Day Two: Adrift, but with a Life Jacket

Babak and Derive

Seeing the presentation by Babak was inspiring - it was really interesting to hear him explain the concept behind his project and to see all that he was able to create as part of this course. Of course, all of that makes it intimidating as well, especially when the conversation starts to include vocabulary that feels a little abstract - variations, variables, components, API, CMS,… I understand some of these basic concepts, but parsing the meaning during a real-time conversation can feel like running to catch up.

Finding Patterns

I think the most helpful light bulb moment of the day was when Bakhtiar mentioned finding repeating patterns - thinking about what a project needs to accomplish and breaking it into repeatable Lego patterns that can be modified and reused. I also thought about my own learning-by-doing experiences, and the number of times I may have started with one plan only to scrap it and start over. It's perhaps not the most efficient process, but the value I gain from those mistakes can help reinforce what I'm learning.

It was also really helpful to me to understand the connection between frames and <div>s - that each can be embedded within others of its kind, and the properties assigned affect how they are visually rendered. This was a thread that seemed to help pull together some of the concepts I had learned in other classes and feel a little more comfortable with Framer.

Studio 2

This session also helped me understand how to approach building pages in Framer. The step-by-step tutorial will help me as I learn to navigate the platform and understand how to use all the tools there.