on social media. Hope you won't take away my designer license.
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It took me 3 years to find a job in Berlin. I'm glad I could help shorten that time period for someone else.
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Typography can make or break your design. It's the one skill you should be investing your time in early on in your career.
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Biked nearly 40 KM to get to this sight of the Devil's Bridge in Kromlau. It was beautiful.
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Looking back, can you point to that one moment that changed the trajectory of your life?
Mine was when I bunked the first day in an engineering job to interview for a design job. Had I not shown courage at that moment, I would've become a Software Engineer.
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How do you overcome imposter syndrome?
I've a folder with screenshots of people telling me how something I made has helped them or how they liked my work. Just swiping through it gets me back up and running.
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Are you okay with looking foolish? If yes, then it's going to be easier for you to get started and try new things.
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Side-projects as a way to land a dream job are very underrated.
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Introducing my new side project – AI Escapes ✦
A travel postcard series where I've reimagined my favorite places in the world with generative AI. These places are real, but the postcards are generated with a touch of imagination & fantasy.
Get them for free ↓
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When I was laid off at the beginning of the pandemic, I had ONE month of salary to support my move into the new continent. And had a blade of visa expiry hanging over my head.
This is not the same. I'm happy for him :)
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Who said print can't be responsive?
Mobile - Tablet - Desktop
All covered.
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Big win for
@ProductDisrupt
newsletter. Sold out the sponsorships for the next 3 months for $1200 🥳
First time that I've sold 3 months (6 issues) sponsorship deal to a single sponsor. This allows me to create even better content now that I don't have to worry about the bills.
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For the past few months, we've been working on a special project – to redesign the
@hygraph
interface.
It's taking shape nicely, here's a little teaser for what's to come.
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I got these pins made to give out to friends when I meet them in person.
I visited BLR last week and met with so many friends. But stupid me forgot to carry the pins 🤦♂️
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💡 Tip for Designers
Organize your Figma files & make it readable for collaborators from the product, engg, marketing, etc.
It was okay to have messy Sketch files coz only designers worked on them. But it's changed with tools like Figma that facilitate cross-collaboration.
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Designer at Twitter: What if we made a LIKE animation that suggests to wear a mask every time someone tweets with
#COVID
?
PM: That sounds cool but doesn't help with the revenue. Let's just make one for
#AppleEvent
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Went on a little road trip to Lake Tahoe right after Config with my old friend from Mumbai.
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This day, 2 years ago, I moved to Berlin with dreamy eyes. The city has been everything I expected it to be and more. I wake up every day feeling grateful that I get to live here. To many more 🍻
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I would be willing to take a pay cut for a 4-day workweek.
I will most likely use that extra day to work on side-projects.
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The
@GraphCMS
design team jammed on a special project yesterday. Can't wait to share it with you. Soon :)
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Absolutely delighted to share with you – our little corner on the internet for all things design at
@Hygraphcom
.
Read on for behind-the-scenes ↓
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Good designers often undersell themselves. Ironically, not-so-good designers tend to oversell.
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Been receiving emails from recruiters lately with subject lines like "return to India to head design at xyz".
That's very kind but no, thanks. Your company isn't a good enough reason to leave my life in Berlin.
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So happy to see
@femkesvs
in person after all this time of virtual friendship. She's an incredible creator and a very kind human ✦
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I inspect fonts on all the good looking websites I come across. What's the most designer thing you do?
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Hiked up to one of the most beautiful lakes on planet earth.
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As a designer, you deal with so many opinions every day. Picking the battles that are worth fighting for is an underrated skill for designers.
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My grandma was hospitalized this past week and this video gave me strength during the time. Thanks, Jaggu dada!
She's back home now and recovering well.
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My side-project
@ProductDisrupt
hit a new milestone – the newsletter sponsorship slots are sold out until the end of this year ✦
Four months in advance, can you believe it?
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Happy Diwali and a beautiful new year from the mountains of Austria :)
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I've seen some internal slide decks at Google. Never been a deck person but buoy, they're beautiful. Almost wanna steal them.
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I moved to Berlin with just one bag. This week I moved to another apartment in Berlin with 3 bags and some more stuff. Also gave away some stuff.
Reminder to self:
Stop hoarding unnecessary stuff.
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@paulg
The US wasn't attractive to me anymore the moment I realised I can do my work with just a laptop and a good internet connection. So I started to look for cities with a better quality of life and ended up in Berlin ❤️
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Just added 246 new components with variants to our design system. This is what I do for Christmas 🎄
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I started looking for a job overseas 4 years ago. The goal brought many struggles and failures but I finally managed to move to Berlin in Dec 2019. It has absolutely been worth every effort. Don't give up on your dreams too early.
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