Annabel Hesselink's Portfolio Project

Throughout the UI Design Program, you’ll build out a job-ready portfolio. Below is a breakdown of UI graduate Annabel’s portfolio project, Soli. If you’d like to visit her full portfolio, head to her website.

Hi Annabel! What inspired you to make a career change into UI design?

As a freelance graphic designer I was getting web design requests, but I lacked the knowledge about how to build a good user interface and why, so that made me hungry for knowledge. Also, I’m from the Netherlands—I moved to Berlin not so long ago, and graphic design jobs here are usually very text based while in UI Design the language is less important. So it’s a combination of necessity and a big motivation to learn.

What did you enjoy most about the program?

The build-up of the course was perfect for me. It had an easy start learning Adobe XD, then I was super happy to learn (and remember some knowledge) all about visual design and slowly we had to start making our own apps and incorporate UX into the process. Every lesson was something relevant that I wanted to know at that moment, which was very motivating. Next to that, the tutor and mentor were a huge motivation and I was guided by amazing people.

What did you enjoy about working on this portfolio project?

This was actually an exercise in which we learned native app design, so we had to make a Material Design and an iOS version. When you learn about this you suddenly start to recognize native patterns in other app designs and this whole world of knowledge opens up. It’s really powerful to learn about these design systems. I also had a lot of fun creating the gradients for the backgrounds in this project.

With regards to your new skills, what are your hopes for the future?

I hope to get a UI Design position and keep learning. As a graphic designer UI Design seemed simple at first, but there is so much to learn!