I was lucky enough to help review a draft of this article, and can say it's definitely suitable for all non-programmers out there :)

Got my first email yesterday and really impressed :)

Covered Paul's on-boarding process for new clients designed to prevent designer/client mis-matches. Some great insights and new ideas I'd not heard of before.

You can see the final typeface here:

http://www.typespec.co.uk/doves-type/

Hi Scott,

Where did the idea of The Noun Project originate, and did you ever expect it to be so successful?

Thanks.

I think the article is wrong to focus on the selling price:

"These projects seem to have taken many, many hours of meticulous labor, and yet any of them can be had for less than US$50—an almost comically affordable price point."

One of the examples the author uses, the Quantum HUD Infographic has sold over 1,000 times. After factoring in Envato's fees, that still leaves Pixflow with around $27,000 in revenue. And that's without all the usual overheads of a standard design studio or the cost of client interaction (meetings, invoicing, revisions, etc).

Overall, Pixflow have made around $430,000 in revenue for 35 items on Envato.

Not bad for "lower wage workers"...

Which browser are you using Greg? Looks fine using Safari or Chrome on my Mac…

It's from the very talented bunch over at COBE :

http://cobeisfresh.com

Sidebar is brilliant, esp. if you don't have time to keep on top of DN for a couple of days - makes sure you don't miss any crucial big stories, and there's always 1 or 2 links which no-one else has seemed to pick up!

http://sidebar.io

+1 Kevin :)

There's always room on the web to push the boat out and showcase everything and anything that can be done.

In fact, going back to the very first issue of A List Apart in 1999, Lance Arthur argues that this SHOULD be done (http://alistapart.com/article/redefining-possible).

How else is the web going to progress if we never say "Oh, WTF" and just do it.

But of course it's all down to context, and personal side-projects & agency websites would seem to be the ideal playgrounds for this sort of work.

Hey Marcus,

Great question and completely empathise with you as I'm pretty much in the same boat as you :)

A few people have knocked Dribbble in some of the other comments, but I've found it to be very useful for learning about Sketch and UI design in general.

I will download .sketch files, then recreate them by reverse-engineering the original file, learning how to use Sketch along the way. More importantly, I try and look at each setting and ask 'Why did the original designer choose this setting? What was their thought process behind it? What if I change the setting? If I omit it, what does the design look like? Does it take away or add to the design? What gives this piece of work the 'something special' that makes it stand out?'

For example, early on I discovered how closely related line spacing and text size are - and not to use the default line spacing if you want really readable type. Also, how multiple shadows can be built up to give really nice effects that are unachievable with just a single shadow.

BTW I'm also in Leicester :)