Femke.Design

One thing I’ve noticed from talking to designers over the years:

The designers who advance the fastest aren’t always the strongest visual designers.

They’re often the people who make difficult things easier.
Easier to understand.
Easier to prioritize.
Easier to decide.

Teams remember the designer who helped everyone get aligned.

The designer who brought clarity to a messy problem.
The designer who helped move the work forward when nobody was quite sure what to do next.

That’s a very different skill set from creating great screens.
And I think it’s becoming even more important.

If you’re curious where your biggest growth opportunities are beyond craft and ex*****on, comment “AUDIT” and I’ll send over my Strategic Design Career Audit.

One thing I’ve noticed when helping designers prepare for performance reviews:

The hardest part usually isn’t the review itself.
It’s remembering everything you’ve done.

A lot of the work that creates the most value doesn’t leave behind an obvious artifact.

Maybe you helped a project avoid a costly mistake.
Maybe you got stakeholders aligned before things went off track.
Maybe you brought clarity to a messy situation before ex*****on even started.

Those moments often have a bigger impact than a single screen or feature launch.

The problem is they’re also the easiest things to forget six months later.

That’s why I’ve been experimenting with a free Claude Skill that helps designers capture work as it happens and turn it into structured examples using the SBI framework:
Situation → What was happening?
Behavior → What did you do?
Impact → What changed because of it?

The goal isn’t to write a better self-review.
It’s to stop relying on memory when review season comes around.

Comment REVIEW and I’ll send over the latest YouTube video + the free Claude Skill.md.

A senior designer told me recently:

“I feel like my job quietly became three jobs overnight.”

And honestly, I knew exactly what they meant.
You’re still expected to be a great designer.

But now you’re also expected to:
- align stakeholders
- influence decisions
- connect design work to business outcomes
- navigate ambiguity
- understand where AI fits into your workflow

None of these responsibilities arrived all at once.

They just slowly became part of the job.
The title stayed the same.
The expectations didn’t.

If you’re trying to figure out which of these skills is actually holding you back right now, comment “AUDIT” and I’ll send over my Strategic Influence Audit.

Many designers want a seat at the table but don’t have a clear path for how to get there, or what to do once they are. Their work is strong, but they are not shaping direction.

Join Coriyon for a live session on: Turning good design into real influence

Hosted by (Meta).

In this session, you’ll:
✨ Get involved earlier instead of being brought in too late
✨ Bring the right context into conversations so your input lands
✨ Move from executing work to influencing what actually gets built

You will leave with a clearer understanding of how to show up in conversations, shape decisions, and take action on the work that matters.

📅 Date: June 10 | ⏰ Time: 9AM PST | 🎟 Tickets: $10

One of my favourite parts of Level Up Club has honestly become the Community Connect sessions.

Not because they are overly polished or formal, but because they feel like the kinds of conversations designers usually wish they had more access to.

People sharing how they actually approached their portfolio refresh.
How they structured a case study.
How they handled a difficult career decision.
How they are thinking about AI workflows inside real product teams.

There’s something really valuable about hearing how other designers think through problems in real time. Not just the final outcome, but the reasoning, tradeoffs, and decisions behind it.

I think there’s only so much you can learn from consuming content alone. A lot of growth comes from exposure to other people’s perspectives, experiences, and ways of operating.

This recent Community Connect session had members sharing portfolio and visual resume approaches, case study frameworks, presentation strategies, and we even had a special guest demo an AI prototype workflow from Stripe.

It was such a good reminder that some of the best learning moments happen through conversations with other designers.

If you’re interested in joining the next Level Up Club round this fall, comment “CLUB” and I’ll send you the details :)

I remember hitting a point in my career where I realized the work itself was no longer the hardest part.

I could design the screens.
Think through flows.
Solve the UX problems.

But suddenly the harder part became everything happening around the work.

Trying to get buy-in from stakeholders.
Explaining decisions in rooms where everyone cared about different things.
Navigating pushback without sounding defensive.
Learning how to communicate ideas in a way that actually moved conversations forward.

And honestly, that shift caught me off guard a little bit.

Because no one really tells you that growing in your career eventually becomes less about the ex*****on itself and more about how you navigate people, decisions, and ambiguity around the work.

I see a lot of designers go through this stage. They know they are capable of more, but they are still approaching growth through pure ex*****on. More work. Better work. More polishing.

When sometimes the thing that actually needs to grow is how you communicate, influence, position yourself, and think more strategically.

A lot of the coaching conversations I have now end up being about exactly that. Not just improving the work, but helping designers navigate the transition into bigger conversations, more ownership, and more strategic influence.

I recently put together a free Design Career Audit to help people reflect on where they might be getting stuck and what areas may need more attention moving forward.

Comment “AUDIT” and I’ll send it over :)