Product designer. Dad². Former touring drummer. Mildly deafened by my own career choices.
- Tweets 1,692
- Following 929
- Followers 645
- Likes 5,364
clint retweeted
How to Ask for Help
If you're a junior designer, I want to share a few things that will help you ask for help more effectively, be it wanting a portfolio review, introductions, advice, or anything really.
1. Be direct.
Most of the people you want help from are busy people. It is *greatly* preferred when you are upfront and direct about what you want. There are only so many hours in the day, and I'd rather know exactly what you want and how I can help.
2. Be specific
There are very few people in the world who ever want to 'catch up' or 'get their brain picked' when you don't know someone and it's ambiguous what they want.
If you want feedback on your portfolio, ask for that. If you want ideas on how to reposition yourself, ask for that.
If you aren't specific, you'll either get no response, or get generic response. My general feedback on every portfolio will always be: show your work upfront; remove half the words then remove more again, and spend 10x the time refining the work shown vs the design of the portfolio itself.
3. Be concise
Everyone is busy, so be respectful of their time and be as concise as possible with your ask.
4. Follow up
If you don't hear back from someone, the most likely answer is they either missed your message or forgot. Platforms like X have, somehow still, terrible DM's that always seem to be buggy, so just follow up respectfully. I don't find it annoying; rather I appreciate the persistence and reminder.
5. Follow through
If someone takes the time to help you, and gives you advice or suggestions, you should follow through on them. I love hearing about how things went or the updates someone made, but I'd guess less than 3% of the time I hear back from someone. Want to know an easy way to start to build a relationship? Follow through. Those who follow up I am more likely to want to continue helping and building into.
So what does this look like in practice?
Instead of "Here's my portfolio, let me know if you have thoughts!" say "I'm updating my portfolio as I look for a full time role at a startup. Would you mind letting me know 1) if this would pass your first 5 second screen, and 2) do you think the work examples I have selected seem credible to an early stage founder?"
Instead of "I'd love to meet if you're ever down", say "I have a few first round interviews coming up in a few weeks. Would you be open to doing a 30m practice portfolio presentation with me? I'll show up at any time that works for you this week or next."
I have generally found our industry is full of people who want to help others, so I hope this is helps you better ask for help!
36
47
568
23,638
clint retweeted
the best people to work with:
- extremely proactive
- sprint toward the problem
- tell you honestly what isn't working and what they're going to do about it
25
34
428
19,666
clint retweeted
if anyone reaches out to you for feedback or advice about design or their careers you should feel FUCKING LUCKY that someone looks up to you.
recently I’ve had so many folks reach out and dm and I take time to jump on calls with all of them because shit is hard. be nice for gods sake.
51
34
724
39,446
I desperately need younger designers to know that you can become very successful in this industry without making every human interaction feel like an enterprise SaaS procurement process.
No, I won’t check out your portfolio.
Here’s why.
Anytime you ask someone to do something, it’s a pitch. In a pitch, say what’s in it for the other person.
What’s in it for me to check out your portfolio? Why would I spend my time, energy, and attention—all of which I value highly—on that as opposed to anywhere else?
If there’s nothing in it for me, then you’re asking for charity.
If you’re asking for charity, then ask for charity. Make it clear. I like doing favors sometimes and being charitable sometimes. But I can’t tell if that’s what you’re asking for, and I won’t assume it.
Even if I agreed to it, you haven’t even given me any criteria. Is there something specific you want help with? Something to improve? Something you’re stuck on? Some job it’s not doing?
General questions get general answers. Specific questions get specific answers.
Since I don’t know what you want help with and there doesn’t seem to be much incentive for me, it’s a pass.
Here are some examples of pitches I would consider more (even if I’d still say no):
“Dan, would you be willing to do me a favor and review my portfolio to help me land a design job working on a U.S.-based team for a fintech startup?”
“Dan, can you please review my portfolio to see if the UI design work feels closer to junior or senior caliber? I’ll make a donation to your favorite non-profit as a token of thanks.”
“Dan, would you mind looking at my portfolio to see if I’m the kind of person you’d hire? I know you value your time, attention, and energy, so I’d gladly take any feedback you can provide after looking for even 30 seconds.”
@odeniransulaimo, wanna pitch again? I’m open to you trying again if you’d like.
But even better: pitch someone who’s in a closer position to help you get what you want. If you want a job at a sports betting startup, pitch a hiring manager at a sports betting startup to check out your portfolio. Even if they won’t hire you for THEIR startup, their feedback would be way more relevant to getting a job at a sports betting startup than my feedback would be, since I’ve never worked at a sport betting startup.
In short, when you pitch, make it about them and make it as easy as possible for them to give you what you want.
10
22
405
22,540
A product designer recently asked me what separates senior designers from staff designers, etc.
One thing I’ve noticed in my own career: the work gets less neatly divided between strategy and execution.
You talk to customers.
Frame the problem.
Make the call.
Design it.
Prototype it.
Sometimes build it.
Learn something.
Change course.
The real skill is developing enough judgment to know where to be decisive and where to keep the door open.
5
1
61
4,694
We rebuilt After Effects and Premiere for GPT-6 Astra and Sol.
Introducing Tesseract.
The video creative suite for your AI agent.
Give your agent direct access to our creative engine.
No more clicking through software built for people.
→ Edit footage, motion, and sound
→ Make precise changes with full creative control
→ Revise and render directly through your agent
And yes, this video was made with Tesseract.
Get the ChatGPT plugin.
2
12
1,661
I’ve followed Mark’s work for over 10 years and in the past two years I’ve been able to add a couple of his prints to our home. This event brought in a grand total of $9,102,500! Amazing!
Mark Maggiori, my favorite living painter, made history last night. His work sold for $1.3 million, a record for a living Western artist. Congrats to Mark and his family!
1
8
596
new themed micro interaction set for my bio, cv, contact iamclint.xyz
1
9
470
product/design folks: who’s doing AI privacy + consent really well right now?
We’re working through opt-in / opt-out patterns as we bring more AI into Givebutter, and I’d love to see great examples.
Clear consent, data usage, settings, controls, etc.
Who should I be looking at? Screenshots/links welcome 👀
1
148
