Willem Shepherd

Willem Shepherd

Montreal Graphic Designer @shopify Joined almost 8 years ago

  • 1 story
  • 14 comments
  • 1 upvote
  • Posted to What I think of Google's new search results page, Jul 04, 2019

    Hahahaha #rant

    0 points
  • Posted to Paul Macgregor - Works, Oct 12, 2018

    Love the site! so clean and minimal. I did get a little bit lost or confused when changing projects - I didn't realize I had to scroll down (or that anything had changed) the first couple times I clicked on different projects. maybe there is a clean way to hint at the rest of the project beneath the fold?

    Love how the animations build into each other - you really nailed the timing!

    5 points
  • Posted to My new portfolio is a single page, a single case study., Sep 23, 2018

    Interesting site - I feel like the writing is quite dry and lacking conclusions. It just sort of states facts.

    The ticket system was built on Stripe and express.js. It was my first project in Node and I was very grateful to have the opportunity to choose which tech stack to use for the project.

    Why was it built that way? what did it do? how did that help? why were you grateful?

    This trend is consistent on most of the site. You have explained a couple things that happened, but not why, how you were involved, what the impact was, why the choice mattered.

    We spent time experimenting with various canvas based animations recreating seismic waves recorded by seismometers, and lots of creepy rotating and expanding polygons.

    This is super cool! - but why did you do that? what was the impact? it sounds like you just played with a bunch of visual canvas rotations and then didn't use them.

    I would also suggest killing the green diagonal stripes that change the text color. They are distracting and also cause readability issues at multiple stages. I thought for while they were links but then realized it it was a visual choice.

    Glitch

    0 points
  • Posted to Introducing Ghost 2.0, in reply to Todd F , Aug 21, 2018

    If you don't know what Ghost is after looking at the Features page I don't know what else to say...

    https://ghost.org/features/

    It's a publishing platform, CMS - for blog or publications.

    4 points
  • Posted to I'm using Design Thinking to get an internship: Your quick feedback is (again) much appreciated, Oct 23, 2017

    I personally would look at your phrasing of your current position. Right now you are positioning yourself as a 'choice' that another company should make, and by stating that you 'need' an internship - I think you are diminishing yourself.

    I would look at rephrasing it to be focused on the benefit, not your 'requirement to find a job to support yourself'. On this note - a lot of your content is focused on fairly hard to define elements like 'getting practical'.

    I love the energy and approach - but wonder if you would be better suited with content that is more specific to:

    • what type of company you want to work for (culture, projects, location if important)
    • what inspires you - who you are, what interests you
    • less on where you worked, more on what you did there, why, what you learned

    We all want to fail forwards - but there are, IMHO, better ways to phrase that. It feels like an empty attention grab vs a real statement - I would much rather hear that you want to explore, push, expand, challenge your current 'you', than you want to fail and learn from that.

    A couple small notes - you mention 'Please get in touch, if you think, we could be a match!' I would reword this as: - If you think we could be a match, please get in touch - and make the 'please get in touch' a link to your email or some way to contact you.

    When making the statement 'It's both academic and actual work-work as well as projects that are in the making right now.' - you mention 'both' but then say 3 things, your academic, work-work, and projects in the making. I would re-think this statement. As well - 'Feel free to look around' is stating the obvious - instead - maybe an action? - something to stimulate thought about your projects, not sure what haha.

    Sorry for the rambling! Cheers Willem

    8 points
  • Posted to I only use one Sketch plugin (Oct. 2017), in reply to Pawel Ludwiczak , Sep 26, 2017

    If only Runner supported Libraries! It's amazing (I still use it all the time)

    0 points
  • Posted to AMA: Adobe XD 2017, Aug 30, 2017

    I guess there will always be a difference between core vs 'pro/power user' features. This exists in Sketch today but is alleviated by the ability to add plugins to enhance the toolset and general workflow.

    Important Sketch 'advantages' and why I have not /cannot move from it at this point include:

    Sketch - Non - destructive symbol overrides - MAJOR (not just text but style, icon, object etc.)

    • (future beta) Linked libraries with external libraries
    • Dashed borders
    • Multiple borders / fills
    • Symbol organization - even thought the / hack is a hack, it works pretty well
    • Multiple pages
    • Character styles
    • Inner shadow
    • Click and drag to change values (i.e. font size)
    • Custom Nudging (8px)
    • Direct select of objects

    Plugins

    • Auto layout
    • Batch create symbols
    • Batch rename layers
    • Distributor
    • Cover artboard
    • Find and replace
    • Dynamic button
    • Select similar * (layers)
    • Symbol organizer
    • Craft and Invision Sync

    Other

    • Character and paragraph styles
    • Global styles, not just colors

    p.s. - if you want to really become a Sketch 'killer' - supporting copy(Sketch)/paste (XD)would be INCREDIBLE

    You're doing a lot really well - looking forward to seeing this become a more fully featured design tool!

    2 points
  • Posted to Where did you find your desktop wallpaper?, Aug 30, 2017

    Unsplash

    I use an app called Wallcat

    6 points
  • Posted to Sooo I tried "Flow" from Dan Ross, Jul 21, 2017

    Your Sublime example is actually pretty beautiful...

    As a couple people have already mentioned - Flow is a typeface for** early prototype low fidelity mockups**.

    On a side not if you ever needed a mockup of a code editor without showing code - that's a great way to do it!

    6 points
Load more comments