@zachpogrob

Obsession beats discipline - go all-in on your craft until you either die or get reborn.

Learn Design Skills Rapidly Using AI

Non-technical founders who need design skills. Anyone who learns better by example than by curriculum. People who have strong taste but lack technical ability to execute.

2-3 months to functional proficiency

What Success Looks Like

You can design professional-quality interfaces, understand the technical details of what makes design work, and execute your vision without depending on others for basic design work.

Steps to Execute

Collect examples: screenshot 20-50 designs you genuinely admire. These become your curriculum.

Analyze with AI: paste screenshots into Claude or ChatGPT and ask specific technical questions like 'What Figma settings create this shadow effect?'

Implement immediately: after each AI explanation, open Figma and recreate what you learned

Build complete projects: use this method to design actual screens for your product, not just exercises

Iterate across many examples: repeat the process across dozens of examples to build comprehensive skill

Checklist

Have you collected 20+ reference designs you admire?

Have you asked AI to explain at least 10 specific technical details?

Have you implemented each explanation in Figma immediately after learning?

Have you designed at least 5 complete screens for a real project?

Can you look at a design and identify how to recreate it?

Inputs Needed

Figma account and basic orientation
Access to AI assistant like Claude or ChatGPT
Collection of design examples you admire
A real project to apply learning to

Outputs

Functional design skills in Figma
Library of techniques learned from analyzing great work
Actual designed screens for your product
Independence from needing designers for basic work

Example

“A founder with no design background wants to design their app. They screenshot 30 app interfaces they love. Each day, they pick one, paste it into Claude, and ask specific questions about spacing, typography, shadows, and colors. They immediately recreate each technique in Figma. In 2 months, they have designed their entire app and can execute new ideas without waiting for a designer.”