Hey, guys! I’ve been putting off writing this article for a little while now because like most of us creatives, I suffer from imposter syndrome, and didn’t think I could bring value to this series which has featured so many legends of the game. But, if reading about my story can help anyone or relate to their own journey, then I’m all for it! I’ll even scatter some visuals throughout the article to make it look pretty.
Designing Without Control
I’m Jordan Gilroy, an almost 40 year old Brit designing and building websites for a living. I’ve been designing for what feels like a very long time, but building sites (in Webflow) is fairly new. There came a point a few years ago where I felt ready to retire, but unfortunately I was still 30 years away from being able to do that.
I’d lost the love for design and my motivation levels had hit rock bottom. A lot of this was down to designing websites that were being handed off to agencies or independent developers, who would build the site to a low standard, or not follow the design accurately. What I was handing over in Figma wasn’t what I was seeing a couple of months later in a browser. When that happens to every design you create, it starts to hurt. That pain turned into a sadness that made me want to quit, but instead of quitting I decided to do something about it. I decided to learn Webflow.
Learning to Build (and Struggling at First)
I wanted to take back control over my designs and make sure they were implemented to my vision. It was exciting! But I didn’t learn overnight. For someone coming into it fresh, with no coding experience, there was a steep learning curve. Fortunately, Webflow’s quite popular and there were tons of resources available to accelerate my learning, from Webflow University, to Joseph Berry’s Awwwards course, and Timothy Ricks’ treasure trove of tutorials.
Initially, learning Webflow actually had a negative impact on my designs. I started overthinking the design process. Instead of just creating something, I’d question whether or not I’d be able to build it. I’m sure if I’d given that same level of consideration to a developer I’d worked with in the past, they’d appreciate that, but it was stifling my creativity. The more I learned about Webflow and JS, the more I freed my designs from the burden of not knowing how to execute them. Now, with the advancements in AI we have today, I don’t think about dev at all when designing because I know I/Claude can figure out a solution. The shackles are off.
Growing With the Work
People often refer to Webflow as a no-code platform, but I see it more as low-code. At least at the beginning anyway. I’d always need to add a little of custom code to Webflow to achieve what I wanted to, but now I add thousands of lines of custom code. That’s mainly thanks to my good friend Claude, but I’ve also learned a little bit of JS — enough to be able to challenge Claude, make suggestions and debug scripts.
There’s a reason I mentioned almost being 40. When I was younger and working in an agency I used to often wonder what happens to designers around that age. ‘Where are all the elders?!’ I wondered. It turns out the agencies I worked at and knew of just had young teams, but it really used to worry me and I genuinely feared growing older in the design industry. But I can confidently tell you now that I haven’t peaked yet.
I know that not only because over time my designs have very slowly gotten better, but because I’m always disappointed with the work I put out. It’s not like I intentionally put work out I’m not happy with — it’s often the case I’m really happy with it initially, but once a site goes live I always have a moment of reflection where I think I could have done a lot better. It’s a blessing and a curse. It leaves me disappointed and feeling pretty shitty about myself, but it also drives me on to do better next time — to make up for it and then some.
I also want to stress how important taking courses has been to my growth. You can never learn enough. I still sign up for at least a couple of courses a year, even if it’s to take a peek at someone else’s process to see how I can improve my own. By far the most important and influential course I’ve taken is Niccolo Miranda’s Awwwards masterclass. I learned so much, and it resulted in my first SOTD. That changed the trajectory of my career, so I’ll always look back at that fondly as a key milestone.
Choosing Action Over Stagnation
Since then I’ve been in love with design again, and I’ve even got a mistress too — building sites in Webflow! Recently I’ve been extremely fortunate to be able to work with people I’ve always admired from afar, like Dennis Snellenberg, Ilja van Eck and Federico Valla. I’m proud to be able to call them friends, and I’m proud of all the other friendships I’ve made and the communities I’ve become part of. I’ve even managed to scoop up a Webby on the way! All because I decided to do something about it instead of being stuck in a rut.