Thread by @Shpigford

1/ Story time on one of my biggest professional regrets.

Back in 2006, I was deep in the freelance world, doing UI design for all sorts of companies.

Somehow, Adobe ended up reaching out to me to do some exploratory UI work for a mobile design product they were working on.

2/ I was a year out of design school and had been freelancing full-time for just a few months. I was nervous working with a company that large...especially one so well known in the design world.

3/ Obviously it was very flattering that they wanted to work with me, but I had a debilitating case of imposter syndrome. I was in my early 20's working with folks who'd been in the industry for decades.

4/ So, what's my regret?

I worked on the project for exactly 9 days and then, spectacularly, emailed my contact and backed out of the job, telling them I wasn't qualified and was in over my head.

🤦‍♂️

5/ It's one of the only times in life where I look back & wish I'd handled it differently.

Here I was, fresh out of school, trying to build a freelance business & one of the biggest design companies *on earth* reaches out & wants to take a chance on me.

And I just blew it.

6/ I instantly regretted it but after that it instilled a pretty deep desire to regularly get in over my head and figure it out.

I now *prefer* to be out of my element and quickly get bored when I'm comfortable.

7/ For fun 2000's-era design nostalgia, here are some of the sketches and UI design bits I created in those 9 days.